The New York Times takes a tough look at a pressing issue in our struggling economy: “How to Keep Yachting Expenses Manageable.”
Another risk is that you buy the wrong boat for the waters where you want to cruise. Jeff Vrana, who oversees one man’s five yachts, the largest of which is a 192-foot Lurssen called Ronin, said new buyers might not understand that there are specific yachts for the Bahamas, for example, where the waters are shallower, and the Caribbean, where they are deeper.
Mr. Vrana said he would also encourage people to buy a smaller yacht until they understood the real costs of owning a boat. “When you have money to burn and don’t mind writing checks for $1 million a month, then buy that 190-footer,” he said.
When he takes Ronin to Germany from Florida for service this fall, it will cost 180,000 euros in fuel one way and 3 million euros for maintenance work.
Thanks for that, NYT.
— The Wall Street Journal has a good Heard on the Street on share dilution at tech companies like Facebook, which makes their market caps and P/E ratios seem deceptively low:
Facebook, Zynga and plenty of other companies have more shares outstanding than many sources of finance data would lead investors to believe. Those buying shares of the social network, for instance, get a stake in the firm that is 22% smaller than they may realize.
That’s because sources of finance data, including a popular source like Yahoo Finance to a more professional source like FactSet, don’t include all shares outstanding when calculating market capitalization on their company summary pages. They use basic shares outstanding, a figure that appears on the cover page of public companies’ most recent financial filing with the SEC…
Multiply by the first number and Facebook’s market capitalization would appear to be $39 billion, about 30 times 2013 estimated net income. But multiply by the second number and the market cap is actually $50 billion, or 38 times 2013 earnings.
— Your moment of zen: Kim Kardashian gets the banker treatment from Maria Bartiromo on CNBC:
(h/t Max Abelson)
Ryan Chittum is a former Wall Street Journal reporter, and deputy editor of The Audit, CJR’s business section. If you see notable business journalism, give him a heads-up at rc2538@columbia.edu. Follow him on Twitter at @ryanchittum.