Gathering New Information about Stocks, Health, and Sports

          With earnings results just a little more than a week away, many traders are anxiously awaiting how the television giant, Viacom (VIA), will perform. Recently put into the publicly exchanged market, Viacom has not done that well relative to many of its competitors, year to date. However, if there is any indication of how powerful earnings are this recent quarter, there may be a surprise for fellow Viacom owners awaiting a strong result to boost shares of this company to a more respectable level.
         As Viacom is still a relatively new traded company, there should not be too much alarm when regarding how low the share price has responded to being traded as a single entity. Typically when looking at IPOs or companies that are put into the public market, besides the overall share price gains in financial sectors, more than likely the share price of other companies in all the other industries will decline for a certain period of time. In the case of Viacom, after falling around 15% since being released, I foresee a lot of optimism in terms of how the share price of this company will react in the future. Looking strictly at the fundamentals provided for this company’s short term existence, so far the numbers and statistics have proven to be quite positive quarter after quarter. Entertaining excellent marginal growth, especially operation wise, relative to other competitors such as Comcast, Viacom has provided expansion above expectations for many investors and should provide to be a valuable instrument to look at more closely with long term growth potential rather than short term. However, even as a short term investment, there are many possibilities for capital gains to be garnered.
         One of the main reasons I expect such growth in terms of share price for this company is just the overall nature of the economy and market during this period. Earnings have surpassed everyone’s expectations, signaling strong growth and a possible soft landing economy. It’s true, the GDP number that came up recently signaled some smaller growth potential, but a lot of that is representative of the housing economy and does not provide for the tremendous gains in consumer spending. When looking at those last two words, consumer spending, such a signal should immediately be beneficial to not only retail stocks, but companies like Viacom which depend on the consumer. While a lot of these companies can be argued to be in a position to fall because of the recent highs being set, I believe there is still strong potential for a company like Viacom who has suffered throughout this ordeal while all other companies have prospered unfairly so. The biggest indicator that I see for strong earnings is the data Comcast pulled up about one week ago. With good earnings and bright future, shares of Comcast pulled up almost six percent in one week: an increase I believe Viacom can absolutely outmatch. The reason for such a positive outlook is attributed to the seasonally favorable time for television oriented companies. With new shows airing as well as the peak of the sports season playing, there are lots of optimistic explorations from all areas of this sector which should not only spark excellent growth this quarter but for quarter number four as well.
         Thus, by going through the economic indicators, comparisons, and praise of its fundamentals, the television giant of Viacom stimulates the notion of an excellent purchase: especially before results are released next week. While there may be a small shortfall as the economy tends to move forward towards a slower growth realization, currently, there is still a lot of possibility to garner a bit of profit from buying shares of Viacom.

-Dennis Biray
October 27th, 2006