Spekulatius

He lived in relative obscurity before the superhero genre got revived wit X-men and Spider-Man.

I know this, but here we are a few years later and the situation is still the same. No surprise, since you can watch satellite TV for free in Europe. I think Broadband internet, which is still lacking in many regions, is there best shot. The national telecoms however are willing to hit hard on pricing before conceding market share.

I should have been clearer when I was criticizing Fries.....he/they have done a great job buying/selling/arbitraging/buybacks, no question, but his execution with operations has been atrocious, especially if you compare to a well run cable operation. His propensity to brag and his overconfidence in aggressive targets that he made a couple years ago have come back to bite him hard. The stock would not have fallen this far if investors didn't lose trust in him...you can tell he's just deceiving/full of shit when he talks, constantly overhyping potential positives and completely glossing over any negatives, constantly spinning nonsense. Look at his results on their commercial business, how late he was to identify that as a huge opportunity. Always putting down his American peers, or trying to justify their underperformance against say Chtr, even when nobody asked specifically about that. I mean the company has grown rebased cash flows every qtr for a decade (this is more because of the advantaged assets rather than mgmt execution and would have grown faster with say Rutledge running things imo) and the stock is selling like its going under (which by itself does not bother me, have owned it for 5 years and I am in the negative).....and mgmt is a big reason. He overpromised and underdelivered, and that is a big problem for a public company, nobody can argue against that last point, it's a fact. Yes, that’s it in a nutshell. I also believe that running a cable business in Europe is much harder than in the US - the economics are just not as good, because pricing is lower.

I am watching this stock too, but isn’t the relatively small premium to the current market cap ( rumored purchase price is $11B, current market cap is $9.8B) a concern. That’s just a 12% premium to the current price. This seems to be a difficult business to run and really not worth as much than thought.

Agreed. The only reason the hammer didn’t come down yet on the Saudi‘s is because Trump wants lower crude prices.

^ There is nothing to prevent a successful fund manager from jumping ship / starting a new fund without SYTE. If there is any moat, it is with the manager, not with SYTE.

The opportunity for BRK depends on how a deepal is structured. I believe it could be a carve out of GE’s insurance business or parts thereoff (to be runoff - BRK has done this before) or and equity preferred raise at favorable conditions or an outright purchase of a whole or part of a business sans any corporate liabilities. In any case, I would expect that GE shareholders would scream bloody murder after seeing the deal conditions. I do agree that an outright GE takeover by BRK is unlikely.

I have a little trouble to see how they can achieve high returns on equity in the long run. sure, there is a first mover advantage, but wouldn’t it be possible for competitions like an insurance company to offer add on insurance or for a health clinic pet store (Petsmart runs clinics on their premises) to offer add on insurance? Insurance per say isn’t moaty, unless there is a cost advantage. I am nothing auf there is much of a short case here, but is there really that much upside?

How good is this aircraft engine business really, if you can have droughts of 5 or even more years in terms of FCF? It’s a compounding business, but it’s not worth as much than a business with s steady cash flow. It’s particular not suitable to carry a high debt load, because cash flows are not stable and it is of uttermost Importance that the customers don’t get antsy about your viability to meet future guarantees (implicit or explicit). I think Rolls Royce, with a $15B market cap and no net debt may be the better bet here, despite the issues with their engines, which are costly to resolve. At least they have a near net debt free balance sheet and probably an implied guarantee from the British government they they will be around, even if something untoward would happen (they were bailed out before the 70’s I think). One thing is certain, the aircraft business would be worth more than in a corporate umbrella that is cash rich like BRK. BRK can and will happily sit out a 5 year FCF drought for a compounder. That’s one of the reason why I believe some sort of a deal between BRK and GE will occur. GE has trouble with cash flow and is incompetent in insurance. BRK has both competence and cash in spades. GE needs to do something to raise capital or this may circle down the drain ,if the credit get cut to junk and the customers become antsy. The deal would probably very good for BRK, because GE would not just pay up for the cash, but also for BRK reputation. I am betting on a phone call when Warren sits in the bathtub.:-). It has happened before....

These type of pricing aberrations for what is a commodity product are not sustainable. I believe the Chinese will bring on sufficient capacity to normalize the margins at much lower level. BAM really got the entry and exit (via IPO) of this business right. Gnerally speaking, you don’t want to buy what smart investors like BAM are selling or at least tread very carefully.

The NHS in Britain is state-run. The German example is instructive. If reform is considered in the US, the German hybrid system perhaps has something to offer. Interesting though if one looks through the prism of historical path dependency, I understand that the present healthcare "compromise" in Germany essentially rests on a set of political decisions taken after the Franco-Prussian war! Interesting also because the man behind the scheme, Otto von Bismarck was conservative, authoritarian and anti-socialist. The idea was to quiet the agitation of the populace in order to make it as a country. In 1883, he passed a law requiring laborers to insure themselves through sickness funds complemented by an employer contribution. The system has evolved but its foundations have remained intact to this day. The scheme is not perfect and some want more "reforms" but I sense that most Germans are happy with it. Do I get this right? The way the German healthcare system functions may be a more palatable inspiration for the US because it means that the core societal values (personal freedom and responsibility etc) are maintained. Bismarck was able to introduce the concept of solidarity without naming it. But he was awfully shrewd. Yes, I believe most Germans are happy with the system, especially if you would put up the US system as an alternative. I believe that Bismarck was shrewd to introduce health insurance because he saw a the huge potential for unrest and let’s not forget they Germany is the intellectual birthplace of communism (Marx, Engels). Without it, history may have been different and I think it is conceivable that Germany would have become communist without it. The health insurance was the first corner stone of what would later to become “soziale Marktwirtschaft “ , which is capitalistic system with Social boundaries. This also means for example that many German companies don’t just see themselves as profit optimizer, but consider it their mission to make all stakeholders happy (employees, community, banks, shareholders). Some companies became more like US companies in terms of profit Maxime (Siemens was once a “caretaking” company and has become much more profit oriented, but some remain this way - BASF , BMW for example). This goes both ways, because if a company gets into trouble, the employees/unions are expected to stick it out and help with cost cutting and restructuring. Deutsche Bank is one that is also now much more Anglo/American and it hasn’t really worked for them at all.

FDA bam on Menthol cigarettes proposed: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bat-plunges-possible-u-move-082916982.html BTI down 11% in London and may have further to go. 25% of BTI’s profits are from Menthol cigs sales according to the article link above.

Single payer does not necessarily mean that the government will run it. It does mean tha the government needs to provide the framework for it. The single payer insurance in Germany for example is not run by the government, but in Britain it is (I believe).

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-06/tesla-short-einhorn-says-last-quarter-was-as-good-as-it-gets ::) One wonders what his overall returns are on the short and whether it was truly worth the opportunity costs of borrowing shares/paying option premiums over the >1 year that he's been short and has nothing to show for it (except losses). Guess he can keep putting out statements like these and one day hope his thesis works out -- but it seems less and less likely that his returns even in that scenario (if it were to occur, let alone when) would justify being short in the end (in terms of lost opportunity cost). Then again, the Greenlight long portfolio hasn't exactly performed on par with anything to write home about either... It’s very worrisome to have people manage your money when they can’t admit they are wrong. When you are short a stock, you need to admit very quickly when you are incorrect and that seems to be the case here. Maybe TSLA greased the numbers for last quarter but nobody has found a smoking gun. Excessive valuation alone isn’t a reason to go short, he should have learned that much.

The holding structure does not work well at a small scale like SYTE or PDH, the overhead is just too much. I think SYTE has like $600k overheard. That’s a very high hurdle when you are of a $10M scale. People talk about the BRK, but they forget that when BRK became public via the Berkshire takeover, their size was much larger, especially considering these were 1970’s $.

I like Yelp too and have been a user for many years. The business is a bit like Groupon that it doesn’t seem to scale well, because you need boots on the ground. As a user, I feel like Google search (from the map app) is catching up in terms or review depth and business seems to care more about the reputation there than on Yelp, indicating that they get the leads from Google.

As far as broadband is concerned, FIOS is better than Charter where it is available . I have owned and do own a house where both Charter is available. I tried Charter and I felt that Fios is better and most neighbour in my new neighbourhood agree. A small dataset for sure, but I would argue that Charter has the best product out there. They also have a reputation for atrocious customer service even by cable industry standards. In most areas (I have lived in 3 areas) , you have at least 2 viable broadband providers.

Seems more sceptical than I would think. Appropriately priced when the deal doesn’t go through isn’t the consensus here. But then again, we have almost 5x EBITDA/EV leverage and the last quarterly results were nothing to write home about (as usual). I do think it’s cheap, but I also think the chance that the deal does not go though is a bit higher than the consensus here. I'd take the "probably wouldn't buy" comment with a grain of salt. I wouldn't expect John Malone, knowing there is a high chance LBTYK will be deploying $10-12 billion in buybacks on a sub $20 billion market cap in the near future, to do anything but talk down the value of the stock. True, he has a habit of talking his book. However, I haven’t seen any recent purchases from Malone, or did I miss them?

Seems more sceptical than I would think. Appropriately priced when the deal doesn’t go through isn’t the consensus here. But then again, we have almost 5x EBITDA/EV leverage and the last quarterly results were nothing to write home about (as usual). I do think it’s cheap, but I also think the chance that the deal does not go though is a bit higher than the consensus here.

It’s the first time I ever heard about a supply chain issue with a cosmetics/ beauty company. The gross margins are so high in cosmetics , that saving a few % in manufacturing cost can’t really move the needle. A management that drives this so hard, seems inept to me and the stock reflects that Add the high debt load and you get a lot of gravity for the stock, They could do an Avon if they continue this path.

And the mediocre ones go for almost nothing like MN, BEN....

Roark, can you elaborate? Taxation and corporate overhead would be my guess. If you like Willow Oak, just invest in the funds as a limited partner.

QuickBooks is not going to cut it for accounting /tracking when you are a public enterprise. I am no expert on this, but there is a reason why companies employ accountants Larger ones run ERP systems that integrate several functions and you have independent auditors and internal controllers poking around stuff. It’s a whole different league to run the same outfit in a public company vs private.

Losses and bankruptcies occurred with health insurers mostly due to underpricing policies or they went out of business because they became uncompetitive ( costs too high, bad customer selection, network cost uncompetitive, underestimating cost inflation). . In most cases, these are just one off factors that can be adjusted annually but if the issue is structural, then it may result in bankruptcy.

I think this runs as share based compensation through the income statement. It’s is noted in page 37/75 as $65.4M in share based payments to directors and employees for the first 9 month and seems to be rapidly rising.