Tuesday Morning Links -- ATT Activates Almost 4 Million iPhones; 20% New to ATT

Updates

Later, 9:55 a.m.: Practically on cue. Down below I wrote: "All eyes, it seems, are on what Apple will do next. It's an incredible story." And now I see this headline story: "Apple Earnings Will Be Phenomenal, But What's Next?" You won't see that headline with Dell, Microsoft, IBM, H-P, Samsung, Google, and the list goes on. I don't know what's next but for now I am satisfied hearing that Apple accounts for 80% of the smart phones being sold, and ATT activated almost 4 million iPhones in the last quarter, almost 20% of "them," new to ATT,

Original Post

Great energy links at ISA: oil pricing, shale boom.

RBN Energy: Eagle Ford, Part I. Break-even point for oil -- $50/bbl.

From Merrill Lynch, via CarpeDiem: energy sector providing a $1 billion stimulus every day. As usual, the comments are more interesting than the article, especially those who are already aware of the energy boom. Of course, some are not.

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Baker Hughes at PennEnergy: falling prices threaten Bakken production.

In response to dropping prices, Craighead predicts many companies in the Bakken oil field will need to scale back production.
"The largest drillers in the Bakken are all reducing their rig counts this month, although none acknowledge a change in drilling plans," said Amrita Sen, an analyst at Barclays. 

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Do you think natural gas prices are on their way up? Hot weather --> more air conditioning, and then this: natural gas rigs at 13-year low, at Penn Energy. 

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For investors only (see disclaimer for this blog: this is not an investment site; don't make any investment decision based on anything you read at this blog), also at PennEnergy: Williams to buy natural gas cracker unit in Louisiana:

Located south of Baton Rouge, LA, the Geismar facility is a light-end natural gas liquid (NGL) cracker with current volumes of 37,000 barrels per day (bpd) of ethane and 3,000 bpd of propane and annual production of 1.35 billion pounds of ethylene. With the benefit of a $350-$400 million expansion under way and scheduled for completion by late 2013, the facility's annual ethylene production capacity will grow by 600 million pounds to 1.95 billion pounds.

Anyone following the RBN series on liquid natural gas understands the Williams investment. It's a natural fit. 

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For investors only, from Yahoo In-Play: AT&T beats by $0.03, reports revs in-line: Reports Q2 (Jun) earnings of $0.66 per share, $0.03 better than the Capital IQ Consensus Estimate of $0.63; revenues rose 0.3% year/year to $31.57 bln vs the $31.71 bln consensus. AT&T sold 5.1 million smartphones in the second quarter. Smartphones represented 77% of postpaid device sales. At the end of the quarter, 61.9%, or 43.1 million, of AT&T's postpaid subscribers had smartphones, up from 49.9%, or 34.1 million, a year earlier. In the quarter, the company activated 3.7 million AAPL iPhones, with 22% new to AT&T (this is being reported to be in-line estimates). Co reported highest-ever wireless margins, operating income margin of 30.3 percent, with EBITDA service margin of 45.0 percent.

The new activations may be "in line" with estimates, but activated 3.7 million iPhones and noting that more than 20 percent of them are new to ATT -- this seems to be a big story by any measure.

At MacRumors, it is a big story: almost 80% of new smart phones sold by ATT are iPhones. 80%. More than 50% of all postpaid phone sales were at ATT this past quarter.  If history is any guide, this will be ignored by CNBC; I haven't watched television in over two weeks now (no cable access) so I haven't seen CNBC in a long, long time. Surprisingly, I don't miss it. Too much noise. I assume Starbucks is talked about a lot, and Green Mountain. I was going to do a stand-alone piece on Apple yesterday but simply lost energy. There are a number of very interesting story lines regarding Apple right now. The biggest for me, and always has been: does anyone care what any other "computer" company is bringing out in the next quarter? All eyes, it seems, are on what Apple will do next. It's an incredible story.

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At the WSJ, I see that about 16 companies announced an increase in their dividends; usually it's about three to four companies per day in the past few months. 

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