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Dear Mr. Berko:

Dear S.R.:

According to MSN Money’s Customer Service Hall of Shame, Comcast has the second-worst customer service in the nation. Apparently, customer service is an oxymoron at Comcast, like jumbo shrimp or postal service.

Comcast’s new e-mail platform, SmartZone, continues to keep customer satisfaction low. I am not a Comcast (CMCSK-$12.72) aficionado, and I don’t care a whit or tic for the stock, even though Value Line’s Garrett Sussman is major-league bullish on this cable issue.

Sussman believes that CMCSK’s 24 million television service subscribers, 13 million Internet users and 5 million phone customers will push revenues from $34 billion in 2008 to $36 billion in 2009. In fact, Sussman thinks 2009 net income will rise 15 percent to $3 billion or $1.06 a share; the dividend will increase to 30 cents from 19 cents; cash flow will hit $3.35 per share, up 11 percent from 2008; and net profit margins will rise to 8.2 percent.

I suspect Sussman’s numbers are much too sanguine, and that he’s grossly overgenerous when he suggests that CMCSK might, in the next few years, trade as high as $50 a share. I doubt that our troubled economy will let Comcast’s revenues and earnings match Sussman’s rosy projections, and I can’t imagine CMCSK in the high $40s or low $50s.

Advertising revenues will arguably stumble; financially squeezed subscribers will certainly reduce their cable services, subscriber growth should slow and CMCSK’s Internet customer count will begin to decline. And, although folks are switching their landlines to Comcast’s digital voice subscriber base, some observers believe this momentum also will slow dramatically. Voice quality is not nearly as good as on landlines, connections are sometimes undependable, and dropped calls are not uncommon.

Meanwhile CMCSK has 90,000 employees, and I’ve been told that CEO Brian Roberts might reduce those numbers by 4,000 this year. CMCSK should trade in a narrow range between $10 and $15 over the next 18 months, and I wouldn’t approach this issue with a loaded 10-gauge.

When John Thain joined Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc., the stock was trading at $50. He received a pay package structured on the belief that he could add another 40 points to the price of the shares. Subsequently, Thain got canned for subterfuge in January. When Johnny Boy signed with Merrill in November 2007, he got a $15 million sign-on bonus and a pay package valued between $50 million and $120 million. Well, he sold Merrill to Bank of America Corp. for $29 a share (some believe Thain purposely withheld damaging financial data from Bank of America’s auditors), certainly a lot less than the $50 a share it was trading at when he took the Merrill Lynch CEO job.

Yes, Thain had the audacity to request a $40 million bonus, but a couple of old soldiers took the kid to the woodshed, and the lad decided to accept a paltry $7.5 million. When Thain’s resignation was announced, a friend at Bank of America told me that there was a “standing ovation on the trading floor.”

I’m not a John Thain fan, as some of you may know; in fact, he had very few fans wherever he worked. When Thain headed the New York Stock Exchange, some folks called him “Mr. Iceman,” because he so badly lacked people skills. However, Merrill was nearly dead when Johnny joined the brokerage, and one can’t blame Thain for its failure.

If you must assess blame, then I recommend you jail every member of Merrill Lynch’s board of directors, who looked the other way while management played footsie for years with trillions of dollars in stupid and dangerous investments. There was a list of screwballs on Merrill’s board ranging from Dame Judith Mayhew Jonas, a human rights activist from England, to retired Navy Adm. Joe Prueher, to Jill Conway, who used to be president of Smith College.

I believe business people should run businesses. I doubt any of those folks knew a CMO from a CEO. Many corporate boards today are a big joke, and Merrill’s is proof of the pudding. Don’t blame Thain; the kid didn’t have a chance with his dyspeptic, acerbic personality and a sloppy board of directors that preferred their martinis “shaken but not stirred.”

Please address your financial questions to Malcolm Berko, P.O. Box 1416, Boca Raton, Fla. 33429 or e-mail him at malber@comcast.net. © 2009 Creators Syndicate Inc.