Star Wars: The Force Awakens World Wide Box office Prediction: $1,703,299,579

Always tough to predict a box office before the opening weekend. However, given the hype, I think it will be in the same range as Jurassic World. Probably around $200 million.


Based on my formula that incorporates box office, IMDB review score (currently at 9.2...I would expect that to go down) and whether it is part of a franchise, I predict the movie will earn around $1.7 billion or so at the box office.  Not bad for a 200 million budget movie.

In the Heart of the Sea - Estimated World Wide Box office: $111,929,573

Going to be a disappointing result for Warner Brothers. Based on my formula (which incorporates the opening weekend and IMDB rating) I predict that this movie will only make $111 million. Based on the budget of 100 million, which you usually double to include marketing costs, it looks like the movie will end up as a loss of $88 million.


Not great.

Atlassian - The only way is down- Price target of $9.61 a share

Been having a look over Atlassian and whether it is worth investing in. Not a big fan to be honest.


The Return on Equity is not great, at a very lowly 3%. Yet, if it has a Beta of say 1.3 (like ServiceNow, a competitor), that would imply a cost of capital of 7.5%. I just don't see the company being able to increase the ROE to that level (especially as they lost money last year and were saved by a tax credit)


On the plus side, Leadership looks ok...fairly diverse board with plenty of IT experience.


Going deeper into the fundamentals; based on the FCFF formula, I calculate the price being around $9.61 a share, which is way lower than the $26.26 on offer at the moment, especially when it is a fairly competitive area. I don't see the growth potential.


And for those who think I am unpatriotic, well, the company is domiciled in the UK! 


Note: Not a recommendation to invest or not invest in Atlassian. If pain persists, see your financial advisor.

Sydney House Prices 12/12/2015: Average 3 bedroom house now sells for $1,248,805 (down 0.27%)

Weakness in the housing prices are starting to feed into auctions....finally. Stats below

House	Type		Sample	Average	Min	Max	Change
Average	2 Bedroom House		811	1,143,728.32	1,114,930.06	1,172,526.58	-0.28%
	3 Bedroom House		3100	1,248,805.42	1,231,280.90	1,266,329.95	-0.27%
	4 Bedroom House		2501	1,468,177.91	1,442,052.19	1,494,303.63	0.00%
Unit	Type			Average	Min	Max
	2 Bedroom Unit		2083	835,199.10	822,039.09	848,359.11	-0.09%
	3 Bedroom Unit		896	1,157,761.11	1,119,503.26	1,196,018.97	0.30%

Estimates of Movie Earnings: Formula

Been looking at one of my favourite sites, www.boxofficemojo.com. Gives a bit of a snapshot into the world of movie revenues and the like.


As a big fan of movies and data, I was wondering if there was any way to predict how much a movie would make using regression techniques.


My theory is that the final world wide box office is dependent on two main criteria; firstly, the weekend opening (if it opens huge, it is more likely to have a big run) and also, how good the movie is (if it is well accepted, it is more likely to have a good run)


So I have taken the top 60 movies on boxofficemojo, based on domestic US revenue(as a sample), and ran a regression with the dependent variable being World Wide Gross, and two independent variables; the opening weekend box office, the second being the movies IMDB rating, less the average IMDB rating (which is around 6.6)


Performing the regression gives the following formula


World Wide Box office = 8.3*(Opening Weekend) + 29,200,000*(IMDB rating-6.6) - 22,000,000


All variables are statistically significant at the 95% confidence interval and the adjusted R2 is 0.91.


So there does appear to be a relationship. Interesting. Based on that, I can predict the Revenues of the Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part2 of $841,392,700 (which should make more that Mockingjay Part 1, ($755,000,000), but not as big as Catching Fire (which made $865,000,000).

Sydney House Prices 5/12/15: Average 3 bedroom house now sells for $1,252,154 (down 0.02%)

Bit of weakness now starting to flow through house prices...finally

House	Type		Sample	Average	Min	Max	Change
Average	2 Bedroom House		785	1,146,920.15	1,117,604.53	1,176,235.77	-0.20%
	3 Bedroom House		3013	1,252,154.77	1,234,310.28	1,269,999.25	-0.02%
	4 Bedroom House		2441	1,468,148.69	1,441,927.85	1,494,369.53	-0.17%
Unit	Type			Average	Min	Max
	2 Bedroom Unit		2044	835,989.84	822,630.96	849,348.72	0.17%
	3 Bedroom Unit		865	1,154,247.35	1,116,264.96	1,192,229.75	-0.09%