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Coffee Talk
A Love bite for Valentine's
No sooner was the ink dry on our profile of Norman Love Confections in the Jan. 6 edition of the Review than the Fort Myers chocolatier won top honors from Consumer Reports in the magazine's February issue.
CR editors hailed Love's chocolates as the best choice for Valentine's Day, beating 19 competitors in a blind taste test. The magazine's total circulation is 4 million.
"Spectacularly executed unique fillings - such as apple pie, passion fruit and pineapple upside-down cake - distinguish these fresh, ultra-smooth, mostly white-chocolate-coated confections notable for their shiny, candy like appearance and decorative details," the editors gushed.
The competition was stiff, with the legendary purveyor La Maison du Chocolat placing fourth. Editors noted that the smaller brands were the clear winners. Besides Love and La Maison du Chocolat, other top performers included Candinas, John & Kira's, Moonstruck and Jacques Torres.
Private Capital likes newspaper cash flow
Bruce Sherman, the I-don't-talk-to-the-press chief executive officer of Naples-based Private Capital Management, has shaken up the wobbling world of publicly traded newspaper companies.
Sherman, whose firm is the largest shareholder of Knight Ridder Inc. stock (19.18%), called in November for Knight Ridder management and the board to seek a buyer for the company, largely because Knight Ridder's stock price has been lagging far below what Sherman believes the company is worth.
Sherman's grenade reverberated and prompted the newspaper industry's trade publication, Editor & Publisher, to publish a special report, entitled, "Who Owns Your Newspaper?"
Turns out, Private Capital Management owns lots of newspapers, or least big portions of them. Ever since Sherman engineered a record-breaking sale of the Naples Daily News to Scripps Howard for the Miles Collier family more than 20 years ago at a multiple that hovered around 20 times cash flow, Sherman has liked the business. His investment strategy has always focused on finding undervalued companies with big cash flow. So much so that, according to Editor & Publisher, Private Capital Management owns an estimated $4 billion worth of nine newspaper companies.
While huge, that investment is just a small portion of Private Capital's $31 billion in assets.
PRIVATE CAPITAL MANAGEMENT'S NEWSPAPER HOLDINGS
McClatchy Co. 37.61%
Belo Corp. 22.31%
Knight Ridder 19.18%
Lee Enterprises 18.96%
The New York Times Co. 15.07%
Gannett Co. 6.94%
Tribune Co. <1%
Source: Editor & Publisher
Making Sarasota a tech-town
Is Sarasota a technology community? Not yet, according to Barry Tuchfeld, founder of The BT Group in Sarasota, which consults for businesses in the areas of strategic thinking and planning for effective growth. But Sarasota has the makings of one if there is a concerted effort to turn a retirement-heavy, tourist-oriented town into tech-friendly haven.
Tuchfeld spoke recently to 82 Degrees Tech and pointed out that the mere existence of such an organization was laying the groundwork for Sarasota to be high-tech attractive.
82 Degrees Tech is best known for getting Sarasota's public wireless network started in conjunction with Sarasota County. But it is really a group of entrepreneurs and techies who are working to create a community that will be inviting to high-tech workers, entrepreneurs and what Tuchfeld calls "cultural creatives" - artist types with a bent toward using technology.
As much as creating the networking infrastructure, and even building "wired" developments, Tuchfeld says Sarasota needs to create the perception that it is high-tech friendly, a place where technology firms and entrepreneurs will want to flock because there will be enough others of like-mind to generate creative synergy.
No more Crews control
Charles G. Brown III is taking up with a new hometown bank, this time in his real hometown. Brown, the 40-year-old chief executive at Charlotte State and Englewood banks, became chairman, CEO and part-owner of the new Tim Clarke, Michael Pender and Sam Norton bank, all owners of the former Sarasota Bank.
Clarke, founder and former owner of Clarke Advertising and Public Relations, announced the hiring of Brown Jan. 17.
Brown assumed leadership at Charlotte State Bank, which promotes itself as the "hometown bank," in 1994. His father, who organized the Port Charlotte bank as a small-business lender with Wauchula-based Crews Banking Corp, had taken ill.
The young CEO turned Charlotte State into a more conventional community bank and added Englewood Bank to his duties in 2003 when Crews bought it. But Brown was always hired help and didn't have an equity position in the Crews family's holding company.
Brown will be an investor in the yet-to-be-named bank. The group hopes to raise $20 million in a private offering, well above the state's minimum requirement, so they can develop a branch network faster than typical startups.
An Ohio State University graduate, Brown has lived in Sarasota for 15 years with his family. He can stop commuting to Charlotte County after this month.
Sosso family ties
The region's newest developer has a familiar last name. The investment group OSSO LLC, which purchased the 200-unit Avondale Estate Apartments in Bradenton and four homes for $15.4 million, is headed by Mark Sosso. He is the brother of Scott Sosso and the son of Helen Sosso, owners of Prudential Palms Realty.
Mark Sosso has developed and owned apartment complexes in the past in his native Pittsburgh, but the majority of his work there was focused on building custom single-family homes. "There aren't a lot of communities like this up there," Sosso says. "This is an absolutely beautiful, well-maintained community."
Investor relations pays
David Dragics has a simple justification for his place on the payroll of CACI International Inc. It is a rationale that even the defense contractor's chief financial officer might appreciate.
Dragics, a CACI vice president for investor relations, flew down from Virginia to Tampa recently to offer tips to his peers at public companies from all over Central Florida.
The most important function of investor relations executives is to instill Wall Street with confidence in their bosses, according to Dragics. Why? "If you improve management credibility, the cost of capital will be reduced," says Dragics.
A retired U.S. Army colonel, Dragics argues that communicating a realistic vision of future prospects to investors will pay off later when a company goes to the markets for debt financing or a secondary offering.
Dragics recommends that every public company have a strategic plan for getting out its message to the investment community. Most of the 35 or so attendees at his Tampa Club talk sheepishly acknowledged with a show of hands that their companies don't have a plan.
CACI, which provides information technology to the military and government intelligence agencies, has benefited from his frequent trips to visit with stock analysts, says Dragics.
"I'm an example of some of your tax dollars at work," he jokes.
Dragics says he often brings other executives with him on the road, and not always those from the suites. Analysts like to talk to operations managers - who, of course, are thoroughly prepped by Dragics beforehand - because they are seen as closer to the action.
The CACI executive says he'll even talk to hedge fund managers, at least those who aren't hoping to profit if the company's stock drops by selling it short. "The biggest misperception among investor relations people is that hedge funds are all bad," Dragics says.
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