Spekulatius

Done. On the other side, forced sales sounds interesting too. There could be real bargains to be had, if funds owning these buggers can’t hold them any more, because the value is unknown. A private investor would need to be willing to hold them for a decade. < Corrected for grammar >

Interesting and thanks for pointing this out. I didn’t know that shares in London trade indifferent currencies. Yes, I would absolutely buy in London. A 20% premium is absurd.

London stock prices XX.L are in GBP. The brits never took on the Euro. One GBP=1.22 USD currently although Boris is working on bringing it to par. ?

The owners are pretty crusty and made waves because there are no women on board and probably none in their mangement either. Colorful history, they changed from an plantation into a real estate investment vehicle with a decent track record. I own a few shares. Probably good podcast material with a bit of digging.

The sector will become a great field for distressed debt and bankruptcy investing. We had a already a mini credit market freeze for E&P and related industries in late 2015 and ai think we are going a more severe version of this coming back.

There is no 20% premium, maybe you forgot about the GBp/USD exchange rate , which is currently 1.22. RYA.L trades at 10.74x5x1.22=$65.5. There is a small premium, but it’s less than 1%.

I don’t think Thai people haggle about the price of street food. The reason you could feed 3 locals for the price of one farang alone is that they raised the prices for you.

I get a sinking feeling when I read about value in the shipping sector.

I think over time, Stelco is a zero, it’s just a matter of time. Blast steel mills in NA don’t work economically any more, as the mini mills over time eat their lunch, breakfast and dinner.

Pretty timely interview with Mike Mayo regarding banks and technology: https://finance.yahoo.com/video/wells-fargos-mike-mayo-banking-152840836.html Sounds like he is reasonably optimistic on banks.

Can you comment at all on RYCEY? Even with the pullback it doesn't seem that terribly cheap to me but I admit I don't understand the financials. I look at RYCEY‘s valuation in terms of EV/ sales. It trades at around 1xEV/ sales, but once profitability is addressed, it should be able to get to 2x eventually. Now add done revenue growth to it, one can easily see more than a 2 bagger. Bases on Current results, you are correct , Rolls Royce isn’t cheap at all. I am optimistic though, because there is just such a strong moat around this business and there is really only one competitor ( and Pratt& Whittey to some extend). Likewise logic can be applied to GE, except I have more concerns about their accounting.

There is some an interesting implication for politics here, as there is a tendency for super rich to get involved more so in the US than anywhere else. Not all of them are A$$holes, but some of them are. We probably should caution the motives to “serve the country” a bit in general. It may just be another way to assert status and power in some cases.

Who knows is not a good answer, if you own the stock. SAVE has underperformed most airline stocks, except JBLU (which has margin issues) during the last few years. The balance sheet has definitely taken a turn for the worse, due to negative FCF. the industry overall seems to be over-earning a bit due to capacity constraints from the 737Max grounding. This benefits SAVE, because their fly Airbus exclusively. I haven’t heard much about the latest trade war escalation where Airbus is now charged 10% tariffs, which are going to be paid by the customer. This hits SAVE hard, because they are expanding the fleet (high Capex) and exclusively fly Airbus 320 family planes. What if Trump goes crazy and escalates to a higher tariff? Then SAVE‘s operating model is in question, as they may have to switch to Boeing planes, which invalidates their operating model and increased their plane operating costs. Or they cancel deliveries (can they?) and actually start to generate cash, which Mr Market may like?

I think these “perfect trades” are a well known staple in trading. It’s called picking up pennies in front of a steamroller.

It’s better to be a rich A-hole than a poor A-hole.

I'm successfully battling the onset of dementia by applying my brain to figure out what Spekulatius' speech-to-text errors really meant. Suggested mental exercise for everyone. AA+++ 8) The AI in Apples text recognition and grammar correction always seem to know what I really care about.

You said "credit cards" twice now. Please tell what non-big-bank CCs have any penetration. That Goldman Sachs Apple card does not count really. 8) Discover, Amex are non- bank offerings. To be fair, this one went more towards the banks, because CC vendors benefit from cheap and stable funding. Whether this remains this way, is another question.

Do you just look at item 6 on a 10-K and come up with these conclusions? Spirit had a large settlement with their pilots in 2018 which led to a large one-time charge. Plus fuel costs were unsustainably low a few years ago. Basically yes. A few other thing - the operating profit margin went down before 2018. Also, analogies with Europe are a bit misplaced - low cost carriers in Europe tend to take away business from other modes of transportation, while in the US they try to cut another airlines throat for the most part. I own a bit of Ryanair and think it’s a better Business than Spirit. Recent pressures on shares may be due to tariffs on Airbus, which will hit SAVE disproportionally hard. What do you think is the reason for Spirits lagging stock performance? I think there is more to it than Mr Market doesn’t like cyclicals.

ODET’s holding costs are fairly minimal - only a bit more than €1M. In addition, ODET has a bit of debt, I think it is €275M, but I am not quite sure. These are fairly small numbers compared to ODET‘s roughly €5B market cap. Since ODET does nothing else than holding a ~64% stake in BOL.PA and is the control vehicle for the family, I am guessing it is the best way to align with the owner operator.

John, I believe you are correct about Bollore being cheap and ÖDET having a double discount. I read the 200 pages annual report and it is a masterpiece in obfuscation. I don’t have a doubt that everything is correct as stated, but the way the business is structured in cross holding and nested dolls, the consolidated balance sheet and income statement is almost meaningless. What we do know is that the logistic business is doing well and the UMG music business within Vivendi is going gang busters and so it seems a lot of value is stored there with shares where they are. It was the music business (which I looked at thought SPOT’s lens) that brought me to this, then I put in a GTC order for some ODET shares, which executed without me noticing right away.

What’s you plan with the registration document? Interesting stock, I bought a few shares recently.

It’s not a fad, imo. Consensus seems to be that their product works in straightforward cases and not so much for other cases. That’s what most BBB complaints appear to indicate. marketing looks cheesy to me and they also offer rebate coupons to pretty much everyone, which seems strange, since their product is low cost already. Then there is then issue that most customer by on an installment plan, at implied interest rates that are equivalent to subprime (15-20%) . So in some way, SDC is actually a subprime lender. However, regular dentist do the same thing to some extend. Regular braces (not clear ones) cost about 4-5k for my kid, so the price gap is real. I looked at this as a long, due to being potentially disruptive, but there are just too many red flags in how the company is run.

I am no expert in this field, but based on my general knowledge of material science and the Chinese abilities to reverse engineer, I don’t think it will be too hard for Chinese companies to create their own UHP needle coke supply. The general process is known, equipment to do this can be purchased, so it’s matter to learn some tricks of the trade that are proprietary. It will happen, it’s just a matter of time.

Competitors will go after the higher ROI business first and then try to make run them better. Think, Credit cards, loan generation, mortgages, payment, wealth management. Lending itself is harder to dis-intermediate, but Even if that were all that is left, banks would be much worse business than they are now. In the longer run, crypto solutions could put a dent into this business too and basically make the banks redundant as loans would go peer to peer. We are a long way off, but this doesn’t mean it won’t happen. The problem is that banks are stodgy and not tech savvy in general and that will probably be the most important factor going forward, not balance sheet strength or branch networks. JPM probably looks best here, Wells Fargo the worst from then it banks.