Spekulatius

Stelco seems pretty cheap and well run. I was surprised to see EBITDA margin above 20%, which is higher than Nucor’s. Also revenue is comparable to Nucor’s, which seems to indicate a very well run company. The balance sheet looks very clean and it seems like post bankruptcy, the assets seem to be on the book far below replacement value, which keeps depreciation low (but this won’t matter when looking at EBITDA). I don’t own this, and there is stigma of operating in the steel industry, but I agree this looks quite interesting. Anybody owns this and has done a deep dive in this? Edit - meant revenue per employee....

Interesting. Do they roast their beans differently for the Japanese market? In the US they roast at too high a temperature which burns the beans something awful and it tastes burnt. Sure most people in the US get drinks containing tons of milk, sugar, flavors, syrups, and whipped cream, so they don't notice, but if you order a double shot of espresso or just a black drip coffee you notice how bad it is. Starbucks has now a blonde espresso that you can add to all espresso drinks per request. It’s not a French roast with the somewhat burned taste that they popularized in the US. The bigger issue I have had recently more so is that the espresso drinks ( I mostly drink. Cappuccinos) are too inconsistent. Often , the cappuccinos are like weak Latte’s ( too much milk). I have returned them in this case sometimes, but then I mostly get the same thing as a replacement.

So LIC develops a site, then sells houses on this site that sit on a 90year lease and then generate a growing income stream from lease payments. What could go wrong? For one thing, it’s still a real estate developer - if they can sell the houses on their plots (because housing prices came down while they were developing it) then they sit on idle land and won’t generate lease income either. Their leverage is fairly low though and the business model seems like a good one. Thanks for posting.

I have been to China a couple of times and I have been to a Chinese Starbucks. This doesn’t make me an expert, but I do know how my Chinese colleagues felt about western brands. They loved Nike E, Levi’s, Adidas more so than there own brands, even though a lot of these goods were produced in China. The few Starbucks shops I have been too were pretty crowded and it was obvious that Chinese went there to show off. This was a couple of years ago and things may have changed, but Chinese coffee culture is in its early innings.

Lorenzo does a lot of smack talk that’s for sure. Rubs me the wrong way, I have heard this before - it reminds me a bit of the former CEO of TWI. Lorenzo has performed better, I admit as much. CLF is a high cost producer though and their cost forecast conforms this. 70$/ton of ore is high cost. CLF will benefit from shortage caused by the Vale disaster, but this is a commodity industry and they will adjust. Nucor for example can use a lot of scrap input. Steel tariffs may not be permanent either and if customer get squeezed, so will get CLF. This could go either way, imo. If I were to make a bet in this sector, I would bet on Nucor.

I question Samsung’s engineering guidelines ever since a I had a LED TV that failed after 2 years. Turned out they had a 12V rated electrolyte capacitor in a circuit board running on 15V. Luckily there were lots of people that had the same issue and made YouTube videos on how to fix it. I replaced the capacitor with a higher rated one from RadioShack (that how old this thing is) and it still runs.

Becoming a millionaire is such a great experience that some like to have it several times.

They need to get a grip and read “The world according to GAAP”.

Chinese go to Starbucks for the cache and the environment. Westerners go there to feel a bit like home. I don’t think imitators like Luckin can quite compete on above. There is always going to be competition in China and imitators, but authentic western brands do very well in China and i expect Starbucks continue to do so too.

The stock is not worth bothering with, imo. Their malls have average sales of ~$400/sqft, which is barely viable. NOI growth is negative and getting worse ~-2% this year. So you need to buy this at double digit cap rates. Why bother when you can buy A malls with a cap rate of close to 8% (MAC, TCO) which are still growing NOI by roughly 2% in this challenging environment. I don’t think that WPG earns its dividend when you look at AFFO vs FFO/share.

I don’t think the coal industry in Australia is terminal, metallurgical coal is pretty much alive. I think one thing I don’t like about dividend payers in Australia is the high withholding tax of 30%. At least when held in an IRA, there is no way of getting it back.

I believe these “BRK buys X” rumors are planted by day traders trying to make a quick buck. Buyers beware!

Technically, I found it interesting that they are bashing LIDAR, even referring to this as an appendix. I thought Waymo uses LIDAR (which is very good at giving a 3D view of the surroundings independent of viewing conditions), but I could be wrong. Tesla want a to do all this with a machine vision and a fairly crude radar. Go figure. Basically Tesla tries to do, what Waymo does with vastly inferior hardware.

Sounds like Waymo is going to be a capital intensive vertically integrated business? From auto parts to actual car manufacturing to über like ride sharing? The hardware at this point is proprietary, so they need to do it themselves to start with. I am pretty sure, they will buy a shell from a car company (body, drivetrain, interior), then stuff their electronic system in it, wire harness, sensors and then test it. I am fairly certain, they won’t build a complete car. Once volume is there and components are more standardized so they can outsourced efficiently, they will probably outsource most of it, except maybe a few proprietary components.

Sold off half my LBRDA. It seems to have outperformed CHTR ( which I own as well).

Bought a bit of PFIE the last few days. I am hoping that higher crude prices lighten up the flame for this stock . They produce burner controls for E&P’s primarily.

Unless I am mistaken, STNE and PAGS process about the same payment volume (~25B real), yet STNE’s revenue is less than half PAGS (~530M vs 1267M for PAGS), somit seems to me that STNE is the low price/low cost provider here by a significant margin. Presumably, PAGS is cheaper than the incumbents. The low transaction cost is one reason why STNE has a much higher proportion of interest income. Given that, it looks like the incumbents will have a hard time fighting back.

I think it is important to note that Brazil banks are not doing too well, ITUB currently sits at a 52week low. Apparent reason seems to be NIM compression , because Brazil’s interest rates have fallen from 14% to ~7%. I guess that is hurting the payment processors as well, since they make their living partly from the float. FWIW, the large incumbent Cielo trades at a PE of 6.5x, which clearly indicates a very dim near term outlook.

How do you account for Cielo as well as the banks that are also into payment processing. It looks like those won’t just roll over and take rate is you g down to the benefit of the customer. Both ITUB, Cielo as well as the other banks are well financed, so they can afford to compete on price to stem market share losses.

Yes, there is definitely the issue with value traps, but there are also a lot of indications of irrationality stocks, like blockchain stocks, weed stocks, perhaps money losing IPO‘s and in particular the stupendous selling in December that let’s me believe that many market participants are chasing quick bucks and aren’t really “rational” ( at least not the way I define rational ). It’s a bit of a “muppet show” out there.

The biggest problem with bank loans is that the conditions/ covenants are in most cases not disclosed. With publicity traded debt they are in the prospectus.

Fidelity and Interaktive Brokers pay you money market rates (~2% currently) for your liquid funds (above a certain threshold), which is one of the reasons I like those two brokerages.

Seems weird to sue the former auditor. Also, cash and securities are down to ~560k. Now a new auditors needs to come in and redo the audit, with $1.4M spent so far on auditing alone? Sounds like a mess. Might be better to delist. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/91668/000165495419001660/sodi_8k.htm

I have Henkel on my watch list and agree it’s a quality company. I have owned this in the past in early 2008 and bought it a bit cheaper than it is currently due to being depressed after acquisition and it has done well for me. Their end markets (industrial adhesives, consumer goods like Unilever) are somewhat cyclical, so it’s not unusual for them to have one or two down years. Their profit losses tend to be moderate in a recession and they tend to recover quickly. It’s a good stock for the long term, due to very limited downside, imo.

Oddball - good perspective. We are talking about late stage funding here vs early stage funding. Both are different areas, The complaint here is not about viability of the business, but rather the valuations being assigned to these late stage ventures. I believe the evidence points to valuations being high, but I also believe that the quality of the companies IPO’ing now is better than the cohort in 1999/2000.