Spekulatius

I like Quickfs.net. I heard about it on focusedcompoundings podcast (Jeff Gannon, Andrew Kuhn) It works extremely well for getting Snapshot at the 10 year financials. I peruse the free version. https://quickfs.net/company/BRK.B:US

I am surprised that WEB isn’t more interested in pipelines, since the FERC regulation is often more favorable than utility regulation. He did indeed buy some pipeline assets in 2001 or so post the IPP crash from Williams and I believe one from Dynegy (which bought it from Enron shortly before and then they got into trouble themselves). I believe he laid around 8x EBITDA for utility like assets, which was cheap. Now we have pretty decent pipeline companies valued at 10x EBITDA (maybe a bit less even) when interest rates are much much lower. Might be a time for them to at least start looking.

Down to $160k in cash, excluding committed funds to Alluvial. They need some spare change to keep the lights on soon. This Mt Melrose saga means expensive lawyer bills.

I don’t understand how they can generate 70% gross margins and then only generate subpar returns. The 70% gross margin is about twice what I would expect in such a business. Weird.

FOXA is a bit more liquid, not that it should matter for any of us, since FOX is plenty liquid. The two used to trade at almost the same price, but recently FOXA has diverged and started to trade at a premium for really no good reason.

I guess the music stopped at some point.

My son plays piano. He actually plays on a Roland F-120 digital piano. It worked well for us since we moved 2 times (first time from the west coast to the East coast). I chose it, because it was had the most piano like action I could find on a digital piano for the low cost. He also plays Sax (Alto sax) for a coupe of years and plays at the schools Jazz band. He got the hang of it quite good (played at an open Mike night at school) and recently hit us up for a better Sax. He has a Yamaha Yas23 , which we bought used when hr started and now seems ready for a better instrument

I very much hope so!

I believe the story was that both companies merging together had the same geographical footprint, so a ton of duplicate locations and costs could be taken out. I remember $8/ share in FCF as an expected run rate after the restructuring. I am guessing the underlying assumption was that the combined entity wouldn’t lose much sales, but that clearly not the case.

I guess Mt Melrose is the microcap incarnation of WeWork.

What makes you believe that BXC is undervalued? It appears that this merger combination didn’t work and they are losing a ton of business. Thee is also $500M in debt plus $150M in leading liabilities ,negative shareholder equity. This could easily be a zero within a short timeframe.

It’s really a lot to ask for in terms of bookkeeping if a house is there or not. I guess the buyers DD in this case has been minimal and/ or they don’t like the deal any more.

How can someone buy a bunch of houses and then not even check that the houses are there, or check for liens on the purchased properties. Sound like they certified themselves as “totally clueless”.

Uber lockup is expiring today. Have fun!

Yes, I agree the main risk comes from the quite high debt load in their investment vehicles. I haven’t looked at them recently, but BPY for example clearly shows some strain resulting from higher cap rates in retail/mall properties from the GGP acquisition. Anyone noted the $1092M revaluation loss in their retail retail properties in the 6/30 quarter. It is a noticeable difference from prior quarters and years, where they always showed revaluation gains. One only needs to look at the charts from peers like MAC or TCO to figure out what is going on. Interesting how none of this is mentioned in their investor presentation. I think the GGP takeover will turn out to be a big dud. BAM is basically a bet on two things: 1) multiple expansion in hard assets resulting from lower interest rates 2) BAM’s operational Expertise

Russia is 30% for non residents and 13% for residents, so it depends on how long your stay. https://www.expatica.com/ru/finance/taxes/a-complete-guide-to-taxes-in-russia-104125/ If you are US citizen it doesn’t matter since you need to pay US taxes on foreign income anyways, which is unique in the world. The German tax authorities don’t give a hoot about income earned in foreign countries if you live there regardless of your citizenship status.

These guys are slimy. Every fight with the regulator tends to be a lost one. Good riddance.

I am pretty sure that fraud is pretty low on the totem pole of priories for startups in the land grabbing phase like Airbnb. I am sure they can solve it, but this is probably reserved for later. For credit cards, I found Chase and Amex to be very good at fraud detection. In two cases, my wife’s Chase card was apparently skimmed and used for a small test charge (~$1), which they immediately detected as a fraud, despite the fact that it was done in relative proximity to our home location. Same with Amex in one incidence.

This move of yours makes great sense to me personally, Cardboard, It seems like Mr. Market has moved into a state of mania, since the beginning of October. We'll likely just get less returns on our long positions going forward. I have right now a feeling of Deja Vu comparable to what happened mid April 2015. It was basically all downhill from there until the early part of February 2016, October 2015 being quite brutal at some point. - - - o 0 o - - - Unfortunately, I personally can't do something like that, for legal and tax reasons. It’s a slow melt up and could go on for a while. I bought a few puts a while ago, which will expire worthless. I think early next year may be a good time to hedge the portfolio again. FWIW, I bought a bit of CTVA finally, as I finally got my price.

Any UK Lawyer that wants to relocate to Russia to save taxes probably deserves to be in jail. Seriously Russia? You would think they go to Luxembourg first. Why is that? Its not just the big law firms, its the consulting and larger accounting(especially Big 4) as well. First, Luxembourg isn't a huge hub for most of these firms; they may have an office there, but typically(unless its a Mossac Fonseca type firm) they only have a few employees and one moderate sized office there. Whereas any firm of size who has a London office also probably have at least one, usually more though, locations in Russia, Hong Kong, Dubai, etc. So whereas the entire firm may have a presence of one office and 6 employees in Luxembourg, they've got 4 offices with two dozen people in each in places like Russia. So if you're a junior partner or senior associate, going from $200 GBP a year plus bonus, to equity partner making $200K a month with a $1M+ quarterly partnership distribution... you're really going to stick around in London paying 55-60%, or request to go to an underserved location(where the firm is trying to build out their book of business), get paid to relocate, and pay 11% taxes? St. Pete for instance, if you like London, is pretty awesome. Russia is a little like the Wild West, but its crazy how badly people misrepresent it. I missunderstood your post. I thought it was about a wealthy lawyer considering to relocate to Russia, which makes no sense. In case you got a job assignment, it’s like everything else with a $1M + in income, you can live pretty well in Russia, but you won’t do too shabby in London either. FWIW, the top marginal tax rate in the UK is 45% not 55-60% as you stated, vs Russia 30%.

Any UK Lawyer that wants to relocate to Russia to save taxes probably deserves to be in jail. Seriously Russia? You would think they go to Luxembourg first.

Cheap is relative. In the last, you could buy similar companies often for 9x EBITDA. DD has some real great business ( chip manufacturing consumables ). I bought some after the earning release, which was better then expected without thr stock reacting and sold today. Playing for small moves here, but it starts to add up. One concern I have with Breen is that tends to scrimp on R&D somewhat. Same was the case with one Tyco spin-off I was involved with (Covidien).

The stock would be up more if he would sing “I kick my sphere in the rear” or something similar during the next earnings report.

Olin seems cheap. One concern I have is that PVC gets more and more replaced with other Polymers - that are more environmentally friendly and safer (PVC releases Chlorine when burning). PVC is often used in construction, because it is weather resistant and doesn’t burn easily, and relatively cheap, but when it burns the release of toxic chlorine in a fire is a major issue. I don’t think above negates the thesis, it I think one should consider this business a slowly melting ice cube.