Financial Experts Share Common Mistakes & How to Avoid Them
Throughout life, we encounter a number of “financial impact points” — pivotal events with the potential to make our dreams come true, say financial advisors Chris Snyder and Haitham “Hutch” Ashoo, co-authors of “Exiting Strategies: The CEO’s Seven Critical Steps To Cashing-Out of a Business, Managing and Preserving Wealth.”
“The sale of a business or real estate is one of those,” says Chris Snyder, co-founder with Ashoo of Pillar Wealth Management, (www.pillarwm.com). “With the right planning, it can become your ideal retirement.”
Unfortunately, sellers often make fundamental mistakes: They underestimate how much money they’ll need for their retirement; they overvalue their business or property; and they often fail to properly invest the proceeds in a diversified portfolio of equities, bonds and money markets for income.
How can you turn your business or property sale into your ideal retirement? Snyder and Ashoo offer these tips:
1. Determine the retirement lifestyle you desire, and how much money it will cost.
If you don’t know how much money you’ll need, you can’t identify how much you need to net from the sale, Ashoo says.
“How many homes will you have? Do you see yourself traveling? Creating a charitable organization?”
Create a detailed list. How much money will it cost you each year? If you retire at 55 or 65, odds are good you’ll enjoy a 30- to 40-year retirement.How much will you need for that length of time?
“When you meet with your wealth manager, insist on running that number through 1,000 different ‘launch’ scenarios – what we call a ‘space shuttle’ analysis – to test whether it will meet your expenses under a wide variety of market and world conditions,” Ashoo says.
“You can’t rely on an Excel sheet analysis based on fixed rates of return and fixed expenses for the rest of your life. It’s a sure way to financial disaster because there’s no such thing as zero risk.”
2. Get an objective valuation of your business or real estate.
Very often, Snyder says, he and Ashoo work with clients who have a vastly inflated idea of how much their business or property is worth. When they decide to sell, they either can’t because no one will pay what they’re asking, or they get far less than they expected.
“People often attach an emotional value to the asset, particularly a business or legacy real estate,” Snyder says. “Hire a merger and acquisition professional to provide you with a real market valuation for your business, or a real estate appraiser to do the same for property.”
If the value isn’t where it needs to be, you may need to make some lifestyle changes or hold onto the asset longer.
Another caution: “If you performed step 1 thoroughly and you are confident you need $15 million for your retirement and someone offers you $20 million, take it,” Ashoo advises. “Don’t hold out for $23 million just because you think that’s what it’s worth.”
3. Invest the proceeds prudently and in a way that will generate income.
Once your real estate or business is sold, you need to build a diversified portfolio of equity, bonds and money markets that will balance your risk and generate an income, Snyder says.
“Modern portfolio theory holds that 93 percent of the return on your investment is based on your mix of these asset classes,” he says
Adds Ashoo: “But prudent investing entails not accepting more risk than is required to achieve your retirement lifestyle.” Don’t rely on a simple risk questionnaire to make that determination for you, the two say.
Again, have your wealth manager run your portfolio through a “space shuttle’’ analysis to test how it will perform under many different conditions.
About Chris Snyder and Haitham “Hutch” Ashoo
Chris Snyder and Haitham “Hutch” Ashoo are co-founders of Pillar Wealth Management, (www.pillarwm.com), of Walnut Creek, Calif., and co-authors of numerous published works including “Exiting Strategies: The CEO’s Seven Critical Steps To Cashing-Out of a Business, Managing and Preserving Wealth,” available as a free download at their website. The two specialize in customized wealth management advice to affluent families. Their unique five-step consultative process for new clients ensures they have a deep understanding of clients’ goals. The two have a combined 51 years of experience.
San Jose, CA (January 23, 2014) —Technology Credit Union (Tech CU) announced this week the credit union has funded a $4.5 million commercial loan for the historic Fox Theatre building in downtown Redwood City. As the credit union continues to grow and diversify its real estate loan portfolio, Tech CU is focusing on lending to owners and developers of commercial real estate throughout the Bay Area and its adjacent counties. This most recent loan was provided to Fox Theatre owners Eric and Lori Lochtefeld, who purchased the property out of foreclosure in 2010 with plans to renovate and bring it back to life by turning the theatre into a mixed-use property with 6,000 square feet of retail, 10,000 square feet of office, and 20,000 square feet of theater space for live performances and private events.
The Fox Theatre is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It opened in 1929 under the name, “The New Sequoia Theater” as a place to show motion pictures and, in 1950, was renovated and reopened as a live performance venue. Throughout its 85-year history, the theater has remained an iconic spot in the Bay Area, having recently hosted such key figures as President Barack Obama, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, authors Caroline Kennedy and George R.R. Martin (“Game of Thrones”), singer/songwriters Colbie Caillat and Ben Harper, and a slew of classic Broadway musicals. The theater has been in continuous operation for almost nine decades through reinvention, and in its latest form, the Lochtefelds are anticipating the Fox will reach its 100-year milestone.
“This financing opportunity is unique because the theater is such an important landmark on the Peninsula,” said Niki Wong, SVP of Commercial/SBA for Tech CU. “As a local lender, we appreciate being involved in supporting the preservation of an historic property, while also seeing the business opportunity Eric and Lori envision for the future.”
“Tech CU’s lending team structured the refinancing of this property to the benefit of our business model and investment strategy,” said Eric Lochtefeld. “They were also flexible and efficient in dealing with the paperwork and getting the loan funded — something we greatly appreciate.”
Tech CU’s commercial real estate loans can be used for real estate acquisition and refinancing, including: owner-occupied and investor-owned office, mixed-used properties, warehouse, light industrial, retail and multi-family properties. For more information, visit www.techcu.com/commercial or contact Tech CU at 800.448.1467.
Founded in 1960 by the employees of Fairchild Camera and Instrument Semiconductor Division, Tech CU has served the high tech workforce in Silicon Valley for more than 50 years and today has 70,000 individual, non-profit and business members and more than $1.7 billion in assets. The financial institution is recognized as one of the best managed and strongest in the country, as indicated by Tech CU’s 5-star rating from Bauer Financial, the nation’s largest independent rating service for banks and credit unions. Tech CU’s members have access to 65,000+ surcharge-free ATMs nationwide, online and mobile banking, 10 full-service branches throughout the Bay Area, and comprehensive mortgage, wealth management and commercial banking services.
Promotional items are a great way to promote your company or brand, but when it comes to choosing what type of items, there is a huge amount of choice. If you are stuck for ideas on what marketing strategy to use next, why not give sports promotions items a go. Not only are they extremely easy to source, they have an element of fun and team spirit that can benefit your brand in numerous ways.
Some of the main benefits of choosing sporty promotional items are:
● They are easy to source and there is a huge amount of range.
● They cover a large variety of different budgets. Small, cheaper items can be great for mass distribution and more expensive items will create the wow factor.
● They are usually fun items that your customers will appreciate and keep.
● These items are often used in public places so are perfect for exposure.
● They can create a team spirit within your company. Team golf days or fun runs are a great way to promote your brand and get your employees together.
The Top Picks For Sports Related Promotional Items Are Below.
GOLF GEAR
Golf can insinuate a sense of class and elegance for your company making branded golf balls and tees a great promotional item. Not only can they be used for your employees on a team golf day, your clients will appreciate the usable gift and unknowingly promote your brand while they play.
SPORTS BAGS
Sports bags are one of the most commonly used promotional products to promote a brand. Not only are they relatively cheap, they are very usable, large enough so that your brand is ery visible and they become a walking billboard for your company in public places.
SPORTS CAPS
Sports caps are even more popular than bags when it comes to promotional products. What makes a cap a great choice is the low cost of production and potential for mass distribution. Much like bags, they very useful,
are often worn in public and in the direct eye-line of everybody else.
BALLS AND FUN STUFF
It’s really important not to lose sight of the fun stuff when choosing a sports based promotional item. Balls, cricket sets or even fun pool items can be given away as free gifts when purchasing something else. Your customers will be grateful and your brand will come across as fun loving and positive.
THE LITTLE THINGS
Very small promotional items can sometimes be over looked however they play an important part when it comes to marketing your brand. Items such as sweat bands or drink bottles are extremely cheap to produce which gives you the potential for mass production. Imagine the impact your free gift will have if you handed out 10, 000 of them out at the cricket or a big sporting event!
“Tim has been working on as a branding expert for several years at CustomGear helping businesses promoting their brand through innovative promotional products. “
This morning we published a review of recent research by PayScale on the most valuable colleges and majors in America, based on self-reported earnings by individuals who graduated from hundreds of schools.
Some of you asked: What about the least valuable colleges and majors in America? What a mischievous question! So we looked into that, too.
Here are the eleven schools in PayScale’s data with a 20-year net return worse than negative-$30,000. In other words: these are the schools where PayScale determined that not going to college is at least $30,000 more valuable than taking the time to pay for and graduate from one of these schools.
It gets worse. The self-reported earnings of art majors from Murray State are so low that after two decades, a typical high school grad will have out-earned them by nearly $200,000. Here are the degrees (i.e.: specific majors at specific schools) with the lowest 20-year net return, according to PayScale. They are all public schools: Bold names are for in-state students.
The same caveats that applied to our first article apply to this one. First, these estimates come from self-reported income. Self-reported income tends to skew up, because humans are a proud species, and we care more about our feelings than strict honesty with anonymous pollsters.
Second, PayScale calculates the next 20 years in earnings by inferring from the last 20 years. Sounds reasonable. But like any assumption, this carries risks. The “most coveted major” changes from time to time. If biomedical engineering becomes the next big VC category, scientists in California will be in higher demand than software engineers, whose earnings forecast might fall. PayScale can’t predict that future. Moreover, if a school dramatically expanded a high-value program (like engineering) in the last five years, it might raise the financial value of its students in a way that PayScale doesn’t full account for, since this research looks back two decades. In short, like most studies of this kind, the findings are fascinating and worth remembering and quoting—but also worth contextualizing.
Finally, as Jordan Weissmann notes, PayScale can tell us which colleges graduate the richest students. But it can’t tell us which colleges make the biggest delta in student outcomes, which might be a more important question for college counselors and families. For that, you would need to study a huge group of similar kids, some of whom went to great colleges, some to middling colleges, and some to bad ones, and measure the difference. When we measure lifetime earnings of students graduating from elite (and poor) colleges, we’re measuring both the quality of the college and the earnings potential of the student attending that college before they stepped foot on campus.
The news today that Facebook will buy Oculus—the makers of the best virtual reality experience in existence—caused paroxysms of upsetment and surprise. That’s fair! But once the smoke clears, this could turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to the most promising technology we have.
If you’ve been tracking Oculus since its early days as a Kickstarter project, today’s acquisition is frustrating. Facebook is your trying-too-hard uncle; Oculus is the homecoming queen. Of course seeing them together would give you the creeps.
It shouldn’t. Oculus offered a beautiful dream, but you can only get so far on Kickstarter funds. Facebook offers the financial wherewithal to make the Oculus Rift a truly mass product, to realize its vision beyond just a gimmick-driven game engine. Even better, it looks like Mark Zuckerberg gets what makes Oculus so special.
Neat, right? Also limiting. Virtual reality has historically been applied to gaming, and that’s how Oculus began as well. But VR’s roots—especially the goofy headset version—are from an age that predates the bandwidth we have today, the drive towards connectivity, the densely layered social tissue that Facebook and Twitter and Skype and WhatsApp have spent the last decade cultivating. Despite lofty dreams of a VR internet, technical limitations have made VR games a closed circuit, a way for you and maybe one friend to pretend that you weren’t in the room—or mall concourse—you were actually in. But it can be so much more. Facebook gets that.
In a call today to discuss the acquisition, Zuck said more than once that his company was preparing for “the platforms of tomorrow.” And that’s what Oculus provides: a platform. A place for games, sure, but also for chat, for education, for literally anything that involves human interaction. If it seems farfetched that a goofy headset could achieve that kind of ubiquity, remember that Android and iOS didn’t exist 10 years ago; now they’re all-encompassing.
That Facebook recognizes this not only speaks to its own ambitions—and its manic urge to hedge for the future—but also manages to broaden those of Oculus. Left to its own devices, the company could very well have turned Rift into the absolutely most immersive way to play Left for Dead. There’s value in that! But by pushing past games and into hospitals, and classrooms, and kitchens, and battleships, Facebook will give Oculus every chance to realize its potential.
Think of it this way. Without Facebook, Oculus’s best case scenario was to bootstrap its way to becoming a real product that gamers could embrace until Sony’s Project Morpheus came along. Still great, but niche. With Facebook, Oculus will go on sale, soon. And when it does, it’ll have ample resources focused on letting you do more than just mash buttons.
The Worst Case
Your worries aren’t totally unfounded, of course. There are a whole lot of complications that come with Facebook owning Oculus. Starting with the biggest concern whenever a big company chews up a small one: Will it disappear and die?
It’s a reasonable question. Google bought Sparrow, now Sparrow’s dead. Yahoo! bought [LITERALLY ANYTHING YAHOO EVER BOUGHT], and now it’s dead or dying. But Facebook, so far, seems to be doing right by its marquee acquisitions. Instagram’s not just going strong, it’s actually adding useful features. The Branch team is still working to make Facebook Conversations better, by all accounts. It’s too early to say anything about WhatsApp, but Facebook has promised to let it act as an independent company as well.
Besides, it’s not like Facebook can subsume a hardware company the way it did, say, FriendFeed. When it says Oculus will continue independently, and that its main goal is to allow it to succeed as a platform, there’s every reason to believe that’s true. Remember, Facebook is buying Instagram and WhatsApp and Oculus not because it wants all of those things to become Facebook. It’s buying them on the off chance one of them becomes what replaces Facebook.
A more rational concern, though, is what the ultimate Oculus experience will be under Facebook. One prominent developer (!) has already jumped ship on the news, and more could follow:
That’s probably a short-term concern; once developers realize that Oculus is the same old Oculus—assuming it is—it shouldn’t have much difficulty attracting enough action to keep you entertained. Especially since it’s currently, for all intents and purposes, the only game in town.
The bigger, longer-term issue might be how exactly Facebook plans to monetize Oculus. Zuck said earlier today that he’s not interested in making a profit off of the hardware (which is good!) but that “there may be advertising” (which is bad!), not to mention various retail pushes. Why go to the mall when you can sift through the sales rack from the comfort of your Rift?
Which brings us to the last question about a Facebook-Rift pairing: What kind of future are we looking at? Virtual reality can bring us closer to people who are at a great distance, but it disconnects us from the world we’re currently in. It’s one thing when you’re just playing a quick game; you’ve got the same blinders on whether it’s a Xbox 360 or an Rift. But attending a lecture? A family reunion? Piloting a drone? It’s miraculous that we’ll be able to do those things from the comfort of our compugoggles. It’s also a little bit terrifying.
SEXPAND
But those are questions for society at large, not for Facebook and Oculus. Right now, today, the most amazing technology we’ve seen in years just found a champion that can make it a reality. That’s something to applaud, not scowl at. That’s how this is supposed to work.
Unless you ponied up for that Kickstarter. Sorry, guys, that sucks.
Automatically Analyzes, Turns Website Data Into Natural Language Reports
CHICAGO (Mar. 18, 2014) —Narrative Science, the leader in Narrative Analytics, announces the launch of Quill Engage™, a free application that automatically analyzes and transforms Google Analytics data into natural language reports. By quickly and easily explaining what’s impacting site performance, Quill Engage enables organizations to make better decisions about user engagement and specific marketing efforts. Quill Engage utilizes Quill™, Narrative Science’s artificial intelligence platform, and can be accessed for free at quillengage.com.
“Organizations of every size struggle with getting true insight and actionable information from their website data. Quill Engage provides instant analysis in the form of easy-to-read, written reports that empower people to do their jobs better,” says Stuart Frankel, CEO of Narrative Science. “Quill Engage is a powerful way for any Google Analytics user to experience the speed, scale and personalization made possible with artificial intelligence.”
Quill Engage automatically accesses and analyzes website stats and trends from Google Analytics and delivers users a weekly or monthly report in plain English that’s similar to one written by a professional analyst. Quill Engage includes performance drivers and recommendations and covers key metrics, including content engagement, web traffic and sources, referrals, paid search, and audience segmentation.
“Website analytics are the lifeblood of most businesses, and companies are spending countless hours sifting through website data,” said Andy Crestodina, web strategist and co-founder of Orbit Media. “Quill Engage takes the headache out of deciphering Google Analytics, so you can spend less time interpreting data and more time improving your site.”
Quill Engage joins Narrative Science’s robust lineup of solutions for marketers and agencies, including campaign analysis and communication solutions powered by Quill. These solutions analyze marketing data and deliver insight and advice in natural language, enabling marketers and agencies to accelerate content marketing and more effectively understand campaign performance, audience measurement and advertising effectiveness.
About Narrative Science
Narrative Science is the leader in Narrative Analytics, which helps organizations automatically analyze and transform data into natural language reports. The company’s patented artificial intelligence platform, Quill ™, mines data for meaning and insight to provide people with relevant communications that are easy to understand and produced at an unprecedented scale. Quill is being used by organizations to improve decision making, create new information products and optimize customer communications across many industries, including financial services, insurance, government, sports and marketing services. For more information on Narrative Science, visit narrativescience.com.
Near the end of Oracle‘s (NYSE: ORCL) conference call last week, co-president Mark Hurd was asked about the company’s ambitions in the telecom space, following its acquisition last month of Acme Packet for $2.1 billion.
“Phone companies have two IT systems,” he said, “One that manages the business, one that manages the network. This was an opportunity to get into the network side of the business.” On Monday the company accelerated the move into that business by buying Tekelec, a long-time provider of network signaling, subscriber data management and policy control software.
The big dog in the telecom space for most of the last decade has been CiscoSystems(NASDAQ: CSCO), which itself has been moving into the cloud space with acquisitions like Solve Direct.
With Oracle and Cisco now on a collision course, who is likely to win?
Telecom Becomes Software
The big trend in this space over the last decade was the dominance of IP networks over old-fashioned analog networks, like those companies such as AT&T had run for 100 years. The new trend is the dominance of software over hardware, exemplified by the rise of Software Defined Networking, which envisions the replacement of specialized network hardware with software housed in commodity systems.
Oracle is moving into a version of this space, but in its own way. The companies it has been buying build software and hold patents that are important to the way fixed and mobile networks run now. Since that old-line business is dwindling, they’re bargains. Oracle hopes to turn these bargains into dominance of the phone industry customers, who still buy billions of dollars in equipment per year and are looking for a way forward.
Cisco until now has been mostly focused on SDN start-ups, and on rivals like Juniper Systems, which have been building their own SDN solutions for IP networks through acquisitions and internal development. They’re adapting their existing fast switching fabrics to the new environment, and figure they have a big moat around the space.
But what if they don’t? Oracle does not think they do. They seem to believe that, by controlling the heart of the old-line software, they can control standards, defining what customers do next.
It’s an audacious idea, but it’s not beyond Oracle’s ability to execute. It started with databases and acquired their applications. Database applications are networked and can easily be translated to telecom networks. Oracle already sells to the phone companies in such areas as billing, so why couldn’t it take over the network operations center?
Who Might Win?
Oracle’s stock has been outpacing that of Cisco for years. Over the last half-decade Oracle is up 56%, while Cisco shares are actually down 15%. Over the last year it’s up almost 10%, while Cisco is flat. While Cisco sells at about 2.5 times its annual revenues of $46 billion, Oracle sells at closer to four times its revenue. That’s after a stock collapse that saw it drop almost $4.50/share on third quarter earnings that came in behind analyst estimates.
Oracle was pounding the table for better results going forward on its call. Analysts were told that the arrival of new hardware probably slowed sales, and that economic uncertainty caused some slop-over of orders from the third quarter to the current one. If you believe that, Oracle is going to go up, and may gain 20% or more by the time the next quarterly earnings are released.
Cisco, meanwhile, is going nowhere fast, and is attractive mainly for its yield and its PE ratio a below-market 12. That’s partly because it’s stuck with the slow-growth telecom market, the same market Oracle is now targeting.
Why would Oracle want a market that Cisco is failing to execute in? Because software margins are fatter than hardware margins, and telecom hardware margins can be fatter than those in the general computing market. Oracle believes it can sell a host of its fastest servers into the network operations space, turn industry standards into software, and bull its way through Cisco’s moat with the lower prices that result.
They’re right on the technology trend, and we know they can execute on profits once they control industry standards. I’d say Cisco is in trouble. Watch carefully for its own SDN strategy announcements for your clue on how bad the trouble might be.
R.I.P. Internet — 1969-2014
At only 45 years old… the Internet will be laid to rest in 2014. And Silicon Valley is thrilled. Because they know… The Economist believes the death of the Internet “will be transformative.”
Some people believe in abundance, that the universe will provide. Others believe in scarcity, that there’s not enough to go around. I seem to be bi. I am dazzled by the benevolence and bounty in nature. On the other hand, I read the headlines.
Ukraine and Syria have all grabbed our attention lately, but buried in the news is something you’ve probably figured out in your own —higher food prices. Even potatoes, that basic thrift food, cost more now, and beef is just shy of inflation prices, according to the USDA. Staples like wheat, coffee, rice and soy beans — are in short supply all over the world. So we’re all paying more for less.
Every global calamity (Fukujima, anyone?) threatens our food security even further. And political unrest and soaring food prices go together like mac and cheese. Not only has economic hardship played a role in Syria and Ukraine, some historians believe it was the real tipping point in the French Revolution. Even cheap eats like bread had become prohibitive.
So-called cheap food isn’t cheap now, either, with McDonalds raising its prices. Of all the reasons to go meatless, compassion and the environment top the list. But forget ethics (if you can) — decision-making often begins with your wallet. Since beef is expensive and they’re going to boost the price of a burger, anyway, now’s a nice time to explore other options.
With all the hype about greening your life, one of the most basic things you can do happens to be the most important — going for a more plant-based diet. According to a Stanford University study, two-thirds of our agricultural land goes toward raising livestock, while less than ten percent goes into feeding us. And we’re hungry.
Over two centuries ago, that happy guy Thomas Malthus wrote,”The number of mouths to be fed will have no limit; but the food that is to supply them cannot keep pace with the demand for it.” He predicted “famine, distress, havoc and dismay. . . hatred, violence, war and bloodshed.” Clearly, a textbook case of a scarcity believer.
He thought the situation was hopeless. I don’t. I wish I believed in universal abundance. I do believe we’re capable of change, even if it takes something as dire as a global food shortage to make us act. Giving up eating isn’t viable. Eating smarter is. It doesn’t mean stockpiling food like a survivalist, just making the most of what we have and enjoying more meatless meals. Starting now.
Now happens to have a lot going for it. We’re coming into spring, a happy, hopeful time augering new beginnings. My own vegetable garden is closer to a kiddie pool than an acre and isn’t big enough to put a goat on, let alone feed one. However, it’s putting out an abundance (there’s that word again) of arugula, kale, peppers, tomatoes, radishes, mint and thyme with almost no effort from me.
So indulge in spring’s sparkling produce — grow it if you can, eat it while it’s in season. It won’t get any cheaper and it won’t be here forever. You can’t afford to waste. Really.
The Beet Goes On (Gingered Beets and Beet Greens)
Vibrant spring greens and sweet roasted beets taste of the moment and make the most of the entire beet from roots to leafy greens. Since Monsanto scored again with genetically modified beets, organic beets are definitely the way to go here.
Nice by itself for a lightish lunch or pair with a whole grain for a main course.
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 bunch organic kale or other seasonal greens
1 bunch organic beets, root and greens
1 pinch red pepper flakes
2 teaspoons fresh ginger, grated
2 oranges, juice and zest
1/4 cup dried cranberries
sea salt and fresh ground pepper to taste
1/3 cup walnuts, coarsely chopped
1/4 cup crumbled vegan feta, optional
Preheat oven to 400.
Chop beet roots off from the greens. Rinse them and wrap them tightly in foil.
Place on baking sheet and roast for 1 hour.
Remove beets from oven and allow to cool. You may do this bit a day ahead and store the beets wrapped and chilled in the refrigerator.
Wash beets greens and kale well, rinsing away any grit.
Chop greens fine. Stems may be chopped small too. Otherwise compost them or save them to make vegetable stock.
Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add pepper flakes. When they start to sizzle, add greens by the handful. Cook, stirring, for about 5 minutes, or until greens wilt.
Grate in ginger and orange zest. Stir in orange juice.
Add cranberries and mix together gently.
Place greens and cranberries in a bowl or serving platter.
Toast walnuts at 400 degrees for 8 minutes, or until brown and fragrant.
Meanwhile, unwrap beets. The skins should slip away easily. Dice beets and scatter atop greens.
Being successful in today’s competitive and fast-paced corporate world requires that you include data service as part of your business plan. When you rely on virtual cloud storage services, you will find that your company is more profitable and that you can focus on multitudes of tasks each day without compromising your security or your profitability. However, with more options for this storage coming available each day, you may at some point ask yourself if you are entirely satisfied with your data service. You can answer that question and make the best decision for your corporate needs by considering these possibilities.
Reasonable Storage Requirements
As your company grows and expands, so will your need for sufficient data storage. If your current provider limits the amount of information you can store, you may consider this limitation as a sign that you need to look for a new service. Cloud providers such as QTS, an Atlanta datacenter, should be able to provide the storage space that clients need without penalty or unreasonable limitations. This courtesy can help you grow your company without having to worry about paying for space that should already be available to you.
Good Customer Service
Just as you provide great service to your own customers, you expect this consideration to be shown to you when you approach your provider with questions or concerns. When you are routinely put on hold or have to speak with agents who perhaps are difficult to understand and communicate with, you may question whether or not this company really wants your business. Even more, when your issues seem to be brushed aside or delayed without explanation, you may have every reason to seek a new data cloud company. You are entitled to good customer service just like any other consumer.
Mobile Accessibility
The success of your business could depend greatly on how quickly you can obtain your stored information. Even if you are away from the office, it could be imperative that you are able to log in and get the information you need to serve your customers. Many cloud customers rely on mobile technology to grant them this convenience. If your cloud provider offers mobile apps or other remote accessibility, you can take this as a sign that your cloud service has your company’s best interests at heart and wants to help you succeed.
Security and Monitoring
Your customers and vendors expect you to take good care of their personal information. In turn, you expect your cloud provider to offer you the security and round-the-clock monitoring your company needs to keep your clients’ records safe. A good data storage business should be able to offer you the reassurance that your corporate information is safe and that only authorized parties can log in and access your clients’ data. If your provider has problems with security breaches or theft, you may be well advised to seek out a new company for this need.
Your success, profitability, and competitiveness may depend greatly on how well your data cloud provider serves your company. When you want the assurance that you have chosen a good business in which to store your sensitive records and information, you might feel more confident when you review these qualities. If your provider fails to satisfy any of these requirements, you may fare better to choose a new cloud storage business.
Former Atlanta business owner Nadine Swayne knows the importance of secured data storage. If you need to check out Cloud companies in the “the Peach State”, look online and search the term Atlanta datacenter to find a suitable candidate for your company.
ISI’s AppleAAPL +0.93% analyst, Brian Marshall, published a report estimating that larger screen iPhones could add over $3 in EPS in the second half of calendar 2014 and that the upgrade cycle is not fully reflected in the stock price. He started his note with the widely-held view “Large-screen envy is prevalent among the iPhone installed base” and “we believe a ~5” form-factor iPhone would spark a massive upgrade cycle as well as many ‘Android switchers’ returning back to the iPhone.” (Note that my family and I own Apple shares and I have sold put options, which is a bullish strategy).
Marshall believes that Apple will announce two iPhones this summer with 4.7” and 5.5” screen sizes. He estimates that in the 2011-12 timeframe about 10%-11% of iPhone owners upgraded in any given quarter and that this has fallen to 9% recently. As the chart below shows the December quarter has had the highest replacement rates since new iPhones are available then but that the upgrade rates have fallen the past two years as there is less reason to upgrade.
Apple will have sold over 500 million iPhones by the end of this quarter and Marshall estimates that approximately 260 million units (about the past seven quarters) is the current install base. At an Average Selling Price (ASP) of $600 each 1% incremental replacement rate (based on Marshall’s 260 million install base) generates $1.56 billion in revenue. With an estimated 40% gross margin (feels low to me but lets be conservative), a 26.2% tax and share count of 875 million each 1% adds $0.53 to EPS.
Marshall is estimating that the replacement rate can get back to towards its peak of 12%-14% when the iPhone 6 is available. If it gets back to 12% in both the September and December quarters I estimate it would add about $3.18 to EPS (Marshall is at $3.12 based on a higher share count of 889 million) to Apple’s calendar 2014 EPS.
It is hard to argue that larger screen iPhones won’t increase the replacement rate. I have an iPhone 5 and have found the screen size limiting when I’m reading emails or websites. The key question is how high could the replacement rate move up to since much of the recent install base is locked in for two years.
Marshall’s calendar 2014 EPS estimate is $42.50 before any incremental iPhone upgrade assumption and would increase to about $46 if he is correct. While his timing could be a bit off (may not get a full quarters worth of upgrades in the September quarter) its affect would probably shift to the March 2015 quarter and help that years earnings (which he has not published). The Street is expecting $46.26 which probably includes some positive impact from larger screen iPhones.