Spekulatius

Agreed. Their products look very stale to me. Right now, if you are in the defense business and it isn’t humming, you are doing something wrong. My guess is that their products were in some long tale projects.platforms that are running out and never were replaced.

My guess is indexers. Momentum traders, algos , superficial intelligence . Selling begets selling.

GLRE almost broke $10/ share today, back to the lows during the 2008 recession. Another month of losses - down 28% this year. Good times on the synching ship, Cpt Einhorn: https://youtu.be/MjTuAV036yY https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/GLRE?p=GLRE&.tsrc=fin-srch

Well, no credit deserved. BAC hasn’t done worse than many other stocks. My experience is such that banks and for that matter most other financials never do well in a recession. The biggest issue for banks is not necessarily a receiving, it is a credit crunch, as evidendpt by higher credit spreads. typically recessions and rising spreads occur at the same time, as confidence wanes, which gives banks a double whammy. Banks don’t value their loans market to market on their balance sheet , but Mr Market impliciely does. I am watching with interest LYG, which is a very profitable British bank, trading at tangible book and 8x earnings and a 6% divdend yield, with no takers apparently. This is what happens when the outlook for the economy looks crappy.

No bank stock is going to work out if we go into recession.FWIW, GS trades st tangible book value today. That’s a bargain in my book. BAC goes for around ~1.6 x tangible book and they still have a substantial investment banking operation (30%+ of their profits).

Looks very positive to me. Left or right government, the move makes sense, and it seems that most companies in the industry agree with it. It really does not make sense to give away resources at a lost, resources that the CEO of CVE rightly stated in the end belong to the people of Alberta, not a private company. https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/alberta-prevented-very-big-knock-on-effect-with-cuts-cenovus-ceo-1.1177575

I haven’t. They always spent more than they generate. It’s the American way!

Besides the issue with the lawsuits, the core issue is that they vastly overpaid for Monsanto, IMO. I like BASFY, the German peer. Much more solid, cheap valuation and a nice dividend. BASFY purchased some AG assets that Bayer had to sale to satisfy regulators for a fair price. FWIW, BASFY is not a perfect peer, sine Bayer more into high value add products.

I would think that doing nothing would be the best option. If the business remains as profitable as it is, Mrs. Gf would just get nice income from her passive stake- nothing wrong that. She just has to make sure there is nothing fraudulent going on. An offer is just an offer, it doesn’t mean she has to take it. You dot need a lawyer to do nothing either.

Why would one quarter of data suggest a thesis is broken? Can you point to something more enduring (and concerning) suggesting the company's competitive position is actually eroding? It’s not one quarter, it’s a string of quarters. There is no evidence that the often cited “flywheel” is actually happening. A stable gross margins is bad news, because the gross margin should have increased with the changes in merchandise and increasing service revenue, but it doesn’t. The gap to Alibaba is widening, not getting smaller.

Hopefully not a snarky question, but at which point do consider the investors here the thesis is broken. The last quarterly results were nothing to write home about - slowing revenue growth and the growth (25% compared to 30%+) and the improvement in gross margins has stalled too. It looks like they are falling further and further behind Alibaba. I don’t follow this very closely, so I may have overlooked something.

One thing to consider is that most of their powertrain business is going away or at least change with automobile electrification. I know that Linanar puts a positive spin on this, claiming it will increase their addressable market, but it does increase risk, imo. Power train appears to be the vast majority of their business.

I believe this too, mostly because JUUL is the much better nicotine delivery system thet separetess the nicotine from the harmful ingredients of cigarette smoke. The FDA doesn’t like that this has increased the TAM, hence their will be regulation, but I think the product will be here to stay and crowd out the cigarette market. It will be interesting to see how much MO has to pay of the minority share. I don’t think they do this to kill JUUL either, because if they did, a competing product would just grow the untapped market.

I haven’t looked at DVA balance sheet in much detail, but the $250-300M in maintenance Capex seems too low relative to the $3.1B in PPE. The dialysis machines and fixtures in their dialysis centers won’t last 10 years for sure ($3.1/10=$310M depreciation). Why not go with their $580M in depreciation from their annual report. Unless it contains a whole lot of intangible amortization, they ought to be close to the correct number for maintenance capex.

I do agree, and that is why overall I am favorable to this move, but please, you can't tell me that this company is not now handcuffed, at least temporarily. Can you imagine the headlines if they raise the dividend or do a buyback? Or God forbid, bonuses for mgmt Disagree. Bonuses always win over bad PR. Nobody gives a damn if they buy back the full amount of their existing authorized buyback amount or raise it in 3 month. There will be an article in Bloomberg or another publication but that will be about it. If it’s not on TV, Trump won’t know or care about it either. Cardboard is correct that restructuring should be continuously occurring , but that’s nowhere it works. Often there are strategic reviews that are an expensive way to generate an opinion that corroborates with what manager knew all along and then things are axed rather than continuously trimmed to create big savings numbers and yet another reason for performance based bonus payments for the enlightened few at the top. Also,in the car industry, plant shutdowns are binary in nature and lead to larger layoffs for that reason.

^ Trump is just making Noise. There is nothing he can do about it and Barra knows this. Slow restructurings are ugly too and more expensive. Its now the time to do it when the economy is strong and jobs are plentiful.

Shouldn’t the reproduction value be based on the assets, not on their current earnings power? It looks like GT tangible assetsare about $4B while the market cap is $5.6B. Tangible assets are <> replacement value, as there are depreciated assets and with GT, the brand name certainly has some value. It also helps to look at competitors, Bridgestone and Sumitomo as well as the Koreans and Michelin trade at low multiples as well. Michelin IMO has the better brand name and should be worth a higher multiple. I also believe thet GT has a huge issue with pension obligation that need to be looked at.

The reverse wine snob looks pretty good, I have tried several wines he recommended and for example the Kenwood / Jack London Cabernet is outstanding. I like most of the Jack London wines from Kenwood vineyards and I can recommend to put yourself on their mailing list - thrynsent out good offers 2-3 times a year with low or no cost shipping and decent discounts. I could get the bottle of Cabernet that was listed for $20 as the lowest price in the US for less shipped to my house recently. When I lived in CA, the vineyard was just a few miles from my house, so I am partial to them.

Spekulatius, A bit off topic here, but anyway : I was actually a bit surprised when you posted about this buy of yours in the "What are you buying today?" topic - I have from your posts in general for a long time considered you a wholeheartedly investment bank skeptic / hater. [ : - ) ] [To me, naturally OK that you post something like this here, thereby elaborating your line of thinking about risks related to the UK banks and related investment alternatives.] There is a price for everything. I don’t like investment banking, but at least when I buy GS, I own the best investment banking operation there is, rather than chimps like JEF. Also, the banks like BAC and JPM have still significant investment banking operations, yet trade at rich multiples to tangible book, while GS trades close to tangible book. GS has build up wealth management and commercial banking and I think they are slowly moving into consumer banking too. Even if GS investment banking ops are only worth tangible book (even if they are best in class), the remainder is worth a far higher multiple, which means that GS as a whole is undervalued, except in the most dire economic conditions.

So it seems that the marketing has moved from TV/print celebrity endorsements to social media. This seems like a very nice talewind for FB. I have also noticed that the opinion now in social media and message boards really counts more and more. In some cases, there are products which seems to have a strong following that is much strong than one can expect just based on market shares. It’s often it’s higher end products (where user engagement tends to be higher) but not always.

The stress test from the ECB was already concluded a few weeks ago and want too flatering for the British banks as a whole: http://tools.eba.europa.eu/interactive-tools/2018/powerbi/ST18_visualisation_page.html I like the British bank from a profitability point of view, but I don’t like the economic setup (Brexit) and possible political changes (bank unfriendly Labour government replacing the current coalition). Then there is also the money laundry issue with the EU following the US to set serious pot. Multi billion € fines instead of a slap on the wrist like it used to be in the past. I bought some GS close to tangible book and feel much safer.

Can anyone forward me the latest annual report? If so, please PM me.

The device is a flop. Price is too high and besides video calling, there seems to be little use for this thing. They did some interesting things with the camera, but that’s about it. The Amazon and Google devices have a much better ecosystem. I guess they had to bring it out in the Xmas shopping season, but this isn’t a well rounded offering.

:D This thread can be closed now. Not before publishing this link for further study: http://bumwine.com

Yes, I believe that oil prices are influenced by politics. Trump makes no bones about that he wants to push oil prices down when they are too high. FWIW, I just added to my CVE position. I am not sure it’s the best bet out there, it I owned already some, so I don’t have to do any additional work to buy more. It sure seams cheap, it then again, the discounts for heavy oil to WTI are horrifying, although CVE has a partial hedge via their refinery operations.