Potlatch Corporation (PCH) announced yesterday that its stock spin-off of its pulp based manufacturing division, Clearwater Paper Corp. will go ahead in the fourth quarter of 2008. They will be financing it differently than they had planned to when the board approved it in July, but otherwise it is still on.

If you did your homework when the original plan was announced back in July, you have some re-figuring to do, but they have laid it out pretty clearly in the 3rd quarter report. I say “pretty clearly” because while they say what they plan to do, right now there are some details missing. And, as you might guess, they exactly the ones that we need to figure out whether this is a good deal or not. Keep watching.

The most recent announcement on the stock spin-off can be found in the Potlatch Corp. 3rd quarter report.

Tags: Clearwater Paper Corp, PCH, Potlatch Corp, stock spin-off

One year after its stock spin-off from NCR Corp, Teradata’s (TDC) stock price is much lower than it started. (Whose isn’t compared to a year ago?)

The stock spin-off and other issues were addressed by the CEO, Mike Koehler, in an interview in the Dayton Daily News .

His comments were especially relevant coming right now given that it has been noted that not only do spin offs outperform over their first three years, but that year two is most likely to see the biggest gains. Here is Teradata beginning year two with it’s stock price riding the down elevator with everyone else.

Seems like a good time to be doing some work to be ready to decide how attractive TDC will be when the market’s trend flattens out and starts to reverse.

Of particular concern to me is the entry of some serious competition into their marketplace. Clearly this is their area of expertise and they have a headstart, but when Oracle and HP and Microsoft come on the scene that may or may not turn out to be enough.

Tags: NCR, stock spin-off, TDC, Teradata

Now we know that Encana intends to call its oil sands unit spin-off Cenovus.  We know what to call it, (though I haven’t heard what the ticker symbol will be.)  That just leaves us to try to figure out whether this is a good deal for us or not.

Generally, getting the oil out of the sand and refining it into a usable product depends on high oil prices.  It’s an expensive process.  The oil is there and they know how to get it, but they need someone to be willing to pay enough for it to make the whole thing profitable.

Right now the price of oil is trending in the wrong direction for this source to be profitable.  Will the price of oil reverse itself enough to make this a good investment?  Eventually to be sure, but when?

Perhaps from the point of view of one seeking value in a spin-off situation, the closer the price of oil edges toward oil sands extraction costs, the better a long term value this new company Cenovus will turn out to be.

Tags: Cenovus, ECA, Encana, spin off