Sunday, April 29, 2007

Shareholder Freebie Followup

This is annual report season. The amount of mail I am getting is now 6 to 9 inches high on a daily basis, primarily due to all the annual reports I am receiving. With the Time Warner (TWX) report, I received an envelope with an offer to subscribe to one of their 43 magazines that they publish, at a special "Shareholder Price". By the way, this was the second most "boring" annual report I received this month. By "boring" I mean an annual report without pictures, without color, without glossy covers. The annual report was all text printed on what felt like very cheap paper, in a large pamplet format that was poorly cut. [By the way, the most "boring" was Apple Inc. (AAPL). Their annual report was their 10K.] I actually don't mind the "boring" report from Apple; or should I say non-existant annual report. It shows that the company is saving money any way they can. No annual reports, trading on NASDAQ instead of paying New York Stock Exchange (NYX) fees, whatever it takes.

The other corporate freebie I turned up was from McDonald's Corp. (MCD), which does have a glossy annual report. They provided a coupon for a free southwest salad, stuck in the middle of the report.

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