Spekulatius

I do think that OZRK is extremely vulnerable both from the asset , as well as from the liability side. These guys are either extremely smart or extremely stupid. My bet is the latter.

I learned a few things from this article 1) There are outfits in Wall Street that actual peddle research ideas to Hedge finds and they literally do it door to door. Seems like an odd business model, but it does explain why all of a sudden many hedge funds own the same stock at the same time or initiate shorts on the same stocks at the same time. 2) HLF internally was judged to be a mediocre idea, then became a good idea because somebody else was in the same idea. I recall the verdict against HLF very well. The $200M was a slap on the hand for a company the size of HLF. WS investment banks get these and worse all the time. However, HLF avoided the stigma of being called a pyramid scheme and fraud and that is all they needed. MLM always work on thr fringe of legality and HLF could continue to do so , even though legality was slightly redefined. That‘s all they needed. The excessive research that Ackman did and the public exposure was counterproductive, everyone become more and more personally invested it become more and more about Ego than making Money.

I agree. Awesome price offered [around 190, or a bit below] for this company by the market on an eventful day. Intrinsic value in the area of 250, or above. It’s still selling for more than 1.2x BV and per Market Analysts like Greg Warren of Morningstar, “Many think” that BRK stock got ahead of itself in 2017. FWIW, Morningstar has BRK.B at $220 fair value and with a 4 star rating right now. Seems about correct.

KML looks quite interesting. If KM CA makes ~200M in EBITDA it means that KML share would be 39% of this or 60M or roughly 60c/share. Now KML will receive 12.5 CAD in cash proceeds for a 16.2CAD share price. The question is what is KMI going to do with KML. The current structure makes no sense and is also tax inefficient. KMI could either buy thr minority KML holders out, or they could sell the bulk all or of the remainder of the company to KML shareholders. Current equity of KMI in their Canadian business is 2.1B CAD, so KML with 1.25B CAD and adding the remainder in debt could buy them out (depending on premium to book). This would make sense to KMI because KMI itself is cheap (they could buy back stock with the proceeds or deleversge) and holding KML as a Canadian C-Corp isn’t tax efficient for KMI.

I think most exacutives sell their shares once they leave the company. One reason might be conflict of interest disclosures, if they work in the same field or for a pot. competitor. Those typically kick in once you own more than one percent, but they probably play it safe and sell everything.

David getting taste of his own medicine. ;D I don’t think that there is a huge risk that GRLE will get the dreaded PFIF designation. GLRE insurance losses are too substantial for insurance being called cover operation. That won’t help much fighting the shorts, though.

Bought CUERVO.MX, BRK.b and KML.TO today Long Tequila, insurance and steel pipes.

Payment is a huge market for any large untapped social network company and I expect FB to get into this in a significant way. I think Visa and MC will be competition eventually.

I can’t understand the reaction of KML.TO to this news either and hence bought some KML stock. Looks like a fair deal and win- win to me.

With concentrated portfolios, survivorship bias turns its ugly head. You hear a lot more about those few successful ones than you hear about those that lose their money and disappear in the shadows. None of Ackman’s bets were sure bets. They were turnaround bets (JCP) , leveraged bets (Target) or jockey bets (VRX). You could also read about all these stocks in the newspaper/media a lot at this time.

Going back to 2009, every year showed material growth in revenue and A/R. Which could be consistent with these acquisitions being growth not maintenance. I think the intangible depreciation is very likely a combination of both growth and Capex. I am not even sure that customer retention matters too much. Depending on thr contract length, I think it is very likely, that the customer will demand another pound of flesh so to speak to extend a contract. I did notice they intangible depreciation has been rising faster than revenue during thr last few years. Then ADS has negative tangible equity. Their captive bank sub Comenity has about $1.8B in equity, ( which equals total ADS equity) which has to be mostly tangible (didn’t dig into FDIC records too far), so this means that the debt and the intangibles mostly reside at the Holding Company Level or another operating sub. This could be an issue if the FDIC disallows distributions to the holding company from Comenity.

Just by looking at their website, they regard the retailers as their customers, not the individual account holders, which is quite telling, IMO. I think there has been quite a bit of churn in their retail customer base as well, possibly due to a lot of retailers going out of business. I just noticed going back, that ADS seem to purchase assets with goodwill attached to it even when their business didn’t really show increases YoY, which sort of tells us that this goodwill is not all growth expense. Do they pay their customer upfront when they initiate a customer relationship?

I read some German articles about the case. Looks like a systemic breakdown of anti money laundry systems caused by a management that seem to discourage to destination bad news upstream. Given this, I am surprised that thet the shares have held up as well as they do, If they had business in the US, they would be in massive trouble and look at hundred millions and probably billion $ in fines. I think the ECB does not wield these huge fines, but there still are going to be consequence. The danish regulators can’t let this slide either, even if they wanted to, because the world and the danish populace is watching apparently.

Core earnings appear back out amortization from intangibles. It looks to me that I’d they acquire a business, they acquire some good will as well. That goodwill seems to me most customer relationships, which I don’t think have that much long term value, so they need to get replaced constantly. I don’t think they backing them out is entirely expensive right way to look at economic earnings and may the market has figured out thw thr GAZP earnings are the correct way to look at stock. Based on GAAP earnings, ADS doesn’t look that cheap.

https://www.valueinvestorsclub.com/idea/NI_HOLDINGS_INC/142033

I realized that LYG isn’t as cheap as it looks. The reasons is that th statuary returns are much less than thr opereting returns. Two items make a large difference PPI and other provisions: PPI provisions were ~1.6B £ / year and other provisions were 800M£ . Those suck of roughly 30% of the opereting earnings. Then there is a pension deficit of roughly $7B£, which is 15% of thr equity base. It looks like Uk regulators are pretty keen on closing shortfall (unlike in the US), they have to to pay increasing amount into the run maxing out at 1.3B£/ year to eliminate the gap. If you just look statuary returns, the earnings/share are 4.4p, and then a 66p share price does not look cheap. I briefly looked at Barclays, which trades far below book. The 2017 shareholders letter is quite honestly depressing. All the profits during the last 6 years (35B£ roughly ) went to litigation and conduct charges, non core losses (from runoff business) , taxes and losses on disposals. zero value created for shareholders. When will it end? Even the CEO doesn’t know. I feel that the skandinavian banks have more promise.

I have been looking at European banks recently. Not all of them are sick dogs like DB. I found some fairly strong looking and reasonably cheap business there. Here is an excellent article about Lloyd’s (LYG), which also has an interesting chart in it that covers other European banks: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4166898-lloyds-cheapest-high-performing-developed-market-bank Danske Bank book value: ~165 DKK share price :~ 212 DKK Earnings:~20DKK ROE: 13-15% I noticed that they have high notional leverage (equity is 145M DKK and total balance sheet is 3.54B),but a lot of these are mortgages. It sure if these are guaranteed or not, may be John can help out? NIM is below 1%, but high leverage enables satisfactory ROE. Unless I understand, why this leverage is “safe”, I wouldn’t touch it. LYG Book value: ~55p Share price ~ 66p Earnings ~ 7 p LYG is probably the best managed Uk bank, they have negligible investment banking activities if any. NIM is close to 3%,I was surprised to see it that high because when I looked at it a while ago, it barely above 2%. Potential issues with Brexit exit need consideration. SVNLY book value: 70 SEK (?) share price : 98 SEK earnings 8.5 SEK ROE ~12% This bank has shown very consistent performance for the last 10 years, NIM is <1%, but thr bank is rated AA and apparently assets are very safe. Banking model seems similar to Danske. share price has been weak recently due to slightly lower Earnings. They have distributed a lot of dividends, typically 65% of their earnings and yet still managed to grow their business. ROE is ~15% in Sweden, but lower elsewhere (Nederland, GB, Ireland). This stock looks somewhat less favorable due to high Swedish dividend withholding tax of 30%, which together with the high dividend, penalizes shareholder in the US. https://danskebank.com/-/media/danske-bank-com/file-cloud/2018/4/interim-report---first-quarter-2018.pdf https://www.handelsbanken.se/shb/inet/icentsv.nsf/vlookuppics/investor_relations_en_q-reports_hb_2017_eng_annualreport/$file/hb_2017_eng_annualreport.pdf I hope to get some discussion going, because I am sure that there are some gems to be found. Some of these banks look cheaper than Us counterparts right now.

MLM is about selling a dream, not a product. It has always been that way. Ackman went wrong going against a company that actually has a solid balance sheet, strong cash flow and is backed by someone who is cleverer and has as much money than he does.

Agreed an sharing vs eating your one plate. Sharing isn’t common where I am doing from, but I rather prefer it now, since I learned it from my wife’s family. Long Island is a Bit of a drag in culinary terms as it just lacks diversity. There are some decent Asian places, gastropubs, but mostly it’s just an over abundance of way too heavily Italian food, they isn’t really like the real stuff in Italy, as far as ai remember. I did find some perfectly preserved retro (unintentionally, I presume) German restaurants here, that are far better than anything there is on the left coast, as well as some German butcheries, which make a perfect Sauerbraten. The diversity in food generally follows the diversity of people moving and living there and Long Island as this point isn’t very diverse yet. FWIW, I have found most of the great hole in the wall places via Yelp actually.

Why has LBTYA performed so poorly over the years? Their stock was at $20 in 2012 and has vastly underperformed indices or Us cable stocks. All the PP presentation look great LOL. However, their organic growth was very mediocre overall, the Euro overall was weak against the USD, but they is only a small part of the story. I think the bigger issue is that they never generated the FCF that they predicted . back in h r Day of thr Virgin Media merger, they had Capex <20% of the revenues and predicted lower numbers going forward. Currently they are investing 30-35% of their revenues in Capex, so that clearly didn’t work out. The deal so sell a significant amount of their business at a moderate premium to their current EV/EBITDA seems great, but what about taxes and what will they do with the proceeds. Something along the line LBTYA does not seem to work out. I would appreciate , if someone could provide some clues. I have looked at this stock many iof more over the years and ever owned it, as I have not been able to get a picture of he actual organic business performance, due to all the wheeling and dealing.

I actually think I would be more comfortable buying this stock, when Einhorn were short. His track record with life insurance is bad - he lost quite a bit of money in Delta Lloyd. I don’t think he or his analysts understand the business very well. BHF ticks some value boxes. Tangible book is 2x the current stock price (>$100/share), adjusted earnings are $8-9/ share according to management. But I am not sure what these adjusted earnings are worth, because GAAP earnings so far were consistently very negative. BHF should benefit from higher interest rates, it they also have quality to a bit of interest rates hedges in place, so I am not sure when and how this works out. We could potentially looking at huge book value losses there, but I don’t understand their hedge book well. Their equity is ~$14.5 and their balance sheet it $225B total, so the notional leverage is 15.5x. I have seen that they replace their traditional annuities with Shield annuities, which require less hedging and transfer more risk to the policy owners, but I also wonder how attractive these Shield annuities are in today’s enivonrment. Also, most of their book are still under the old structure and will take decades until they are run off. My other concern is that MET actually knew what they were doing when they spun this off and created a toxic dump of undesirable assets, that will blow up when they are not liable any more for fraud-full conveyance.

Wrong math. If CHTR retires 15% of their nshares avery year, they end up with 0.85^7 or ~32% of their shares left after 7 years. The law of smaller numbers 8).

How can anyone know the IRR for an evolving technology that is still in a the testing stage. I don’t think the CFO’s if the company involved know the answer. Folks should get a grip here, time would be better spent opening a cold one. Happy Friday afternoon !

Elon is passionate about what he is doing and his products and many CEO’s in the car business are clearly not. I am not defending Elon, but I think it makes a huge difference.

The ATT trial was mostly line of sight. MM waves don’t go round corners or through obstacles generally. Also, from the data, they mentioned trials at 400Mhz, similar to currently used cellphone frequencies, which are meter waves - those go round corners and obstacles due to diffraction. It seems to me way to early to speculate too much about what is going to happen. let CHTR run their business for now and generate mid/high single digits EBITDA growth and buy back shares. everything so far indicates that the tech, however it is implemented, needs lots of towers/repeaters, which favors the companies that have assets in the ground already, I think.