April 2008 - Posts - Strategy Muse

April 2008 - Posts

How they control cost: 30-Apr-08

Posted by Sourav Mitra at 
Home Retail Group Plc, the owner of Argos and Homebase stores: 1. It buys about a third of its merchandise from Asia. 2. It has combined the sourcing practice for Homebase, the home- improvement chain and Argos, the catalog-based retailer. [Click here for full story at Bloomberg.com] Buying cheap = cost saving = no-brainer Combining the sourcing practices...

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How they boost income: 29-Apr-08

Posted by Sourav Mitra at 
Metro AG, Germany's largest retailer: 1. It added electronics and food outlets in Poland, Hungary and Russia, where economic growth is stronger than Germany's and now gets three-fifths of sales outside Germany. 2. Its Real chain is refurbishing stores to stem losses. 3. Its Real chain started a marketing campaign including its first TV advertising...

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How they control cost: 29-Apr-08

Posted by Sourav Mitra at 
Avon Products Inc., the world's largest door-to-door cosmetics seller: 1. It initiated a restructuring in November 2005 that included job cuts and the shift of work to countries where wages are lower. It will save $430 million annually by 2012. 2. It will save more than $200 million annually by selling fewer, more profitable products. 3. It will...

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How they boost income: 28-Apr-08

Posted by Sourav Mitra at 
Harbinger Capital Partners, private equity firm: It is investing in satellite communications outfits because: 1. There is rising demand for satellite-based communications: calling, Internet access and TV services as bandwidth-hogging high-definition channels proliferate, telecommunications companies that provide TV services will need more equipment...

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How they control cost: 28-Apr-08

Posted by Sourav Mitra at 
Whitbread Plc, the U.K. owner of Costa coffee shops: 1. It sold the David Lloyd health-club chain. 2. It will control staff and distribution costs to offset energy and food-price inflation. 3. It has changed menus at its pub restaurants to reduce the effect of higher ingredient costs. [Click here for full story at Bloomberg.com] If you look hard you...

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How they boost income: 25-Apr-08

Posted by Sourav Mitra at 
Harbinger Capital Partners, vulture invetstor: 1. It snaps up troubled assets in bankruptcy, short sells distressed bonds, and uses huge stock positions to agitate for change at underperforming companies. 2. It made tens of millions of dollars on an earlier wager that Bear and other financial stocks would collapse. 3. Last year it bet against all things...

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How they boost income: 24-Apr-08

Posted by Sourav Mitra at 
Ambac Financial Group, bond insurer with a net loss of $1.66 billion, or $11.69 per share, due to writedowns on financial instruments: 1. It will try to regain the trust of its customers with greater transparency, including the posting of outside analysts reports, no matter how dire the predictions, on the company's website, as well as attempting...

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How they control cost: 24-Apr-08

Posted by Sourav Mitra at 
Hyundai Motor Co., South Korea's largest automaker: It will use fewer parts and re-model vehicles to help offset the increase in costs after it agreed in March to pay suppliers as much as 20 percent more for components because of surging materials costs. [Click here for full story at Bloomberg.com] To save cost, look again deeply and remove whatever...

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How they boost income: 23-Apr-08

Posted by Sourav Mitra at 
HP Labs, the research arm of computer giant HP: 1. It will cut its projects from 150 to 20 or 30 dropping those with little commercial future. 2. Researchers whose projects get scuttled will be transferred to bigger teams 3. Researchers will compete for money and manpower by pitching projects with business plans, to a central review board that will...

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How they control cost: 23-Apr-08

Posted by Sourav Mitra at 
OAO Center Telecom, one of seven Russian fixed-line telephone companies controlled by OAO Svyazinvest: 1. It will eliminate 16,000 jobs over the next five years. (It already cut staff by half to 42,000 since 2003.) 2, It will cut the number of customer centers to 350 from 1,120 now. 3. It will outsource payment collection of more than 70 percent of...

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How they boost income: 22-Apr-08

Posted by Sourav Mitra at 
Osem Investments Ltd., the Israeli unit of Nestle SA; 1. It will increase sales of Tivall vegetarian meat substitutes and Sabra salads in Europe and the U.S. It will sell hummus, a spread made from chickpeas, and other Middle Eastern salads abroad. 2. It may enter the kosher infant-formula market in the U.S., U.K. and France after agreeing to buy control...

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How they control cost: 22-Apr-08

Posted by Sourav Mitra at 
Motorola, Intel, Texas Instruments, Cisco Systems, Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nextel, Qualcomm, Toshiba, and Samsung, telecom companies: They are investing in and / or buying virtualization software from VirtualLogix and Open Kernel Labs because it enables mobile-phone makers to add features regardless of the operating system (a Web-browsing application...

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How they boost income: 21-Apr-08

Posted by Sourav Mitra at 
GM's Saturn, car brand: 1. It will use more sophisticated advertising with a "Rethink" tagline to shift from the sentimental tone of the old campaign, which signaled economy cars and poor quality. 2. It ads will focus on women because close to 80% of Saturn's purchases are bought or directly influenced by women. 3. It is trying to...

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How they control cost: 21-Apr-08

Posted by Sourav Mitra at 
Wesfarmers Ltd., Australia's second-largest retailer: It will ask shareholders to buy $2.3 billion of stock to pay off debt acquired with the purchase of Coles Group Ltd. to save refinancing costs as the cost of refinancing debt with debt surged by more than a fifth. [Click here for full story at Bloomberg.com] Issue of shares will reduce cost of...

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How they boost income: 18-Apr-08

Posted by Sourav Mitra at 
IBM, Infotech and Infotech Services giant: 1. It continues to make very large investments in R&D -$6 billion a year. 2. It will become even more global than it is with eight existing research labs in countries including China, India, and Israel. 3. It will make fewer, bigger bets that might be risky, but could yield bigger breakthroughs instead...

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