Spekulatius

I can't help to speculate, that what we perhaps are observers to here, is public budget hoarding / storming - one of worst tumors in public finances. We are in the late innings in the battle post GFC between these "bad boys" [the banks] "who almost pushed the world out over the cliff" and the public and the regulators. The regulators are grapping for every straw and trying to penetrate every crack in the hull - how tiny it may seem - and turn every stone, where there is just a bit of smell of a case, the motive [perhaps] being to keep up own allocated ressources & budgets, justifying exisiting budgets [those most likely to be reduced going forward] by starting up investigations and perhaps also cases. At least WFC is entitled to equal and fair treatment, compared to it's competitors. I think WFC is just a convenient punching bag right now. Let’s say you are an ambitious employee in a government institution regulating banks - who are you going after if some irregularities surface, which are sure to surface in any bank with 100,000 of employees? Going after WFC is probably the easiest way to get some headlines, get some fines for the government, which will look great on your resume. That is why reputation is so important in the banking business. Both the customers and the regulators need to trust you. Losing money is one thing, but losing reputation is worse, WEB said this better then anyone. WFC lost a good chunk of their reputation and it is going to be very expensive for them. This is what the people that scoff at the few hundred million of settlement costs are missing.

+1 That's a very good description of Lloyd's. One thing that worries me is the huge level of household debt (about 90% of GDP) in the UK. Lloyd's is a fine institutions and will probably fare better in the event of a credit crisis but it will be far from untouched. Yes and real estate had gotten ridiculously expensive in the UK. A Brexit exit will also uncouple the interest rates from the EU more, I think, although they alsway had their own policy due to stickin with the £.

Yea, maybe a woman would have helped. Also maybe having a few more board members that weren't senile would have helped also. Half that board probably consider it a personal victory if they survived a board meeting. I see that Mad Dog is also on that list. Now I don't doubt his ability to smoke an Iraqi division. But the idea that he would have anything to add in the area of blood testing is laughable. Blood letting is more his thing. Furthermore, as DETJD pointed out this more or less applies to everyone on the board. What a joke. I think anyone with some experience in the field would have helped. All these guys are out of their are of competence by a mile and they retired and most likely haven’t seen anything but staged tours of the operations. You could have learned all you wanted, if you would have spent some time checking out the opereion and talking to some people. You will be amazed what you can learn about a company, fairly quickly. But a Kissinger or Shultz who both are way out of their area of competence and retired a long time ago won’t do that. I do think they choosing a BOD for reputations effect and with none having experience in the field is a big red flag.

The key question is with asset quality though. Granted, SRG may be a 60c on the dollar valuation, but those are retail assets RE assets, which are structurally challengened. It is better to purchase assets that are valued at 90c on the dollar when they are likely to appreciate compared to assets for 60c on the dollar that may be falling in value, especially in conjunction with leverage.

Yes, but WFC’s earnings have stagnated during that time and the stock wasn’t cheap to begin with and it isn’t cheap now. It’s not crazy, it is reversion to the mean.

Boring as hell. It’s like BRK with half the ROA. They acquired a steel fabricator and a funeral products company ( caskets etc). RIP. I kind of like these guys and if it is cheap enough, I wouldn’t mind owning the stock, knowing that the returns will never match BRK or MKL.

But KMI still competes with MLPs. How can they charge more for regulated assets just because they have to pay tax and other entities don’t. This does not make sense. The advantage is how they are allowed to spend their DCF. They are able to more optimally allocate capital compared to an MLP like Enbridge. ENB is not an MLP either - they own and sponsor MLPs. They can and do allocate their capital either in an MLP umbrella or with the C-Corp mothership. KMI and other C-Corp directly compete with MLPs for new projects. My guess is that this decision to adjust pricing for new projects based on taxes (which are often theoretical and non- cash anyways) has so many unintended and negative consequences, they it will not stand, or that the incorporation will change. Theoretically and MLP example could run a C-Corp sub to new projects to house, so they can charge more, since taxes are paid for by the customer. If this makes any sense, I will rest may case.

But KMI still competes with MLPs. How can they charge more for regulated assets just because they have to pay tax and other entities don’t. This does not make sense.

Based on the lastest pictures, she seemed to go to a really bad hairdresser, so that’s a start.

They issued some stock to pay for ~12B in Capex this year. Most of the equity raises came from sponsored vehicles. THey have an enormous Capex program that this year will result in ~2B in incremental EBITDA, which will make the EV/EBITDA ratio look much better. The cash flows from these expansion projects will flow for decades. This is like an utility but with better regulation (FERC) and better growth prospects. Their plan is to raise the dividend by 10% for a couple of years (which is possible based on current projects completed or in the works) from a almost 7% starting yield.

If the thesis plays out and FFH shows 15% book value growth or anything close to it for a couple of years, there won’t be any buybacks because most likely the P/B will be too high to warrant buybacks. In the end it will be the organic book growth that determines if the investment thesis works, not buybacks.

I have been buying quite a bit of it recently. That’s my thought. I also own SEP in my taxable account and a bit of EEQ. They are all cheap, IMO.

What is so great about their results? Earnings were up ~5%, despite significant acquisitions and ROIC went down. No surprise that the markets reaction to the results has been muted. I don’t know about the fish feed market, but the market for farmed fish is highly cyclical (driven by supply and demand), so this might affect fish feed producers as well. The fish feed market itself seems to be low margin. I sort of like this outfit, but I don’t think the results have been as stellar than you make them. FWIW, I do think you should countinue to cover this outfit.

There are most likely better bets it there, but XOM has such a long history of being a superior operator and still a bulletproof balance sheet, that I do think they are interesting for a LT buy and forget Energy allocation in a portfolio.

I use StopAd. It’s free and seems to work (no issues for at least one day now)

Thanks, I installed the Free StopAd app and the problem seems to be gone for now. Very annoying and quite honestly self defeating to allow ads like this.

I think the redirects come from ads on this website. Since the ads are targeted, some users get it and others don’t. They are a hell of a nuisance and make this website unusable. I do get them on my iPad, but not on my iPhone so far. I am contacting our host regarding this issue.

Both, small format discount stores and larger grocery superstores can coexist (they do so in Germany where Aldi and Lidl started and are the most established),as they serve different purposes. Grocery superstores is where you go for larger shopping tips. I have been to some in Germany and it is fun get the choice of 20 different kinds of ham (Schinken) from France, Spain, Germany, Italy etc. You get specialty beers there, some of them have a bar. It’s fun to go there when you have some time and purchase a larger amount of groceries and prefer some choices The small format discounter (Aldi, Lidl) where you go for everyday necessities. They are cheap, quick and quality is decent to good. Both can coexist without issue, but I the in the middle that will get squeezed.

The same eccentric billionaire owner has run Sears into the ground, so I think his acumen needs to be discounted somewhat. WPG is a Bad example since they own C malls (on average). KIM is a better proxy, except that they have fully cash flowing properties right now, with the option to redevelop, while SRG needs to redevelop their entire real estate quickly,or they will sit on unproductive assets. KIM can take a more measured approach to redevelopment, since their properties are mostly cash flowing and will be for a while. I think it is a fair question, KIM may offer a similar total return Thant SRG at a lower risk.

I am having the problem recently that accessing the CoBaF website consistently directs me to some malware website for an Amazon Gift card. This is when accessing the CoBaF website with and iPad Pro. I tried removing all the website data from Safari via the setting menu followed by a restart, but this does not solve the issue. I know that turning off JavaScript for Safari gets rid of the redirect, but then many websites don’t work correctly any more. I am wondering - could this malware be server site or is it malware on my iPad? I never had such and issue before, except on a Windows PC, where a malware removal tool got rid of the issue. With that malware attack on my PC, the redirect occurred with all websites, not a specific one, so this one is different. do, far, I only got the malware redirect when trying to access the CoBaF website. Any ideas from resident experts what is going on?

Yes, doing a Teledyne only makes sense if shares are quite undervalued and there is no wayside knowing how Mr. Market will value FFH going forward. Talking about a huge buyback in context of above makes sense.

I agree on above criticism by Stubblejumper and I really think that the culture is of questionable value here (as discussed in another thread) and I would rather see a culture change than preserving it. i am not sure about this, but if it were not for realized gains, FFH would have shown an operating losss, due to underwriting losses (mostly from FFH) which interest income did not compensate for. Again, this can happen, but it’s not a great result operationally. Did anyone notice thwt AWH (which they bought last year) had an understand ration above 100 before catastrophe losses? Not great either, hopefully it’s a one off. Also Premium blabbers a bit too much about all these small deals that are with 1-2% positions (if not less) and while they work out well, they don’t do all that much for the bottom line. They need to get big things right (AWH acqusition etc.)

I bought my position in 2012 for about $1000/share after doing a fair amount of research. I have little concern that the Hathaway will treat minority’s owners unfairly. THey have proven to be fair to shareholder, predating the LP incorporation for decades now. I think these guys are pretty good sellers and buyers of real estate shown over a long period of time and at least decent operators. I did notice thwt this year the expenses have outrun revenues and recent results were somewhat subpar.

If the properties were super prime (or even prime), the newlly redeveloped properties would generate more than $17/sqft. $17/sqft is a B-mall Rents, no less and no more. So, I think we can safely assume that Sears properties are on average B-mall properties. i think the rents for B-mallet DDR and KIM are around $16/sqft but that includes properties with below market rents. KIM and DDR are B-mall Reits.

Repurposing of retail space will happen, but I think not all the retail space can be repurposed. In some cases, the cost of tear down and rebuild may be very high and will result in a huge economic loss for the owner