I sometimes am criticized for writing about things that have nothing to do with Israeli stocks or the Israeli economy or political system. Well for those who don’t like it you will have to give me a pass.
As we all know there is nothing like spring training in baseball. Every team comes to camp with optimism and thinking they can win the World Series. Well for Seattle Mariners’ fans forget about winning it all. We know that won’t happen this year, but there is even better news. The city of Seattle is being reunited with an icon; Ken Griffey Jr. is coming back to the Emerald city to close out his career in the city where his hall of fame career started. the city is going crazy about the return. Tickets are being sold like hotcakes, Griffey jerseys are not being produced fast enough for the demand. According to the Seattle Times:”On Thursday, the Mariners sold 16,000 tickets, when various combinations of 16-game tickets and other partial season tickets were added up. Single-game tickets go on sale March 14. At the Mariners sales department, said Rebecca Hale, director of public information, “when someone would disconnect from a phone call, there was another waiting. We’ve not had a day like this in a very, very, very long time.”
It’s nice to know that with everything bad that’s happening around the world, and the total lack of anything positive or uplifting coming out of the White House, the return of a baseball great is enough to emotionally jolt a city.
Welcome back, Kid!
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Before we get to the Israel news briefs, I want to send a big congrats out to Seattle Mariners announcer Dave Niehaus, on his induction, yesterday, to the Baseball Hall of Fame. My childhood was spent listening to him do play-by-play and nobody does it better. His “Fly away”, “My o My”, and ” A very pleasant good afternoon everybody on a glorious day out for baseball, the mountain is out in all her majesty” are calls that will forever be ingrained in my memory as well as millions of baseball fans who have listened to him over the years.
Now to the news:
Elbit Systems(ESLT) looks like it will have a strong quarter. Globes reports that the company is looking to make between $8-11 million more than they had thought as short-term delivery contracts rose.
Did I mention that today is my birthday?
The Jpost is reporting that Israeli chip maker Metalink (MTLK) is about to cut a lot of jobs as they try and reduce their burn rate. The report also says that the company is reviewing ’strategic alternatives’ which sounds like a potential sale maybe in the works.
Over at Seeking Alpha, Pierre Daillie interviews well respected investor Larry Sarbit, who speaks highly of the Israeli company Ituran (ITRN). Commenting on the the company that provides location sensing devices, Sarbit says, “It’s a cash machine. Once you get this thing in the car, it just spills out cash and they probably got pricing built into this. In other words, if they increase the price of monitoring by a buck a year, do you think a guy who can afford a Mercedes in Argentina is going to give a damn?”
Silicom (SILC) is out with earnings and they say that they were impacted both by a drop in the Shekel/USD exchange rate as well as a tough spending environment for their customers. CEO Shaike Orbach said, “On the one hand, our revenues for the quarter suffered from both the difficult market environment, which has affected the revenues of many players in the network appliance value chain, and from a significant reduction in orders from our largest customer. We have been impacted by the customer’s new appliance configurations, which reflect its decision to begin offering our copper BYPASS cards as an optional add-on rather than as a standard component, as well as by its low quarterly volume of orders for fiber cards.“
Aaron Katsman, IsraelNewsletter.com
Disclosure: Author’s fund has a position in ESLT,ITRN,SILC. He has no position in any other stock mentioned as of 7/28/08.
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Aaron Katsman is Managing Editor of the Israel Opportunity Investor newsletter. He is lead portfolio manager for the Israel Growth Portfolio and Managing Director of America Israel Investment Associates, LLC. For more information, go to www.israelnewsletter.com or call 1-888-327-6179, or email aaron@profile-financial.com.
