Cablevision Systems Corp (CVC)

This met a high level screen to indicate a sell and strong underperform against its peers (other tickers in its industry). My 1st version of this spreadsheet devles deep into the company's balance sheet and recent income statements, combined with other relevant price data for the company including insider/institutional holdings, short interest, debt levels, etc.
I'm testing capabilities of this 1st version of my automated, valuation spreadsheet matched with my personal criteria and see how it holds up.

I'm betting on Lebron coming to the Knicks and/or a CVC as a take over target.

telecom industry. Sold short CVC in real life portfolio @13.85/share today.

Horrid balance sheet

The economy is bad, and it's getting worse. The P/E of this company is high and the current ratio is low. The double whammy is that this company will not only have trouble getting financing, but it's customers (people in general) are getting hurt with the economy.

Cablevision Systems continues to add new services as well as getting a corner on the market in several key areas. With the addition of digital tv cablevision will be hot for a long time to come

Purely on recent acquisitions such as Sun-dance channel, and the looming of Long Island Tribune

Going strictly on valuation

Low Market cap compared to Verizon and Comcast but they offer the same services, especially to houses that are not serviced by other services.

the next time the dolans offer 36.00 a share to take this company private i hope mario gabelli and all other hedge fund pigs agree to sell them the stock!!! lets let little jimmy dolan stop answering to a board of directors!!! we will all get a chance to buy the bonds and get our equity back at 10 cents on the dollar after he files chapter 11 and get a turnaround team to run this profit center the right way!!!!

$36 Dolan bid rejected by shareholders shows that there is untapped value, especially if certain sports-related assets are put up for sale. Looks attractive under $30.

Undervalued cable, telephone, internet company that managmement tried to take over with a too low per share offer. Look for a special dividend in the next twelve months and a share price in the 40's.

Likely to be acquired

Cablevision’s consolidated revenue grew approximately 12% with it favorable metric adjusted operating cash flow rising more than 21% to $482 million driving on the strength of the core cable business. Its cables business not only represents 70% of the total revenues but also outperforms its peers offering superior services. Triple play of bundling video, data and voice has become the order of the day. It has rolled out its high-speed data service Optimum Online Boost that has increased download speeds to ultra fast 30 megabytes per second. But of late, with Verizon investing in fiber networks and backing of it current strong customer base, a push into the video market would be a major threat in the future. Madison square Gardens group revenues increased 5% and Elton John choosing to celebrate his 60th birthday has generated enormous visibility.

After several-failed attempt, the chances of taking Cablevision private by the Dolans family look visible. The largest shareholder seem to offer around $36.26 per share at an attractively high premium makes it a great deal for shareholders. However uncertainties still surround whether the deal would be approved. Financial health of the company is really poor as it carries a huge debt of around $12.5 billion in the balance sheet as it had financed a $3 billion dividend payment. With interest coverage ratio falling below two, the credit rating agencies rating changing status to highly speculative junk making it difficult to further raise money. The company continues to be hindered by severe competition, burdensome debt and other issuance of corporate governance, which makes the chances of double-digit growth look dim.

cabel will continue to try to find its niche

price target on the stock to $27 from $28, i don't believe that the Dolan family will raise their current offer of $30 and we should see decelerating net subscriber additions and slowing growth.

The stock should be taken out at $32-33 in the next 6 months

Dead Executive Stock options?

OK here goes, I guarantee you will not hear this explanation on CNBC. Forward warning ? the technical details on the service delivery system may not be 100% correct but the principle is. Cablevision is big in the Northeast ? especially NYC where they share cable dominance with Time Warner. Earlier this year they started to upgrade their system to digital from analogs neighborhood by neighborhood. This included a switch in the frequency of the signal, which effectively knocked out all the illegal hotboxes. The illegal hotboxes were easy to obtain, cheap and provided a way of getting the full package and only having to pay the minimum charge. Let me be clear here, I never owned an illegal device but many people did. Even though they were illegal, certain foreign language newspapers (I?m being politically correct by not naming the language but I?m sure you can guess if you have ever been in NYC) readily advertised them. In the past when Cablevision switched frequencies and knocked out the hot boxes, the tech people quickly built a new receiver that corresponded to the new frequency and the cable thieves were forced to buy a new box, which they readily did because they only cost the equivalent of 1 months premium Cablevision subscription. This time however was different. The digital signal could not be duplicated. Bye bye hotboxes - neighborhood by neighborhood.

So what do you think happened? Former hotbox owners were now forced to upgrade ? by this time they were addicted to HBO and the other premium channels and were not going to give it up even it they had to pay Cablevision for the premium service. This resulted in increased revenue per subscriber ? a key metric and guess what? Cablevision ?beat? their last 2 earnings estimates.

Now pull up the chart year to date. See the big drop in late April? That was a 1 time $10 non taxable dividend that was paid ? probably to cover the cost of their opposition to the now dead West Side Stadium which was suppose to house the NY Jets. (Google Cablevision & West Side Stadium if you want more details) When you back out the dividend, the stock is up 55% since the beginning of April!

I believe that this stock still has a lot of upside ? they still have more areas to upgrade and they will pick up on the hold outs in the converted neighborhoods who are still looking for a new hot box as well as the current cheats. But beware ? if Cramer recommends it as a buy you know that?s? the kiss of death so all bets are off in that case.