Excellent post over at Seeking Alpha right now discussing the rapid acceleration of Apple’s iTunes Music Store.  They chart the sales growth nicely for you, but the upshot of it is:

• first 100 million sales in 2004
• broke 1 billion sales in 2006
• broke 5 billion sales in 2008

Considering the fact that iTunes began life as a way of driving sales of Apple hardware, this looks like smashing success.  Now that Apple has a dominant position in the MP3 player market (they always have 3 or more positions in the top 5 players for sales) and iTunes is a household name, their new initiatives get to launch with enormous steam behind them from day one.

I’m talking about the IPhone primarily, but the AppleTV is also a really interesting device.  Both of these are video devices, and video is definitely a growth market.  Those of you who know me know that I’m bullish on web video.  It seems clear that as the world slowly transitions from traditional television to video on all of their new devices, Apple is going to be there in spades to soak up the growth.

We have AAPL in our portfolio, should you?

BHP Billiton is a global natural resource giant located in Melbourne, Australia. BHP is a the market leading or almost the market leading supplier of aluminum, energy and metallurgical coal, copper, manganese, iron ore, uranium, nickel, silver and titanium minerals. They also have interests in oil, gas, natural gas and diamonds. If it comes out of the ground and is useful, BHP probably has a hand in it. We originally bought this stock because there were talks of BHP Billiton acquiring rival Rio Tinto (RTP).  BHP is already the largest natural resource company in the world and adding Rio Tinto would’ve given them a near monopoly. Unfortunately, the deal never got off the ground as Rio Tinto never seemed willing to be purchased, however, the stock has done well YTD because China and India are rapidly developing their country and requiring a lot of natural resources to do so. While these two countries are in super growth mode, especially considering their vast populations, there should be a very healthy demand for BHP’s inventory of resources and the stock should steadily climb for the next few years.

WE MUST PROTECT THIS HOUSE!

But seriously, Under Armour was started in 1996 by former University of Maryland football player Kevin Plank.  Kevin wanted to design athletic apparel that would improve an athlete’s performance by wicking away the sweat from the body keeping the athlete cooler in hot weather.  From that simple plan grew an assortment of product lines such as HeatGear(R), ColdGear(R) and AllSeasonGear(R).  Over the last 5 years UA has grown its sales revenue from $50M to $600M as the Under Armour label has grown in popularity among athletes, especially youth consumers.  Under Armour is the football uniform of choice for Auburn, Maryland, Hawai’i, South Carolina and Texas Tech, and hopefully that list will grow and tap into other large fan bases.  Under Armour has now set its sights on Nike’s athletic shoe dominance.  Although, UA has had a line of cleats available, they recently made their debut in cross training footwear on May 3rd, which you might have heard about from their 1st Super Bowl ad in January, and has already become a dominant player in that area.  From here they will look to make a splash in a much larger segment, running shoes.

SBUX

We purchased Starbucks back in August of 2007 at $24.42 per share. At the time SBUX had dropped 30% of its price over the previous 18 months. After a long run up during the early to middle 2000s we saw this drop as a correction. We thought that a 30% was a little excessive and that once SBUX hits a bottom a more stable stock will emerge that will continue its growth at a more realistic and steady pace. Unfortunately SBUX did not hit its bottom in August 2007. In fact, SBUX continued to drop another 30%+ to as low as $16. SBUX has since rested around $18 not knowing which way to go next. This has been one of Ben Hur’s worst performing stocks but it has provided us with good experience. We still believe in Starbucks in the long run and will continue to hold it in our portfolio.

AllianceBernstein LP. provides investment research and services globally as well as managing their own family of mutual funds.  In addition, AB is one of the largest global asset management firms in the world with approximately $800M in assets under management.  With over 4.1 million clients worldwide, AB has offices in over 47 cities in 25 countries.  Although primarily based in the U.S. - Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, Tampa, Washington D.C., West Palm Beach and White Plains - AB also maintains foreign offices in London, Tokyo, Singapore, Shanghai, Mumbai, Cape Town, Sao Paulo, Hong Kong, Madrid and Montreal, making it available to service the needs of investors in virtually any developed areas of the world. AB currently yields a 5-6% dividend which is paid quarterly.  Unfortunately, we purchased this stock before the recent financial crisis began, however, the club hopes that once the credit fears and financial bubbles pass, AB will be a big winner as more investors get back into the market.

Apple, Inc. designs, manufactures, and markets personal computers, portable digital music players, and mobile communication devices and sells a variety of related software, services, peripherals, and networking solutions. Apple has a checkered past in Ben-Hur lore as it has been suggested, and rejected, as a buy several times. However, a dip in the market afforded an opportunity to secure the stock at a value. Apple has harnessed an increasing amount of market share over the past several years on account of its top of the line selection of MacBook laptops, iPod digital music players, and the iPhone. Additionally, their stable operating system allows compatibility with Microsoft Windows and Office applications like never before – undoubtedly another reason for the increase in market share. The club sees a lot of promise in this growth stock. Apple looks to continue to be a force in the market for some time as they offer improvement with each generation of their products.

Total System Services is a payment processing company Ben Hur chose as an international growth investment. Their business model is to process payments, a task which they do very well as they were the first in this market and a handful of their clients in the past have unsuccessfully tried processing in house just to re outsource to Total System Services. Internationally they own over 40% of a similar company in China which controls its processing market their. In addition they are making progress in the UK by making London the international headquarters for expansion with new offices in India, Germany and the Netherlands. The plan is to be a part of their international growth which should result in a diverse base for healthier earnings.

NETC is the leading Brazilian cable & broad band provider. Currently Brazil’s population % of people using cable and the internet is much smaller then in other developed markets like the US, Japan and Europe. Ultimately Ben Hur feels the standard of living increase especially in the Brazil’s middle class will tend towards narrowing the gap. As time goes on we expect the % of Brazil’s citizens using cable and or broadband to potentially double in the next five years. This growth play is long term and should be revisited once a year to track the progress Brazil’s population is making with these markets. We are looking for population of about 60% users.