So for the first installment of Alternative Transportation Week, I felt it appropriate to do an easy transition from something that applies to all the car fanatics out there as well – form versus function.

Take Chris Rado’s Time Attack Scion TC for example:

It’s no question that to the general public, that enormous wing jutting out the hood of his car gets more than a few “WTFs”, but it provides the much needed downforce to make the car uber competitive and help get that incredible amount of horsepower on the road. This is function.

Some others can mod for “form”, which actually (and usually) attracts a few more “WTFs” than function cars because you see them on the road. These mods do not often serve any real performance benefit, simply an aesthetic one. For example these “Bosozuku style” cars:

These cars are often modified with many large exhaust pipes, bright & colorful paint, and extremely wide & large aero kits. Also popular are external oil coolers & intercoolers, mounted to the front bumper and connected via large tubes through the grille or headlight socket. You can read more about the Bosozuku lifestyle here.

The same rule can definitely apply to the bicycle world, although at times the line between form and function may be more blurred. Here’s a couple examples:

CW&T Blockhead Stem

CW&T are architecture grads gone bike designers and this “blockhead stem” is their first product. Some have been able to appreciate the aesthetically pleasing, simple look to it. I’m one of them. I love the raw simplicity of it. But there are definitely others who think it’s just a hazard (during a fall), it’s overly simplistic, only comes in one size and weighs too much (500 grams) where may other competitive stems are well below 200g.

Despite the controversy of whether it’s just a beautiful art piece or actually serves some worthwhile function, CW&T is really doing something different by offering the design specs open source – which is REALLY sweet considering you can essentially custom make your own version using their specs.

“Blockhead Stem is licensed under a creative commons license. Take our design, modify it, make one for yourself. But please don’t sell them because we need money to buy and eat dumplings. Give credit where it’s due. We actually want you to go find your machinist buddy and see if he or she can make it for super cheap. We spent about a month searching for a quality machinist that can produce them on demand. If you find a better machinist please share.” – CW&T

For me, it’d just be a beautiful piece to have on a thick aluminum show bike frame as I think a 40mm stem is just way too short for my purposes (I have a 120mm Deda Elementi Zero100 Servizio Corse). Regardless, I love it and what CW&T is trying to do.

Aerospoke Wheel

Thought up by a machinist & mold maker in Michigan, the Aerospoke was the business back in the day and have experienced a BIG resurgence of late as a result of their price drop a few years back (think $80 new versus their $350+ going rate now). So where are the lines blurred with this one?

Some argue that it is one of the stronger wheels you can buy for your bike – and even more, that it offers an aerodynamic benefit. Sounds like a definite win for the function guys. But at the same time, the opposite side argues that the wheel is heavy, impractical and so “right now”. Even more, aero wheels have come a LONG way and the aerospoke, despite its legitimacy in the 1980s, is just not worth it in the aerodynamic sense anymore to gram-conscious riders and time trial racers. They also are rumored to be flexible and untrueable – though some have found ways to make that happen successfully. Can’t ignore the possibility of them failing/exploding either.

Regardless, I love the look of the wheel and since I know I can shave grams off of my other bike components if necessary, I’d buy an aerospoke to have if I found one at the right price.

Blockhead Stem is the sturdiest stem you’ll ever meet. A solid chunk of aluminum machined with sharp edges and corners, this stem is not for everyone. Ride it at your own risk.

Material: 7075 Aluminum
Length:40mm
Clamp diameter: 26mm
Rize: 0 degrees
Steerer tube diameter: 1-1/8″
Dimensions: 53mm x 53mm x 86.79mm
Weight: 501.8 grams
Includes: 6 stainless steel screws

One night in Bed-Stuy we imagined it and needed it for our fancy bikes.
So far there are only 2 in the world. We think there should be a few more.

source

cw&t’s new Blockhead Bike Stem is beefy construction carved out of a solid block of 7075 aluminum.

cw&t‘ = $89

http://www.greeninventions.info/Free-Energy-From-Trash.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changing_World_Technologies

This company has come up with a superb plan to rid every city of it’s overflowing garbage.  They have filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Protection and need funding to keep this idea going.  I’m hoping that President Barack Obama’s Green Team will take a look at this company and use Brain Appels ideas for the future.  It’s friendly to the environment, it reduces waste and toxic materials and even agricultural waste.

Shell has spent billions of dollars in research for new renewable resources but most of their ideas are not really environmentally friendly.  To be honest, they really should be investing in a company like CWT- Changing World Technologies.  Watch the video on how they turn trash into energy.

I walked in to say Hello to Baffa(not sure how she spells her name) at La Moda Shoes and she asked to be one of my clients. I will be assisting her in decorating the walls of her store and create a more visually appreciative store front as well. I ran a bunch of ideas as they came to mind then and there (my speciality) and I proceeded to write them down for her. I’ve created a new site at http://www.squidoo.com/lamodashoes about the sales and we will be adding pictures of the shoes, handbags that are on sale there. I made a list of suggestions on her site and on my own http://www.squidoo.com/ideagirlconsulting of the things I was working on today.

I was surprised to learn about CWT (Changing World Technologies and its TDP (Thermo- Depolymerization Process) how it converts garbage to oil. Pretty cool stuff, I was sad to see they had to file Chapter 11 on March 4th, 2009. I’m hoping that President Barack Obama will take notice of this company and it’s founder Brian Appel as an innovative plan to reduce garbage in the country and convert it to safe oil/gas usage. It’s environmentally friendly. I did about 3 hours research this morning writing notes down for future articles.
I’m also posting blogs on my OB site (Barack Obama – Idea Girl Consulting site about new technologies to create jobs)

Mapster1989, Team Boss of T-Mobile Motorsport, today named himself as driver #1 in the Clio World Tour.
This comes as a shock as he was said to have been happy away from the driving seat.
“Ive made the decision to race myself in the Clio World Tour. It was looking very unlikely that I would be able to secure 2 drivers for season 6 so I took the decision to fill in one of the places myself. For how many races is unclear at the moment but I didn’t want T-Mobile Motorsport not to enter the Clio World Tour, a championship which I am very fond of”

Mapster1989 has revealed his intentions for his team as he enters teams in 3 differant championships. T-Mobile Motorsport will have a team in the Clio World Tour, Multicast Touring Trophy and the Hot Hatch Cup. “This can only be good for the team. We feel that we are big enough to cater for all teams and bring in the rewards for doing so.”

TMM will be running the Renault Clio 197 in both the CWT and the HHC along with the rear wheel drive BMW M3 E46 Coupe in the MTT.

xcoopz21x is confirmed as driver #1 in the MTT. All other driver slots are left open for the time being.

Here’s a new and unique WordPress theme developed by me. CWT is a premium WordPress theme for running a classifieds website.

Features:

• User Submitted Classifieds – visitors are able to ad classifieds using a simple form on the site. You can set if users are required to register or not to publish something.
• Managing Classifieds – You can edit / delete classifieds through the usual WordPress manage page. You can choose to publish classifieds automatically or if you want to approve them first!
• Displaying Classifieds – classifieds are displayed in a clean / easy-to-read way. You can choose a currency, and certain icon for each category. It also display the sale item location in yahoo map view.
• You can share the sale with your friends.
• Usability – Easy to use listings layout, search box and an form for posting new classifieds
• RSS Feeds – general RSS, a specific RSS feed for each category and with a bit of web knowledge you will be able to implement even a mail alert system.
• No Plug-ins Required

Here is the Snapshot of homepage and single page:

You can take a look at http://wordpress.mybetatesting.com

We have been investigating several of the “safe sectors” for investing to identify which ones may have seen the worst or which ones could continue to have issues regardless of whether or not recent stock market strength holds up or not.  Water is supposed to be one of those immune sectors as people have to drink water every day and just about every aspect of life revolves around water.  So we are starting out with domestic water utilities, because this is the first line of defense in the water sector and the most defensive portion of the water sector.  In theory, these do not require any new community growth or new water-intensive industries for the “defensive” thesis to hold up.  We briefly wanted to review American Water Works Company, Inc. (NYSE: AWK), Aqua America Inc. (NYSE: WTR), American States Water Company (NYSE: AWR), and California Water Service Group (NYSE: CWT).

American Water Works Company, Inc. (NYSE: AWK) was one of 2008’s largest IPO’s, which was actually a Re-IPO after being acquired.  It provides water and wastewater services to residential, commercial, and industrial customers (approximately 15 million) in 32 U.S. states and in Ontario, Canada.  Currently, the company has a $2.9 billion market cap, and its $18.06 stock price gives it an implied forward P/E ratio of almost 14-times expected 2009 earnings.  Its 52-week trading range is $16.22 to $23.65.

Aqua America Inc. (NYSE: WTR) operates regulated utilities which offer community-wide water or wastewater services for residential, commercial, and industrial customers in Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina, Illinois, Texas, New Jersey, New York, Florida, Indiana, Virginia, Maine, Missouri, and South Carolina.  The stock has recovered substantially off of  its lows.   It had roughly 3 million customers.  The company  has a $2.6 billion market cap, and with a $19.30 price it trades an an implied forward P/E ratio of 22.7 against 2009 expected earnings.  Its 52-week trading range is $12.20 to $22.00.

American States Water Company (NYSE: AWR) offers water and electric service utility operations for residential and commercial customers.  The difference is that this is not as geographically diverse and it serves many areas which have been hit by the woes of the declining real estate market on top of other issues.   It also distributes electricity in 1 customer service area and 3 water service regions operating within 75 communities in 10 counties in California, as well as provides water service in 21 customer service areas with close to 250,000 water customers and about 23,000 electric customers in California, and it operated 2,724 miles of pipeline of water transmission and distribution systems; it also served 13,488 water-service customers in Arizona and operated 184 miles of pipeline of water transmission and distribution systems.  The $650 million market cap based on a $37.53 stock price gives it an implied forward P/E ratio of 21.4 times expected 2009 earnings. Its 52-week trading range is $27.00 to $42.00.

California Water Service Group (NYSE: CWT) provides water utility and other related services in California, Washington, New Mexico, and Hawaii.  California Water Service Group provides service to approximately 463,000 customers in 83 communities (2007 data).  With a $42.80 stock price, this trades at an implied 20.8-times forward 2009 expected earnings.  Its 52-week trading range is $27.68 to $48.28.

Where this gets interesting is that the bulk of these four trade much closer to their highs than to lows, with the exception of American Water Works.  But it also trades at the largest discount to its forward 2009 earnings estimates.  Part of the problem is that it is a recent IPO after the Germans sold it back to the US public markets.  All of the other stocks in these four are expensive if you consider a mere forward-P/E ratio compared to the market today.  That is because of the defensive nature of the stocks and probably also because of inherent regional monopolies they hold.  Have you ever inquired to see if you could get a new water company of competitive quotes for water service?  You can get a new water provider, if you move to a new market.

Again, this is just four of the companies we cover in the domestic utility side of the water sector equation.  This is also one of the most defensive stock sectors for US investors.  The sector never really gets “cheap” if you are just using P/E ratio comparative analysis.  Traditionally, these might not rally as much as the markets if we go into a bull market mode.  Again, that is “traditionally” and you will be surprised if you look at just how much these have recovered since the lows of October and November of 2008.  We will be looking separately as filtration, infrastructure, and other services in different pieces this week.

Jon C. Ogg
March 23, 2009

These are the top upgrades and positive research calls we have seen from Wall Street analysts so far early this Thursday morning:

Alcoa (AA) Raised to Overweight at JPMorgan.
Aqua America (WTR) Raised to Outperform at Baird.
Beckman Coulter (BEC) Raised to Overweight at Barclays.
California Water (CWT) Raised to Outperform at Baird.
Chartered Semiconductor (CHRT) Raised to Neutral at HSBC.
China Telecom (CHA) Raised to Overweight at Morgan Stanley.
Nicor (GAS) Raised to Outperform at Baird.
Nokia (NOK) Raised to Outperform at Credit Suisse.
Piedmont Natural Gas (PNY) Raised to Outperform at Baird.
Watson Wyatt Worldwide (WW) Started as Buy at SunTrust Robinson Humphrey.

-JON C. OGG

Since Peter is not posting new stuff right now, I thought I would begin with this recent classic. You can read it here.

Interpretation: Since I do not like Wade, but lack the ability to actually refute his arguments, I will simply call him a “liberal,” thus proving to The Wizard that I am willing to criticize any dissident voices in Oz. Perhaps The Wizard will show me favor by handing me a plum committee appointment.

With that, I is . . .

Pumpkins

Look at how long this “base” has been formed and now finally broke out above the resistance line.  The days of the breakout action are on big volume.  Now it is testing that level as new support.

Here’s an ETF of Water Resources. Broke above resistance of a double bottom reversal but without major breakout volume.  Could be a “fakeout” but we’ll see if the line holds as new support.

The Northcentral Arkansas Educaton Service Cooperative will be a Classroom WalkThrough 2.0 training for superintendents, principals, assistant principals, and instructional coaches. Participants will attend three-days of training in the new 2.0 version of Classroom Walkthrough (CWT).  It is designed to provide Instructional Leaders and instructional coaches with at-a-glance information about what is working and not working in their school, and strategies for talking with teachers about improvement in the instructional program.  CWT is a process that uses a set of tools to answer questions such as:  What is going on in the classroom?  How do we know that the approach taken by the students and teacher was effective?  How can this be improved?

Day 1:  October 23–at the Northcentral Cooperative
Day 2:  November 6–at the Northcentral Cooperative
Day 3:  January 29–at the Northcentral Cooperative

Unlike oil, gold, and other such commodities, water is the one commodity we must have to live. And I don’t even think about it. I don’t have to. Clean water is delivered to my home and where I work. It’s always available, and it’s cheap. Will it always be this easy?

Living in Arizona, one of the fastest growing and driest states, I thought back to a discussion I heard on NPR about population migration. I remembered this startling prediction: the Southwest will be riddled with ghost towns when water runs out, and those looking back 50 years from now will be mystified as to why people ever wanted to live there. Last year 26% of the Southeast was covered by an “exceptional” drought – the National Weather Service’s worst drought category.

Consider these worldwide facts from the United Nations’ Human Development Report 2006:

1. Less than 1% of the world’s freshwater is easily accessible.
2. 1.2 billion people lack access to freshwater, and 2.6 billion are without adequate sanitation.

More people with higher living standards, pollution, and climate change may be pointing to water shortages down the road. A key example, China has 20% of the world’s population but only 7% of the water. Will China have enough water to support its rapidly growing urban population?

The water industry should be ripe with investment opportunities. I put together a group of 18 stocks, certainly not all-inclusive of ways to participate in the industry, to begin to find out:

York (YORW), Pennichuck (PNNW), Middlesex (MSEX), Connecticut (CTWS), Southwest (SWWC), Artesian (ARTNA), SJW (SJW), American States (AWR), Aqua America (WTR), and California (CWT) are all domestic water utilities.

Mueller Industries (MLI) – tubes and fittings used in water distribution systems.

Watts Water Technologies (WTS) – water safety and flow control products.

Nalco (NLC) – water treatment chemicals and services.

Flowserve (FLS) – flow control equipment.

Gorman-Rupp (GRC) – pumps and fluid control equipment.

Calgon Carbon (CCC) – products to purify water and air.

Veolia Environment (VE) – water treatment services based in France.

Consolidated Water (CWCO) – desalination plants and water distribution systems in the Caribbean.

I used Fast Track to get a quick study on the group and find potential buy ideas:

1. These are mostly small cap stocks, and they are not widely followed on the Street. Thirteen stocks have market capitalizations under $ 1 billion. Thirteen stocks are covered by 5 analysts or less, and 9 stocks by 3 analysts or less.
2. Financial leverage is high, with long-term debt to total capital averaging 40.9%, ranging from 0% for Gorman-Rupp to 74.1% for Nalco.
3. Free cash flow was negative at 10 companies in 2007, and 7 companies posted negative free cash flow in each of the last 5 years. These are all utilities.
4. Thirteen stocks had P/E’s below their high / low 5-year average. Only two stocks, Mueller and Watts, also had PEG ratios that were below both their industry and the S&P 500.
5. California Water was the only company where management was a net buyer of stock.
6. The Street is not particularly enamored with this group of stocks. There are 40 purchase recommendations out of a total of 86 ratings, so there’s room for ratings upgrades. Aqua America seems to be the darling of the group with 10 analysts following the stock and 9 recommending purchase.

Here’s my take:

1. I was disappointed to find that Flowserve was the only stock that passed my Fast Track screen, having failed no more than 3 categories. But Flowserve is really a play on oil and gas, which accounts for 41% of their business, as opposed to 6% for water.
2. Only 3 companies, Veolia, Flowserve and Calgon, did not report disappointing earnings in any of the last 4 quarters. But Street analysts have held their earnings estimates steady at 12 companies. Watts pre-announced an earnings disappointment for their March quarter, citing weak construction here, slowing economic activity in Europe, and even problems in China. While this could be unique to Watts, is it a harbinger of more disappointments at other companies?
3. No company in the group delivered consistent earnings growth in the last 5 years. This, and that Watts is a pure play on water makes me question whether the water industry’s growth story has really kicked in yet.

I’ve decided to stay on the sidelines for now.