portfolio14

The VIC writeup is older than 45 days, so it's publicly available. You just need to register with the website to access it. Thanks!

I said this before. When the 50%+ controlling shareholder is willing share his fortune via 9% dividend, he is not there to screw his long-term shareholders. He has every authority and incentive to stop dividends and cash out himself via salaries. But he doesn't. Last time when he tried to reverse-split and cancelled it, you can tell he hated opportunists though. Do you know ADVC's history, how the guy transformed the company from a Delphi-based desktop app developer to a cloud-based service?

Hi KJP, I don't have access to VIC. Any chance you can send me (john@portfolio14.com) a copy? Thanks -- John

I sold 1/3 of my AAPL when it hit 160-ish and put the money into BRK. :D

Very nice. Youtube linked me to this old video: which, in my mind, captures both the spirit of Apple and the spirit of value investing.

A couple of thoughts: - My guess is Apple deliberately staggered the iPhone X pre-order date so that they can judge iPhone X demand by iPhone 8/8+ demand and have a head start in planning their supply chain. - SE is the Celeron of iPhone which isn't cheapened like 5C. My guess is Apple will maintain the SE line with updated CPU/RAM but nothing else in order to keep it alive but with enough differentiation.

I don't know how you guys think of it. But I'm completely out of it at $10. Apply a bit of Mungerism. If you invert it, ask yourself: assume you own no NTP and someone tells you Kaisa has just taken control over this net-net public listed property developer called NTP, will you buy it? You will look at Kaisa's history, not NTP's history. You will see all sorts of red flags. Huge risk of them "stealing" the 200m cash to cover their other businesses. To me, Koo at the helm was a margin of safety, part of the thesis. So, the painful truth is that thesis is broken. It doesn't mean it won't go up or become a multi-bagger. But that will be based on a completely different thesis, something a lot of speculative.

http://www.scmp.com/business/article/2093574/hong-kongs-electronics-king-koo-spend-us116b-two-duel-purpose-property?utm_source=t.co&utm_medium=referral

Thanks. The risk with ADVC is, IIRC, Kroger is their primary customer of which the industry is under threat from Amazon. ADVC doesn’t make money from Kroger. They make money from Kroger's vendors. My understanding is ADVC initially gained traction by getting Kroger and a few other grocery retailers to endorse their network, which effectively forced smaller vendors unable to develop EDI in-house to go with ADVC. This is a classic two-sided market scheme: get one side of the market to endorse your product by charging them little or nothing and charge the other side for access (think payment networks and ratings agencies). I have concerns about ADVC’s business, but Amazon steamrolling grocery stores isn’t one of them. What will happen to ADVC's business if one side of this market (i.e. Kroger) disappears? Say, if Kroger decides to close shop tomorrow.

Thanks. The risk with ADVC is, IIRC, Kroger is their primary customer of which the industry is under threat from Amazon.

Where did you hear it? I haven't heard anything from my broker yet.

I generally agree with you. In particular, I agree that a go-private is likely coming and that minority shareholders won't get full value. It depends how small your holding is. ADVC was listed via a backdoor listing at the time when ADVC needed the liquidity for its early investors who put in the capital to transform the business from a desktop software provider to a cloud-based SaaS provider. The CEO looks after these initial investors who helped him going through that difficult time. It shows in his earlier communications and in the generous dividends. If you think about it, given his majority shareholding, he has no reason to share the profits via dividends if he wants to screw all the minority shareholders and maximise his gains. He could've paid himself gigantic salaries.

Is anyone still holding ADVC? Just received a juicy 8.54% dividend in my account today. I don't recall there was any announcement. But Google Finance shows the dividend was declared on Feb 16. There was no communication of any form from the company... Or did I miss it? :-\

Aren't you double counting the divdends in both the $430b cash pile and the 6.2% discount rate?

Executive summary in geek terms, Liberty? :)