LESSONS LEARNED MEAN BETTER RELIEF FOR HAITI

Below is a piece I wrote for www.capitalnews.ca which is an online publication done by fourth-year journalism students at Carleton. View the full piece here

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Huge waves, the earth trembling, mass destruction, screams, prayers and hundreds of thousands dead.

A little over five years separate the tsunami off the coast of Indonesia and the earthquake in Haiti. But both disasters have resulted in vast humanitarian relief.

Boxing Day 2004 saw the shifting of two tectonic plates about 150 kilometres from the Indonesian island of Sumatra. This resulted in a magnitude-9.0 earthquake, and a tsunami that rushed the shores, leaving very little in its wake.

Homes along the coast of Indonesia were swept away by massive tidal waves after the earthquake struck in 2004.

Fast forward to Jan. 12 of this year, when a magnitude-7.0 earthquake rocked the already very poor island of Haiti, devastating the country and specifically, its capital city Port-au-Prince.

In both instances, Canadians rushed to aid, opening wallets, writing cheques, with the Canadian government sending millions to help support the broken lands.

But with Haiti relief efforts in full-swing, Canadians are left wondering where this level of response was five years ago. More than anything, the tsunami relief efforts taught Canadians what it was like to respond to a disaster.

Certainly Canada is better equipped for disaster relief these days. It's also easier to focus efforts on one area than several countries and thousands of kilometres of coastline.

Former president and chief executive of CARE Canada, John Watson said in an interview with CBC News in February 2005, that Canada’s response to the tsunami disaster was “amateur” and that “NGOs should get together to set up an efficient, unified aid delivery system.”

Since 2005, CARE Canada has worked with Oxfam Canada, Oxfam-Québec and Save the Children to form the Humanitarian Coalition. The four member agencies have a mandate to join together to raise funds for the people of Haiti affected by this crisis.

The current president and CEO of CARE Kevin McCort says the reason for combining the relief efforts is to make it easier on the donor.

“The intention is to raise more collectively, partly due to eliminating the costs of competition, and partly due to making it easier for donors to make a choice,” says McCort.

Karen Palmer at Oxfam Canada echoes those statements because working through the coalition decreases administration costs.

“[They] normally run at about 10 per cent during a crisis so when you donate,10 per cent will stay behind to Oxfam to cover those costs,” she says.

“With the humanitarian coalition, it’s running at about seven or eight per cent, so that way we’re much more efficient in terms of getting more of what you’re donating actually out to the field.”

One-third of Haiti's population has been affected by the quake. Léogâne's stadium now serves as a temporary relief camp where city residents live in tents and line up for food and water.

All donations for Haiti are to be matched by the federal government.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper had originally placed a $50 million cap on matched donations, but has since removed the cap.

"Giving has exceeded wildest expectations and we will continue to match pledges dollar for dollar," Prime Minster Steven Harper said in a late January news conference.

In total, Canada pledged $655 million to the tsunami relief efforts, which combines all government donations along with public donations. So far the Canadian government has pledged $135 million to the Haiti relief efforts, with an additional $104.5 million coming from Canadians.

“The humanitarian effort has been extraordinary,” NDP leader Jack Layton told reporters during the January 19 NDP caucus. “I was witness to what happened in the case of the tsunami, I think all our government officials and our service personnel have learned a lot and I told the Prime Minister that I was pleased with the rapidity of the response.”

The relief efforts in Haiti are ongoing. If you are interested in donating, the Government of Canada has more information.

Less Risk, More Steady

This is a piece I wrote for my Business and Financial Journalism class at Carleton, a company profile on Wi-LAN, a high-tech company in Ottawa. The full piece can be found on Ottawa Insight

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Less risk, more steady

By Adam Stanley

OTTAWA — January 2010 — Although the high-tech sector has struggled this year just as the rest of the world has – relying on government funding and reacting to the global economic downturn – it has not gone through a full-blown recession.

In fact some companies, such as Ottawa-based Wi-LAN Inc. have come through the worst while remaining profitable.

“The recession was not as severe in our sector and that’s because our sector normally does better than the economy. We grow faster than the economy, so the measures taken to cut costs have actually allowed many firms to maintain and even improve their profitability,” says president and CEO of the Information and Technology Association of Canada (ITAC) Bernard Courtois.

Wi-LAN President and CEO Jim Skippen echoes that analysis. “We’re forecasting that we’ll have cash earnings between $9 to10 million (this year) so it’s profitable, it’s growing.”

Founded in 1992, Wi-LAN was established to commercialize technology inventions to make low-cost, high-speed wireless networking a reality. It was during the early 2000s when Wi-LAN entered numerous business ventures and became very profitable.

Almost four years ago Wi-LAN changed its business model to generate most of its revenue through licensing intellectual property and not by manufacturing goods. This was a change for the better, explains Barry Richards, a financial analyst with Paradigm Capital.

“Being publicly traded is new, it’s a good model. People were quite apprehensive and weren’t sure about the business model, but it’s worked out quite well.”

High tech is more than manufacturing

Moving away from a manufacturing business isn’t as inconsistent with the high-tech community in Ottawa as some may think.

“As much as Ottawa likes to call itself the ‘Silicon Valley of the North’ there is nothing. There is no silicon, even though there are good kinds of solutions to societies needs in the technology sector,” says Dev Bhangui, a financial analyst at Haywood Securities.

Wi-LAN is one of those companies involved with many sectors of the high-tech industry.

“It’s not just in the telecommunications area. It’s broader than that. We’re not just a telecommunications play,” says Skippen. “A long time ago Wi-Lan was, but today, we’re not really. We are in the telecommunications industry, but we’re also in the television industry, and we’re also in other industries.”

That diversity seems to have paid off for Wi-LAN.

With the release of its financial results for three and twelve months on December 10, Wi-LAN saw earnings of $35.1 million.

“Last year we did $26.6 million so it’s been a significant increase,” says Skippen.

Looking for growth

It’s an increase of $8.5 million or 32 per cent from the same period in 2008. Wi-LAN also saw a net loss of $9.2 million or 10 cents per share turn into net earnings of $10.3 million or 11 cents per share.

Richards explained that the economy can only be stimulated by government spending for so long before it has to run on its own, but he says that retail and industrial investors seem to be feeling pretty good.

The next steps to economic recovery lie in industry growth, and the high-tech industry is no exception.

That growth is especially evident in areas of digital content, digital commerce, and digital media, according to ITAC’s research, says Courtios.

TV and wireless

Wi-LAN is working on a new research initiative for television stations going from analog distribution to digital, which should put the company in that new area of technological promise, says Skippen.

This past year Wi-LAN grew especially in the wireless area, as well as in television licensees. It has over 200 license agreements currently, and over the past two years Wi-LAN has signed approximately one new licensee per week.

They are not all cookie-cutter agreements either. Tyler Burns, Wi-LAN’s director of investor relations and communications says that “the number of licensees signed compares very favourably to peers in our industry. You (will) find a dramatic difference between what Wi-LAN has done and what others have done.”

As Wi-LAN deals so closely with patents and patent agreements, there are also litigation issues with other companies.

This year though, there has only been one new action where, in California, Intel launched a claim against Wi-LAN. Wi-LAN is also involved in two cases of litigation in Texas with trial dates at the end of next year. “There will be a lot of activity between now and then,” says Skippen.

Investors like what they see

With the change to the new business model, Wi-LAN has attracted investors, especially institutional investors this year, says Burns. Wi-LAN is hoping to increase its institutional investors this upcoming year.

Being a public company it’s difficult to provide any financial forecasts before the release of their annual report. But Skippen is confident that Wi-LAN will continue to be doing more of what it has always done.

“We’ll continue to sign licenses with somesignificant players and continue to show that kind of progress (and) we’re hoping to make significant progress in our litigations as they near their conclusion.”

From an investment prospective, Wi-LAN has come a long way from the company it once was.

“In the beginning it was riskier because they didn’t have a lot of revenue, they didn’t have a lot of cash, they didn’t have a lot of history,” says Richards.

“They’ve done a fantastic job now three-and-a-half years later it’s a more steady company. Less risk, more steady.”

Wi-LAN is changing its fiscal year end from October to December to match the business cycles of its customers. It will release audited financial results for the fourteen months ending December 31, 2009 in early March of 2010.