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Jim:        But I want to stress this one point… okay… it is crucial… right now the street is trying to let the baby have its bottle… they don’t have us crying over spilled glasses of infant formula… let alone all the money that we have lost in the last few months… so brokers are giving you a quick chance to try to make some money in Mead Johnson… I am not telling you to buy the stock after it becomes public… I want you to get in on the deal… okay… there is a tremendous disconnect in the public between buying the stock and buying on the deal… but it makes a huge difference… I don’t care about Mead Johnson if you can’t get in on the deal… in other words if the broker says I can give you some shares in the IPO if you want it… I can give you some shares after the IPO happens and its public…you don’t want it… so call your broker… send some Commish to Morgan Stanley… they are the book runner… and see if you can get in on the actual IPO… if Willey Sutton were still around today, he would be trying to get in on this deal… not buying in the after market… because that is where the money is.

Think about it… the last big IPO was Visa (V)… back in March of 2008... almost a year ago… and the bankers pulled the same thing… if you got in on the IPO which priced at $44... then you would still be up 25%… but if you got in on the closing price on the day that the stock started trading… you would be about flat… that is the loser trade… you want in on the Mead Johnson deal… which is just like the Visa deal… it is all about getting people back into the game… you don’t want to buy the stock on the open market after it pops… now I like Mead Johnson, I wouldn’t be talking about it otherwise… but the current price range in the deal is between $21 and $24... I like it at those prices… give or take $2... meaning it maybe okay to tell your broker that you will pay up to $26... I do not like it much higher than that… and if it is higher than that when it starts trading… please… I am begging you here… you know better… don’t buy it… don’t be like some in the media… I am not the kind of guy who names name… I am more of an Arthur Miller figure, than an Olie Kusan, and buy it at any price because Cramer said he liked it… and then go crying to Mommy kind of guy.

Anyway, if you do intend to cry to Mommy… this is the perfect, perfect company for it… Mead Johnson has 70 products in 50 different countries… you have probably seen some of this stuff… all of the shelves have it… it is the leader in infant formula… think Infamil… okay… among other brands, if you have kids… in numerous different markets including the US… it is the largest infant formula in the world… hey, there are a lot of things people cut back in a recession… but feeding your kids… and especially their babies… that does not make the list… 2/3’s of the companies sales comes from baby formula… the other third from pediatric nutrition… in both segments Mead Johnson focuses on making premium products… I have always thought by far that this is best of breed… with formulas that are based on hard science… and thus hard to copy… Infamil, it’s big baby formula brand, is one of the most trusted in the world… I know we used it… okay… with the highest number of consumers trusting it… doctors recommending it… and consumers thinking that it is the closest equivalent to breast milk than any baby formula… trust me on this.

Anyway, you don’t pinch pennies when it comes to buying your baby the best formula out there… although I wonder about the correlations between recessions and breast feeding… totally idle thought… spatial… not linear… the companies products are about recession resistant as they come… Mead Johnson’s pediatric nutrition side is where the growth comes from…. $19B industry… expected to be $28B by 2012... now you should know that Mead Johnson gets half of its sales… ¾’s of it sales from Asia and Latin America… so right now it is the victim of the strong dollar… like so many other consumer products companies… but since that is being built into all the estimate models from the get go… the company should be a big beneficiary once the green back eventually weakens… like the gazillions of articles that have been written about our currency say it should…it is always benefiting in the turn in milk prices… that makes up 30% of Mead Johnson’s cost in goods sold… Mead Johnson will also give you a nice dividend, .80 cents… it is at the mid point of the price range applies at 3.5%… not too shabby… if only you can get in on the deal, and get the stock at that price… they are going to be giving money away on this Mead Johnson deal.

What about the details of the deal… Bristol-Myers is only selling 13% of the equity in Mead Johnson… 25 class a shares… we usually don’t like class a, class b… but, this is 28.75 million out of a roughly 200 million… and in the end it will have 97.9% of the voting power… unfortunately… but that is okay… the flow of the stock is going to be tiny… something that will make for huge swings… another reason that I expect this stock to pop after it becomes public.

Here is the bottom line…