Tell It To Al

Bursting water mains are an everyday problem in America.

The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates about 240,000 blow every year. It gives America’s drinking water infrastructure a “D” grade, noting some pipes are more than 100 years old.

Municipalities have long neglected water system maintenance, often allocating scarce dollars to more pressing needs. The result is often a sink hole large enough to swallow cars.

Aqua America, a publicly traded water utility, offers a solution. The company buys up water systems and repairs them. CEO Nicholas DeBenedictis has positioned his company to prosper from the great infrastructure crisis that may lay ahead. Meantime, his stock has been climbing and his dividend has been growing.

Click here to read my column on MarketWatch.

When you meet a guy like Gary Kelly, CEO of Southwest Airlines Co., you have to wonder, what’s wrong with the rest of the airline industry?

Serial bankruptcies, layoffs, bag fees – crisis after crisis – Southwest has none of that. Mr. Kelly says it’s because he’s not afraid to love.

Click here to read my column on Marketwatch

It was a tough week for J.C. Penney CEO Ron Johnson.

First, he delivered the bad news: $985 million in losses and shrinking sales for 2012, his first full year as CEO of the struggling retailer.

Then on Friday he took the witness stand in lawsuits that competitor Macy’s filed against J.C. Penney and Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. Macy’s claims Mr. Johnson and Ms. Stewart have violated a contract it has to sell Martha Stewart-branded products, exclusively.

Mr. Johnson has included Ms. Stewart’s products in his larger strategy of putting boutique stores within his stores. So far, it doesn’t seem to be working out.

Click here to read my column in The Sunday Wall Street Journal. And click here to watch me talk about this and other subjects with Will Ripley of Denver’s NBC affiliate, 9News.

It’s been difficult to see how Mr. Johnson’s strategy would ever work out. Click here to read what I wrote about it last year.

Higher payroll taxes, delayed tax refunds, higher fuel costs, ongoing malaise in the jobs market – it’s all dragging on the outlook for one of the world’s largest companies, Wal-Mart.

Click here to read more from The Associated Press.

Four years after the Great Recession began, America’s poor and the lower rungs of the middle class are still hanging on by threads.

If anybody knows this, it’s Wal-Mart. The discount retailer can literally track the ebbs and flows of its sales by the very seconds people get paid.

“The Wal-Mart customer is a bit of a microcosm of the U.S. economy,” a top Wal-Mart executive once explained. (Click here to see the 2010 column I wrote about this Wal-Mart executive’s unique perspective on the economy in The Sunday Wall Street Journal.)

“You need not go further than one of our stores on midnight at the end of the month,” he said. “It’s real interesting to watch. About 11 p.m., customers start to come in and shop, fill their grocery basket with basic items, baby formula, milk, bread, eggs, and continue to shop and mill about the store until midnight, when…government electronic benefits cards get activated and then the checkout starts.”

On the plus side, the poorer America becomes, the more it needs Wal-Mart. On the minus, if America gets too poor, Wal-Mart can’t keep growing.

It seems no amount of horrific news will stop the cruise industry from growing.

Not even mysterious diseases, fires, missing persons, shipwrecks or a stagnant economy.

The prime age for cruisers is 45 and older, and with aging populations in the world’s most affluent nations, there seems to be a new cruiser born every second.

 Click here to read my column on MarketWatch. And click here to read my column on the Titanic II. The original Titanic went down in 1912, James Cameron released a movie about it in 1997, and now some people are lining up to do it all over again.

You know that expression, “like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic”? Well, some people are ready to cough up big buck for the chance to do just that. Click here to read about the demand.

Some day, instead of pass the ketchup, we may say pass the Buffett.

Last week, Warren Buffett, one of the world’s smartest investors bought about $28 billion worth of ketchup with his acquisition of H.J. Heinz Co.

It was one of the safest bets he could make in a dicey global economy.

Click here to read my column in The Sunday Wall Street Journal. And click here to watch me talk about the deal and other business topics with 9News anchor Will Ripley.

Research in Motion Ltd unveiled its new Blackberrys last week to a resounding chorus of observers who said 1) pretty cool phones and 2) so what.

RIM’s stock fell sharply shortly after the announcement. Analysts said they were particularly disappointed that the phones won’ be available until March.

I used to love my Blackberry, but Apple’s iPhone has driven the Blackberry to near extinction. I can’t imagine going back. Can you?

Click here to read my column in The Sunday Wall Street Journal. And click here to watch me talk about it with Will Ripley of Denver’s NBC affiliate, 9News.

Maxine Clark, “chief executive bear” of Build-A-Bear Workshop Inc., is resigning amid disappointing financial results for the struggling retailer, the St. Louis Business Journal reports. Click here to read all about it.

Let’s face it, despite all the talk of a recovering economy, it’s been tough out there for retailers.

In some ways, it’s a testament to her leadership that a retailer, taking up expensive mall space to sell teddy bears, has survived this long. Click here to read what I wrote about Build-A-Bear in 2008. I had no idea it would still be here in 2013.

Technology changes rapidly, but the way we watch videos does not.

Last, week the company that owns Blockbuster said it would close an additional 300 stores and layoff about 3,000 people. What’s amazing is that there are still Blockbuster stores to close.  Do people still drive to the store to watch movies?

Blockbuster filed bankruptcy in 2010 and satellite company Dish Network purchased the chain out of bankruptcy court with plans to somehow keep it going.

There were about 5,700 Blockbuster stores as recently as 2005. With Dish’s latest announcement it will be down to about 500.

On another front last week, Netflix made a surprise announcement that it added 5.8 million customers for online streaming accounts that go for $8 a month. In 2011, Netflix made a sudden and unpopular move to separate its mail-order DVD from its streaming business, spawning a mass exodus of customers.

People still like getting DVDs the old-fashioned way: In the mail.

News that Netflix is beginning to recover from this sent its stock up more than 40% in a single day last week.

Click here to read my column in The Sunday Wall Street Journal. And click here to watch me talk about it with Matt Flener, anchor of Denver’s NBC affiliate, 9News.