Spekulatius

I think I would rather deal with the Russian than the Saudi corruption. Valuation are much ore forthcoming too and in Russia, We know what to expect. From what I read, the rich cronies in the SA upper crust are more or less forced to invest, which probably tells you all one needs to know about this. Perhaps this stock is interesting at some point in the future after a steep selloff. For now, it probably should go into the “too hard” or “yuck” file.

In case anyone is interested: https://www.proxydocs.com/0/001/420/589/hanover_foods_corp_1st_qr_11182019.pdf

The article states that growth has outperformed for at least 25 years. So in a way, one could say that the timeframe from 2002 to 2007 was the aberration, not the time since 2008. Maybe investors systematically underestimate the propensity of growth to persist and business disruption and overestimate the ability of business to reverse to the former mean?

I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it.

Sold part of my SDI today. Stock popped due to proposed merger with the 50.1% sub TPB. I wish I could have accumulated more SDI, but I take what I get.

The podcast with Prem is way too much of a love fest for my taste. I haven’t listened to podcast with Smith from FDX yet but he feels a little bit delusional to me regarding AMZN in his CC.

The position at that point was limited to 80% only because otherwise, FRE and FNM would have to be consolidated on the governments balance sheet, which would ave cracked the debt ceiling (at least that’s what I recall). Anyways, I have spent more than 2 h on this and still don’t know what to make of it. I think it’s basically a political bet and if the political wind blows in a different direction going forward before it is privatized, I think the status remains as is, which pretty much would be the best for any stakeholder (government, homeowner) but the current shareholders. That’s why this is an “oddball” and not a regular value investment, imo.

RDS operates down there, but I think the exposure is fairly small. In any case, the non energy exposure in an ETF makes it more interesting and the Nigeria ETF seems mostly banks and consumer goods,, which seems way more attractive to me. The US market has been outperforming pretty much any other market. (Except Russia) for the last 10 years, but that is unlikely to continue. It’s a great time to diversify out of the US in my opinion. I don’t know. You are more diversified through an ETF and if you pick any oil company with meaningful exposure to Nigeria any negative shock to the economy should effect them too. I think the long term trend will be Africa becoming a middle class country. Hard to see how oil will get you exposure really to that long with also the same downside exposure of instability.

It works just like with other domestic ETF’s. Sometimes, the dividend taxation’s is a bit different. They do have a breakdown for 2018 here: https://www.globalxetfs.com/content/files/2018-Year-End-Tax-Supplement-Global-X-ETFs.pdf

Most of the contributors have their own micro website/ communities, which cost extra. SA gets a cut from them. I am not saying that it doesn’t make sense to pay $20/ month, but I don’t think it’s a great value given that the quality of the freeware commentators is far below what you can find on other message board, including here.

I know little about this country, except that it holds large oil reserves and is subject to corruption. The NGE ETF appears to be one of the worst performers of all times as it fell from ~ $60 in 2014 to ~$12.5. The above ETF apparently yields ~13.5% dividend yield. Hard to believe there is no opportunity there. I don’t own any, but have started to look into this. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/06/20-years-democracy-nigeria-changed-190611124203153.html

I think it is abundantly clear that in addition to Malone being a very good businessman, he was in the right business, at the right taint in the right place. The place being the US, which is where very cable probably has the best economics in the whole world. Malone could never reproduce the results he had in the US anywhere else because the cable economy is aren’t as good anywhere else. That’s why the LBTYK and LILA vehicles are such failures at least relatively to his US cable ventures.

I guess the question is if this is really cheaper or higher quality than for example a pure play like LBTYK or MEGACPO.MX. I think especially the latter is more appealing with a pristine balance sheet no wireless exposure and trading at 6x EBITDA. TIGO look cheap based on EBITDA, but it seems that maintenance Capex is very high and consumes most of the cash flow. It’s hard to tell for sure, with so many moving pieces though.

FNMAS is hard to handicap, as it is basically a political bet. It could be anything from a zero to a 3 bagger. It appeals to a certain type of investors but not others.

^ I would think the WC movements are very likely inconsequential and related to either investments and divestment balances at the time of the filings. It doesn’t hurt to ask IR though.

According to the Q3 report (Page 17) The EBITDA from Television is $251M/$1356M or ~18.5%. It seems a somewhat low number, but it’s much higher than 8%.

Can't say I understand the RH purchase. CEO touting a new business model with magical 50+% ROIC for a furniture retailer, while borrowing heavily to repurchase shares and battling short sellers. I guess that RH is a Weschler or Combs purchase, based on the size. One thing to consider is that the Berkshire folks should know a thing or two about furniture retail, since BRK owns a few furniture retailer (Nebraska furniture Mart, Jordan etc). So I am guessing Weschler/Combs and Buffet know the lay of the land in furniture retailing fairly well.

WFCF (food / meat certification business), which finally showed some decent earnings and better operating metrics. I was following the stock for quite some time and liked the business, but wasn’t comfortable with valuation and execution until after the recent earnings report, which showed some promise. DD (bought back some shares again).

Home flippers make money because they cherry pick deals and they are doing value add to the houses. I think it’s much harder to do in corporate setting (Mt Melrose anyone?). The successful flippers I have seen also exit the market when it becomes risky. Turns in the market can be hard to predict and when they happen, they occur suddenly. from what I have seen in CA during there downturns is that single home markets can turn illiquid virtually overnight. I am not sure analytics will help with thwt - they might, but if they are really become the large players they want to be they sort of have to dance as long as the music is playing. I just see small upside, large downside in this business, the opposite of what one would want. I guess we will see.

Also there are some lawsuits between the DuPont spinoffs, this affects primarily CC, then CTVA and DD. (If CC were unable to pay or unexpectedly win a lawsuit to keep DD and CTVA on the hook) At least, I know now why CTVA and DD are down ~3.5% today. FWIW, I did buy back some DC shares I sold for $71 and change just a few days ago. The trading in these tin ties with virtually no relevant news makes little sense to me for quite some time, but it does seem easy to take advantage of this. Has DD and CTVA suddenly become a trading sardines for Robinhood Account holders? It almost seems that way.

My impression after the reading the CC transcript is that this is a business that’s growing ~20% annually, while the expenses are likely to grow ~40% near term (due to the 40% increase in sales force). That’s not a winning recipe for a good stock performance in the near term and it is the likely why the stock has sold off. Moving senior salespeople to management means that these sales people won’t contribute to the bottom line near term, possibly aggravate the problem above. Obviously, the company feels they need to do this, maybe to retain talent or to develop the organization or a combination there off, however it sound to me that the concerns they some analysts have been expressing are well founded. Based on above, I feel that the stock has a substantial risk of showing worse metrics in the next 6 month and possibly longer and while the stock price may reflect that, I think there a high chance that we see substantial downside. Obviously, if you believe they the current plan makes sense then this is a great opportunity to get into a very reasonable valued SAAS business. I am skeptical and see a lot of SAAS companies putting their foot on the gas pedal in terms of expenses and if revenues don’t follow the expenses in short order, we will see a lot of flameouts in this sector.

Fully agree. If data is the differentiator, the figure out how to monitize the data. This also avoids competing with their customers ( realtors) and stays true to a capital light business model.

Now Juris let the genie out of the bottle. FWIW, there are 3 writeups of Becle in VIC. I think the one written on 4/12/2018 is probably the best one: https://www.valueinvestorsclub.com/idea/Becle_S.A.B._de_C.V._/7840919531 The stock isn’t cheap, but the family who owns most of the shares are good operators/ brand builders.The acquisition of non Tequila assets was Bushmills (Irish whiskey) which has done well since acquired and is a strong category. It’s not cheap by any means, but I believe it has good growth prospects for a long time and lower valued than peers.

After reading up on this a bit and going through the CC, my own impression is the near term results very likely will look quite negative with costs outrunning the revenue gains. For example, they want to increase their sales force from 65 to 90 people in a short period of time (Q4), which is a ~40% increase roughly. I don’t think their revenue growth will ramp like that, especially since they move some of their best sales people on to management positions, which raises some flags on its own. They talk about strong unit economics, but with most companies equate means contribution margin = profit in their metrics (apparently ) , even though it really misses out on a lot of costs. Anyways, I see some attractiveness in their business model, but I would tend to wait how the big sales push works out, my guess is that it won’t look great for the next 6 month at least, but I could well be wrong. Last not least, If we get a downturn, I expect their business to get hit very hard, - third party contracting is one of the first things to get scaled back.