RIM's shares down by 25% on a single day

If you are in Canada, you would realize the weight of this blog's title. Of late there's been a strong correlation between RIM's performance & TSX's performance.
RIM is a household pride & is the newest face of Canadian technology prowess.

Today's value is the lowest in more than a year.
There have been two opposing reasons given for this downturn.
Some market analysts say that this negative dip is in line with the current global cues that hasn't spared even the best performers. More specifically, RIM has been over-evaluated for quite sometime & this downward slide was market correction.

On the other hand, RIM sympathizers argue that the reason was that RIM's Q3 results haven't met the market expectations. The market was expecting a return of 98 cents per share whereas the actual earnings have been around 88 cents!!
The markets may seem to be a little too severe on this company. Given the kind of cutthroat competition that's happening in mobile handset business, its imperative for RIM to invest more into R&D and bring out several more products to retain its market share.

RIM officials have clarified that R&D costs that were incurred in the present quarter will show profits in the coming quarters.

yet another new bottom..

Whoever thought that we are coming out of the slump of sub-prime crisis after the Citibank & Bear Stearns turmoils was mistaken. He would have been under a swirl of shocks in the past few weeks. It was Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac first & followed by Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch & AIG on a row this week.


There's a heated debate on why should the US Fed government bailout these firms for their follies at the cost of tax payers' money.
It seems to me that the sub-prime crisis has turned out to be a night-marish situation to the entire Capitalist society. The government is bailing out these firms so that they survive to disburse more loans to the people, people who are already neck deep with loan defaults.

But it seems this is the only easy & visible path that the Fed officials can see as of now. US is the richest country, its GDP is $13.8 trillion, Japan, the 2nd richest is a paltry $4.3 trillion. Developing economies such as China, India & Brazil are extremely dependent on the US for selling its goods. So if there's none buying in the US, these countries take a big hit. Although there are burgeoning domestic markets, they are in no comparison to the US market & they need more time to grow to the size of the US. So retaining the US market liquidity is crucial in maintaining global economic stability.



Its believed that the market goes into this scary, bearish mode every 5 years. Last time it happened during the Internet companies fallout & 9/11 crisis. That slump wiped out a good portion of the enthusiastic Internet startups in the Silicon Valley. The picture has never been the same for those who survived. They never again saw the kind of appreciations they saw in the last 1990's.

The situation today is somewhat more difficult. The companies involved are the biggest names in the financial world, the amounts involved are way beyond a common man's imagination. The blood-bath seems to be not over yet. How will the future be for those who survive this?

Have we hit the bottom? Or are we still to see it? Are we getting back to revival?

camp Manitou - an unforgettable experience

"Dude, this orientation camp was so dis-orienting" -- this was what one of my friends said after we came back from the 3 day camp to Camp Manitou (http://www.manitoucamp.com)
It was 3 days of exhausting fun. We had lots of team building competitions during day & we then partied all night. The entire period was so action packed that we didn't have time to gasp a breathe.



On the way to the camp, we had speed networking sessions (a 2nd year's idea, inspired by speed dating) by which we were supposed to meet many of our bus mates. I had a nice conversation with Jen Provan, a sailor who had represented Canada in Beijing'08.

After reaching the camp, we were shown to our cottages where we threw our luggage & headed to the dining hall to have lunch.
After lunch we had the Finance competition. Were given about 30 cards of 4 different colors, each representing land, labor, market & money. The mission of the competition was to form as many possible combinations of land, labor, market & money of the same color. If we needed any cards to complete our combination, we could trade it with any of our cards in a trading session that was held for 10 mins at 3 intervals. My team ended up garnering 880 points, the winning team had about 1200 points.


After the competition, the Desi gang went out to play cricket. Guess where we played? In the baseball ground. Indian improvisation right over there.. :)

Later, our Dean, Roger Martin visited the camp. We had an interactive discussion about his brainchild & the main buzzword at Rotman: Integrative Thinking.

That evening we had a casino event hosted by the faculty, including the Dean & the Vice Dean. We got to play with all these big guns in a very informal environ. There were free drinks to further relax our nerves when talking to them.. :)



Next day morning after the breakfast, we had the Consulting contest. The case was to come out with a recommendation for a leading credit card company that wants to enter the calling card market.
We came out with quite an out-of-the-box idea & we presented it quite well, so we got a clearance for the final round.
But in the finals, we missed out the 1st place by just 2 pts & had to content with the 2nd prize.

After lunch we had one of the best events in the camp: the Olympics. We were again split up into teams of 5 & were to play some of the more popular games such as basket-ball & volley-ball and some customized games such as "Grapefruit passing" (its a very interesting game, you've to play to know it). I got to play ice-hockey for the 1st time & I thoroughly enjoyed it. I even scored the winning goal for my team !!
By the end of the Olympics all of us were completely, all-and-out exhausted.
The soccer fans still had some batteries left, we went & had a good game of soccer.

As the sun came down, the party animals started coming out. Today's theme was movie costumes. We had been previously informed about the theme, so all of us had brought some kind costume along with us. I had brought a flashy "jhink-chak" shirt that I had brought in Pune, a pair of sun glasses. These were enough to make people believe that I was some Bollywood star.
One guy in my cottage had a costume of Ghost Busters while another had dressed himself as some Star Wars characher.
At the venue, it was amazing to see so many colorful people. One girl was a Marlyn Manroe in her famous white dress, there were a bunch of pirates & a whole lot of Jokers, inspired by the cult icon Heath Ledger. Can't forget his line "do you how I got these scars?"
Some of the Desi gang recognized me as Rajinikant, so I decided that's what I am gonna be. I was boasting some of the heroics of Rajini such as lighting a cigarette with a gun, etc to some of the curious "phoren" students..




Next morning was our last day in the camp. All of us were dead tired by now. I saw most ppl limping around. It must be either coz of the Olympics or they had tripped while heading back to cottages after all the drinking & partying. I confess mine was because of the Olympics.. :)

We had a marketing contest right after the breakfast. Most of us were too tired to participate. Winners were decided based on which team receives the max numbers of claps or table banging for their performance. The winning team had put in quite a good show.

We then had lunch & got on to the buses & head back to the school.

All-in-all, it was a great effort & co-ordination by the 2nd years that made this event a great success.

latest in Canadian telecom industry

Canada seems to be quite a happening place for telecommunications. With still 1/3rd of the population not having mobiles, there's a large market out there that needs to be tapped into.


Some of the recent happenings just show how dynamic the industry is:

1)Spectrum auction
New entrants would definitely lead to more options for customers.
New entrants would also invest in telecom infrastructure, and potential new entrants such as the traditional cable operator Shaw Communications suggest its intent to foray into the Broadband and IPTV domain. These provide an opportunity for already over-heated Network Equipment Manufacturer (NEM) space.

2)BCE & Telus going the 3G way
BCE & Telus finally decided to give Rogers a run for its money by announcing their foray into 3G space. They've announced that they'll jointly deploy a 3G HSPA network & have selected Nokia Siemens as their supplier and would spend $1 billion over a span of 3 years.
This network upgrade would allow them to sell the legendary Blackberry Bold & iPhone 3G that have a huge market but were not currently supported by BCE or Telus networks.

3)Acquisition of BCE
Posed to be one of the largest deal of the year, this $51.7 billion acquisition is certain to bring in new life into the largest communications company in Canada.


There are going to happen at a faster pace once the spectrum allocation results are announced.