Long or Short Capital

Long or Short Capital’s fiscal 4th quarter ended on 7/31/06, and the company reported their results for both Q4’06 and FY’06 in a press release on their site:

Mister Juggles: “Long or Short had 4th quarter performance in line with management’s expectations for the slower summer months. Sequential same store traffic of 21%. This is the key figure I would like to share with you in today’s call, and while there are other figures that would show what we have done, these figures would be much more ambiguous, some could even be used to make our results look “not so hot.” Sequential same store traffic is a like-for-like measure of our number of visits in Q4 compared to Q3. As you can see, we were 21% more trafficked than last quarter, a growth rate which is the best in the Online Financial Humor/Abstract Investment Recommendation Industry.

We generated earnings per a subscriberholder of $0.38 compared to $0.32 in Q3. Our accounts receivable is a little higher than we’d like it to be due to unfavorable payment terms and a one-off timing issue with one of our largest accounts. Working capital was also challenged by our securing of a 5 year extension of our domain registry costs, which was payable up front. Revenue was flat sequentially but our reliance on Yahoo CPC advertising has been reduced and our runrate revenue should be at a higher level. In the Yahoo segment, our click through rate increased 20% sequentially, but that gain was offset by a 34% decrease in our revenue per click. Our suscribership increased from 161 to 282.

We now have $115.56 of Payment-in-Kind (PIK) debt which is off-balance sheet and was previously undisclosed. Management has experience operating in a leveraged environment, and the debt should be reduced substantially by the end of Q1’07 from working capital.

We passed several milestones in our first year, including our 30,000th visit to our new storefront, as well as 100,000th visit overall. We also fell in love. We hope that in the coming year we can repeat what we did well last year, and improve on it, by approximately 5-7% in every measure.

Note that the financials below are unaudited and may contain non-GAAP measures. All numbers comply with Seldom Accepted Accounting Principles (SAAP).

Unaudited Financial Results for Q4’06

Income Statement

Contextual CPC Revenue $38.47

Static Ad Revenue $78.50

Other Revenue $14.11

Total Revenue $126.08

Cost of Sales $19.55

Marketing Expense $0.10

Operating Income $101.43

Balance Sheet

Cash $0

Accounts Receivable $190.14

Inventory $0.00

Prepaid Hosting/Reg $115.05

Accounts Payable $0

Cash Flow Statement

Operating Cash Flow ($34.83)

Capex $0.00

Dividends $X.00

Performance Metrics

Visits 16,900

Pageviews 31,850

Clicks on ads 100

Ad impressions served 55,000

Subscribers by Email 50

Subscribers by XML 232

Inbound Links per Technorati 154

Inbound Links per Google ~71 sites

Past Results (due to our reliance on SAAP, previous unaudited financial results are not reliable)
Long or Short Capital Q1’06 Results
Long or Short Capital Q2’06 Results
Long or Short Capital Q3’06 Results

In Jordan, drivers for tours are not legally permitted to also be tour guides. So while it makes sense that a Jordanian driver for a group of 50 Germans, who speaks pretty good deutsche and happens to know a little about Nabatean culture, also lead the guided tour of Petra when the group gets there, he cannot. He will not be allowed. Instead, he will pass his group to a specialist licensed tour guide. While “economists” and other fake scientists may see this as wasteful, what this really does is create jobs. Where 1 job should exist, 2 jobs exist and the proletariat rejoices.

We suspect that this kind of job creation is the perfect way to solve the Middle East’s burgeoning shortage of jobs for the large young cohort which is entering the labor force. Simply take one job, split it in two and you have two jobs. Why haven’t governments thought of this sooner?

I wish that that the government mandated that if you work in finance, you could not also sexually harass female employees yourself, someone else had to do it for you. It would really free up my work day.

Monopoly is a metaphor for life in many ways. For instance, people often claim the outcome depends little on skill and largely on luck. In reality, the best way to win is the same as in life: become the banker and then skim off the top. However, this equation may change with Monopoly’s introduction of a version that uses debit cards rather than cash. This trend should reduce the demand for Monopoly money and increase the velocity of virtual currency.

Furthermore, cheating will become more costly as the requirements have increased from merely being bold, sly, or sticky-fingered (aka a generic finance type) to having a computer science degree (aka a generic nerd). This will represent a shift in the labor supply curve of thieving bankers. Increased regulation and greater financial transparecny should also serve to reduce shadow market opportunities in the greater Monopoly market, such as trades in “One in every currency for rolling snake eyes” or “All the cash in the middle for landing on Free Parking.”

Following our report on Sexual Harassment Arbitrage, Helen Green, a woman who was a secretary for Deutsche Bank in The City area of London, sued and won £800k in damages for being bullied. Not sexually harassed. Not groped or oggled by her lusty depraved male handlers. Bullied by her female peers.

Green had told the High Court that she worked in a “department from hell,” where a “gang of four” women subjected her to “mobbing” and “stonewalling,” and that a male staff member spoke to her in a sexist and degrading manner.

Mr. Justice Owen said: “On any view, the behavior of the women was oppressive and unreasonable. [Welcome to Finance!]”

It is beyond my analytical acumen how Deutsche Bank could be responsible for bullies; it seems responsibility should have been attributed to the parents of the “Gang of Four” in an after work meeting with the principals. A picture of Helen Green underscores the power women assets have, not only in terms of sexual harassment arbitrage, but in terms of female harassment arbitrage as a whole. You do not even have to wield the pretty, to wield your womanhood. £800k for “silent tears” and a case of the sads is compensation not available to men of any level of attraction.

This is a response to all those who emailed doubting the veracity of the camel’s affinity for Coke. A camel sipping Coke and a camel chugging a Coke bottle. We value empiriscm above all else.*

*Unless empiriscm was empirically proven to be less valuable than some other measure.

Camels are the navy of the desert, capable of porting goods across terrain that is otherwise inhosptiable, even to trucks. The shipping and transport of goods is crucial to modern global economies. Is the camel industry poised to benefit from the contagion of the emerging Middle East market?

Ahkmoud, my desert guide in the Middle East last week, shared these facts with me on camels:

1. Camels can go without food or water for long periods of time from 6 days up to a month depending on the conditions.
2. A camel has a powerful sense of taste. Ahkmoud remembers a camel that would only drink Coke, when offered a Pepsi he would refuse. When offered Pepsi or water or other substitute liquid within a Coke can, he would catch onto the ruse, the clever beast, and spit it out.
3. Camels only have sex once per year (hence the term “sexual camel”). If you happen to disrupt a camel humping (pun intended), the camel will remember you as his enemy for the rest of his life.
4. Camel milk can cure cancer, if it is caught early (Ahkmoud insisted it had to be within the 1st two weeks).
5. The Koran says that if you want to know Allah, you need only look to the camel.

The typical pick-up truck costs you $20k, requires constant refueling, will overheat in the desert, pollutes the earth, cannot discern between Coke/Pepsi, and cannot cure cancer. A fully grown camel costs the USD equivalent of $1300 to $1700 with none of those drawbacks.  And for all of that, all he asks is you turn your head once a year while he bangs out the two humped camel babe he met in eastern Turkey. 

Recommendation: Long the Camel, growth in automobile use has sucked the world dry of oil while simultaneously causing global warming. The world will soon be a hot desert with no oil and the only way to get around will be on coke-drinking camels.  We also recommend exposure to flying camels which should take significant share from Airbus and Boeing after they are FAA approved later this year.