Applied Materials
Applied Materials (Nasdaq – AMAT) is the leading provider of semiconductor capital goods equipment in the world. Only about a quarter of Applied’s business volume comes from North America and Europe combined. The vast majority comes from Japan, South Korea and the Asia-Pacific zone. Applied has four business segments: 65 percent of revenues come from the Silicon segment (equipment for chip fabrication and particle deposition processes); 23 percent from wafer Fab Solutions (clean room and robotics equipment); 10 percent from Display (equipment used for TV flat panel displays, computer displays, etc.); and the balance from Energy and Environmental Solutions, including …
Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc.
Chipotle Mexican Grill (CMG – NYSE) operates fast, casual, fresh Mexican food restaurants serving burritos, tacos, bowls and salads. Through its vision of “Food with Integrity,” Chipotle is seeking better food that is sustainably grown and naturally raised with respect for animals, the land and farmers. The Company has about 700 restaurants in 33 states, almost all of which are company-owned. Chipotle is a well-executed concept and great growth-stock story. The company has consistently beaten consensus earnings estimates since going public and over the last five years revenues have grown between 30 and 55 percent. Strong growth across all of …
Spotlight on Your Portfolio: Carbon Footprinting Your Investment
You hear a lot of talk from Wall Street these days about how climate change presents “unprecedented business risks and opportunities.” While investment action doesn’t yet fully match this rhetoric, many major firms are establishing research shops focused on the investment implications of climate change. Some of the early (and quite excellent) work has been focused on the likelihood that the U.S. will pass legislation regulating carbon emissions in the next two years. It’s been decades since we’ve seen this kind of sweeping environmental regulation in the U.S. Carbon regulation on its own – as well as other climate change …
Tar Sands Development Stickier Than Anticipated
In a rational global economy not entirely driven by short-term profit maximization, the collective body politic of all nations would have applied the precautionary principal to the threat of climate change twenty years ago. We’d now be celebrating the fruits of two decades of aggressive efficiency measures, phased down fossil fuel use, and the mass distribution of renewable energy technologies. Instead, we have the tar sands. Record oil prices and declining access to the oil and gas resources of nations such as Russia, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Venezuela has led to a rush to develop Canada’s tar sands deposits. CIBC …
Toyota Backpedals on Burma
If the Prius left you with a warm and fuzzy feeling for Toyota, you’re not alone. Noting that Toyota “has been a leader in both developing and promoting hybrid power-trains, the new industry standard, and is well advanced in overall R&D programs for future vehicle types,” the corporate responsibility research firm Innovest chose the company as the sole automotive representative in its top 100 most sustainable global companies in August 2007. We’re in agreement that Toyota deserves accolades for implementing sustainable business strategies that have led to the successful launch of hybrid fuel technology. But – and you sensed this …
From the President
One of the most amazing days of my professional life was the day more than a decade ago that I spent as keynote speaker for a conference of the people in charge of General Motors’ environmental policies and procedures in plants around North America. There were hundreds of them, many of whom had Ph.D.’s. They were very interested and supportive when faced with an unedited speaker advocating stronger environmental policies and complete disclosure of results. On another day, a visit with the General Motors’ crash test dummies, watching steering wheel columns hurtle into the surrogate humans in car seats at …
It Seems to Me
Business Takes the Rap Again in “Michael Clayton” and “There Will Be Blood.” In the category of advertising known as “institutional,” companies try not to sell products or services but to craft an image of themselves as decent, upright, responsible corporate citizens. You can see these messages on the Op Ed page of the New York Times (ExxonMobil and General Motors), the inside covers of opinion magazines like Atlantic Monthly and Harpers (Chevron‘s “We can’t do this alone”) and on public television (Archer Daniels Midland). It’s not a new phenomenon. What’s amazing is how ineffective it has been. The fact …
It Seems to Me
In Memoriam: Anita Roddick, Frizzy-Haired Lady Who Pioneered Social Responsibility in Business Anita Roddick, fiery founder of the Body Shop cosmetic stores, died last September 11. She was only 64. No one who ever met Anita is likely to forget the passion, energy and dedication that she brought to building the Body Shop into an exemplar of corporate social responsibility. I remember her poking fun at big corporate titans with kindred soul Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry’s. They were both more interested in the social missions of their companies than the business mission. They both loved poking fun at …
Strategic View
Do Markets Need Government? When I studied and taught economics 25 years ago, the basic model of efficient markets was straightforward. Investors and businesses maximize profit, consumers seek value for money, workers search for lucrative jobs. Competitive market forces were central, although market failures were acknowledged: the maldistribution of income and “externalities” such as pollution and crime that are not reflected in market prices. The role of government was to efficiently remediate these failures, to regulate, tax or otherwise “get the prices right.” What happens, however, when self-interested capitalists understand that social inequities and externalities like pollution and nuclear proliferation …
The Thanksgiving Column
Thanks (presumably) to 34,000 emails vehemently opposing the repeal of shareholders’ right to file non-binding ballot proposals, social investors dodged a bullet this fall. On November 28, the Securities and Exchange Commission failed to follow through on its earlier hints that the rules governing shareholder proposals might be significantly tightened, even to the point of where they might succumb to the fate of the dodo. Therefore, a hearty cheer and very grateful thank-you to those readers who responded to our action alert last fall! You know who you are, and we are very grateful for the time you took to …
Recent Comments