![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/ViasatOneYear.jpg\" "\\"ViasatOneYear\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\nOr am I too late? I hear on the grapevine that master investor Seth Klarman bought a big chunk of ViaSat a while back at much cheaper prices.<\/p>\n
ViaSat’s present metrics stink. Price\/earnings ratio is a high 35. Revenues are only growing at 16% and net income has barely moved in five years.<\/p>\n
But… and this is the HUGE “but” — they’ve just launched this spectacular, huge satellite, with oodles of potential customers — airlines, rural customers who can’t get any Internet service for love nor money (except dial-up) and the disadvantaged — like me in my country palace with its tranquility, nice views, high taxes and ultra-awful Internet service.<\/p>\n
I did the math. The satellite’s capacity is 1.5 million customers. Each will pay a minimum of $50 a month. Multiply that out and you have an extra $900 million of revenues to add to the present $800 million and you’ve more than doubled the size of the company and probably done much more to profitability. You can see what attracted Mr. Klarman (he’s the one whose out-of-print book on investing sells on eBay for thousands of dollars). He was smarter and earlier than me.<\/p>\n
Now what? Wait for a pullback? Dip one’s toes in? Good questions. I’m mulling. It’s 5:00 AM in Vegas. My brain is a fog. I don’t handle jet lag well. The “fly in the ointment” — there’s got to be a better metaphor — is that ViaSat launches it nationwide service next Monday. That should wake every sleepy investor and push ViaSat (VSAT) up even further. By the way, the dip in the chart in the summer of last year was speculation that the company’s satellite was late, wouldn’t be launched, would blow up — usual nonsense.\u00a0 It’s up. It does work. I’m excited.<\/p>\n
This is a photo I took last night of the ViaSat satellite antenna which, I hope, will soon sprout on 1.5 million households. This is the antenna I ussed for my successful test. The deal is you pay $150 for the antenna, the modem black box you have inside, and installation. Then for $50 a month you get ViaSat service of up to 7.5 gigabits per month or up to $130 a month for 25 gigabits.<\/p>\n
ViaSat will bring decent Internet service to farmers and the disadvantaged. They should do well.<\/p>\n The rest of CES?<\/strong><\/span> I’ll give you more tomorrow morning. For now. I’m going back to bed.<\/p>\n The magician and the cruise ship<\/strong><\/span>. Today’s pathetic “joke.”<\/p>\n A magician worked a cruise ship. The audience was different each week so the magician did the same tricks over and over again.<\/p>\n There was only one problem: The captain’s parrot saw the shows each week and began to understand how the Magician did his tricks.<\/p>\n Once he understood, he started shouting in the middle of the show, “Look, It’s not the same hat!” or, “Look, he’s hiding the flowers under the table!” Or “Hey, why are all the cards the ace of spades?”<\/p>\n The magician was furious but couldn’t do anything. It was the Captain’s’ parrot.<\/p>\n Then one stormy night on the Pacific, the ship sank, drowning. The magician luckily found himself on a piece of wood floating in the middle of the sea, as fate would have it … With the parrot.<\/p>\n They stared at each other, but did not utter a word.<\/p>\n This went on for a day… And then two days. And then three. Finally on the fourth day, the parrot could not hold back any longer and said…<\/p>\n “OK, I give up. Where’s the ship?”<\/a><\/p>\n
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