Spekulatius

The management fees that grow with the Lp’s size are key to almost guarantee outperformance of the GP(BAM) over time. Then there is the advantage that thr GP really has the control, while the L.P. are well - limited. When you are buying BAM, you interest is aligned with mangement, when you are buying the L.P., you are the golden Goose that can’t be slaughtered, but that is fair game for anything else...

The biggest concern with respect to their fixed line businessis probably not Infratel, but they they will be required to open up their network for competitors in the end, especially if they would be a virtual monopoly. Telecom and media regulation in Europe tends to be more customer than investor friendly.

Boy, I am relieved to read this report. With the growing stable of owned businesses, I was worried that some of the subs had country club type work environment. Lifetime employment guarantee for all type of shit. Living in Chicago I had heard of the cushiness at Kraft with layers of management each with mini fridges stocked with free food. That was before 3G. They probably should get the fridges back into the offices. If the 3G guys tried their own food every once in a while, they might be more inclined to make it better.

You need to set hard exit criteria for these kind of trades. In case of BH, I think you would need to set a date by which the position is sold. If you don’t do this, you let the botched short term trades become a long term investment, while you know they are not potatoes really. Beware of changes in the investment thesis, they rarely work out. Easy to say, but hard to do.

Results are posted on the SEC website - loss of $1 per B share. The pig bleeds, but very slowly. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1726173/000092189518001572/form10q07428007_05042018.htm

What I see is that $9.1M net income = $0.26 per diluted share but total FFO is $11.0M or $0.20 per diluted share. If the diluted per share figure remains static, how does 9M translate to a higher per share value than $11M? :-\ The earnings were boosted by roughly $41M profit from property dispositions, but proceeds from property disposition don’t contribute to NOI (which is property operating profit).

I felt the CC is terrible. Elon was totally unprepared and didn’t even seem to have the math correctly in terms of tact time. Then this rambling about expensive robot technicians and a manufacturing line being basically a software problem... Elon seemed aloft and disheveled. This hole thing runs on a wing and a prayer.

It is possible. My understanding of the RF propagation is that wavelength has a much bigger effect in terms of penetrating walls and obstructions than transmit power. That is correct. At some point, you have to have enough power to burn holes through wall to get wave propagation 8)

Would anyone know if this is true? I don’t know. If everything is so much simpler compared to ICE cars, why do they have so much trouble building them? I think the Tesla folks have a different way to count things than the rest of the industry.

I think most people will find that they need a better internet connection , once they cut the cord and switch to streaming. I think my 100Mbps minimum speed requirement is about right. I upgraded to FIOS gigabit after cutting the cord. I bet Verizon makes more money now from our household than they did before, even though our bill is lower.

I would be careful about outsourcing your thinking to "experts". One of the so called "experts" in the article said 15Mbps is all you need for broadband, so that should be the definition of broadband. Does anyone really believe that 15Mbps internet service is competitive today? 15 Mbps is certainly not enough, you are going to have trouble watching Netflix with it, especially with other devices competing for bandwidth. I don’t think my household is the unusually and I count at least a dozen devices hanging on my wireless network. I think 100 Mbps is the bare minimum now.

I feel the lack of profitability due more competition and the very low interest rates in Europe has more to do with the ailement or lack of performance of the European banks than difference in regulation. The problem with DB is that the German home market is very competitive. DB used to do 3% NIM in the 80’s ( then best in class) which fell to <1.5% NIM now. This is one reason why they expanded to US investment banking with the Bankers Trust takeover in 1998. Playing poker with the big boys in Wall Street never worked out for them. Give the US banks the same 2% NIM than the British bank generate, or the <1.5% that German Banks generate and they wouldn’t look much better either, IMO.

ATT is contractually obligated to expand their FTTP footprint to 12.5M customers as a condition for the Direct TV merger. They yt themselves a huge anchor around their leg with that Direct TV acquistion, IMO. ATT off and on has been building their FTTP network, they put $ into Uverse a while ago, but then stopped doing it. I think Verizon on the east coast is much better build out and can compete with cable.

Everything is backloaded as usual.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoinegara/2018/04/30/jorge-paulo-lemann-says-era-of-disruption-in-consumer-brands-caught-3g-capital-by-surprise/#51d2c8281f9b

I'm confused by this one too, but I don't own a dog. --- On another note: "Then there was the time in 2001, when Mr. Son threatened to set himself on fire in the offices of the ministry unless an official prodded telecom giant Nippon Telegraph & Telephone to lease optical-fiber lines to SoftBank, for a broadband network it was building." https://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2013/12/14/why-regulators-dont-scare-softbanks-masayoshi-son/ You never own a dog, the dog owns you. Most humans just haven’t it figured out yet.

Valid posts about BH from several fellow board members here - but not based on the time horizon applied by treasurehunt for this move. To me, it's more like SharperDingaan buying DB back in September 2016. I agree, for a short term trade with a clear exit - win or lose, Mr. Bigs integrity is almost irrelevant. Speaking of the DB shipwreck, the price is almost back to where it was in 2016. Are they better or worse off than back in 2016? I have a hard time telling.

Agree, here. Sadly, what is happening is the opposite. Senior finance executives have left in an oddly high number, as well as senior folks across the company. I think this speaks to how challenging it can be sometimes to work with someone who has high capacity and strong opinions... hard in the best of times, and very hard when times are challenging. Interesting company to watch! CFO’s and beancounter leaving is more of a yellow/red flag than the CEO’s leaving in many cases. I think of CFO as the proverbial rat that leaves the sinking ship first. This is because the can (or should be able to ) understand the financial situation better than the CEO and a bankruptcy certainly looks bad on a CFO’s resume.

BRK just needs to hold on to their shares and AAPL’s share of the company will slowly increase due to buybacks.

>>I can't think of another top executive anywhere with such a clear incentive to engage in price-supporting shenanigans<< Valeant comes to my mind. They also have a pile of debt in common.

When integrity is lacking, ability does not matter.

OK, so its not like a bank or an insurer which must reserve and as long as the business has a lot of runway, it's all good? I've always struggled with understanding the application of leverage, you've made it a bit less muddy. I'll ponder... Yes, you they use the float generated by the time lag when they pay the vendors and they get payed for general corporate purposes, but it all depends on the stability of the business model. One example where it can be issue are construction companies that receive advance payments when they orders for large projects that may take years to execute. The idiot management from CBI used them for stock buybacks, but the issue is that the business is cyclical and new order intake may vary a lot. So what happens in such a case is that the companies are flush early in an order uptake, but cash starved when the business declines. Of course stock prices tend to be high when orders come in and low when dry up, so this is essentially a recipe to buy high and sell low. Then add some mismanagement with order execution and customers getting a bit antsy because you spent therm,only ona to know buybacks and you get a recipe for disaster. This is unlikely in the car part distribution sector, a steady business with quicker turns, but it generally needs to be considered.

There just aren’t enough radio bands available to support high speed data transfer of a high cell densities without interference. Also, for very high dataspeed, one needs high frequency/ short wave bands, which have very poor penetration, which means that we probably need to look at line of sight systems, which are Prone to interruptions. Infrared Light frequencies used in goadfiners are 10^5 x higher than common radio frequencies, and that is why more information can be squeezed through quartz fiber.

I struggle to even come up with a potential buyer for this low margin business that will not get better. The only public peer is SENEA, which actually has much better governance and results over the last decade, yet trades at 0.6x book (or 0.5x book with LIFFo reserve). Best case scenario for shareholder is liquidation but how likely is that?

You are correct, and I would hazard to guess that you are under 30 years of age? I am 55 years old and just finishing my 1st of 8 semesters at college. I am being very choosy about what I buy & why, which includes timing cash flow needs for the next 4 years. Any cash I deploy towards equities needs to look like an obvious "front run" (citation needed) to me. Example, CHTR, DIS, SFTBY) Notice that I said "needs to look like that to me." The amount of front run I get needs to be perfect & I may be inadequate to the task. From the stocks you own, ABEV, CVS and CHTR will have negative tangible equity as well, which I think is the same than negative owner equity.