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...company's lack of focus is showing on the balance sheet too. Tim Gaumer, director of fundamental research for StarMine, a financial-analysis firm, notes that Google's pretax return on assets declined to 7.6% in the quarter ending in June, down from 11.8% a year ago. "While significantly above the industry average, that's a rapid decline," Gaumer says. What has changed this year is that Google has ramped up its investment in areas with lower expected returns, such as infrastructure. Still, sales should reach $10 billion this year...
...Szaky's office could pass for a landfill. Szaky, 24, the co-founder and CEO of plant-food manufacturer TerraCycle, sits in a chair that was at one time another firm's trash, next to a computer on a desk that were both once trash, and, with near palpable enthusiasm, draws supply-and-demand graphs on scraps of paper to show why he's so fond of building his business out of trash. "What is garbage?" he asks, marker in hand. "It's any commodity with a negative value, right? It's something you're willing...
Dumping has also been valuable for Tennessee's Bouldin Corp. In 2003 the firm began taking Warren County garbage and converting it to what Bouldin calls "fluff." That's household trash ground up, with the metals removed, and heated so it's inert. Fluff is used as a peat substitute. Bouldin's new landfill project is expected to swing to profitability after it launches its first durable products next year: landscape timber and building blocks made from trash. "A few years down the line, we'll wonder why we ever put this stuff in the ground," says marketing manager Terry...
...University estimates that homeowners spent $2.4 billion on replacing or improving their garages in 2003--more than double the average annual spending over the previous decade. Companies that specialize in this niche, which barely existed a few years ago, say they're expanding exponentially. Garage Envy, the Pasadena, Calif., firm that transformed Cardenas' space, expects 2006 revenues to hit $2.6 million, up from $1.1 million in 2005. GarageTek in Syosset, N.Y., hit $20 million in 2005, a 30% increase over the previous year, says marketing director Barbara Butenski, and this year the company expects its revenues to hit $28 million...
...stores. "The growth of this category has been in the general neighborhood of 10%," says Mike Mullinax, national installation manager in the custom home-organization division of Home Depot. Indeed, says Greg Alford, a senior partner with the Peachtree Consulting Group, a market-research firm based in Atlanta, "garage-organization projects are the fastest-growing segment of the home [renovation] industry." The average cost of a Home Depot makeover is in the $1,000 to $2,000 range, says Mullinax, adding that the chain is "trying popular prices" to target the majority of its customers...