Spekulatius

Imports could come into play if the US lifts the Import duties, which currently don’t make sense. Then, lumber could flow from Canada again. another pot. large supplier is Russia as they have huge capacity, but are notoriously unreliable. I also think that lumber prices are a bit seasonal and tend to peak in spring but I am not 100% sure about this. My brother is in lumber trade and sells lumber for a large Belgian mill as a free Agent. The situation in Europe is similar and the mill he works with makes money by the wheelbarrow (and he too) and he has never seen anything like it. He also mentioned to me that those things can flip in a month but probably not this time. I have recently heard about Interfor in a Twitter spaces meeting where the Twitter lumber gang (Kyle Cerminara $BTN) were talking and the stock came up. They also mentioned the special $2 dividend. The way I look at it as an Investment - if I get most of my investment paid back (which means in terms of dividends) in a short time period, I would be interested. I wouldn’t care about buybacks and increasing capacity as my underlying assumption would be that this is going to be a crappy business again in 2 years and pays me nothing for a long time again. If it turns out better than that, that would be great, but I wouldn’t make this my baseline assumption. So, this really depends on how much in total dividends they pay in the short period they are making hay. So what I like to see and what would make me inclined to invest is a clear message from management that they are paying out most of their earnings in cash. Ideally I would like to see a monthly dividend payer that pays out 80% of net earnings or something along those lines. No position.

Yes, this seems to be somewhat of a consensus. It is hard to create a moat in a product like this, but being best in class (or close) with tailwinds from getting higher priority with IT, might be enough to get this stock to work. I have experienced phishing training programs that also address phishing amongst many other things and are really only generic multiple choice test that must be suffered through. I think there is quite a possibility to create a good product, using behavioral science, drills and less cookie cutter training approaches and now I am sure there is a market for it.

They missed the boat to create a Deathstar SPAC when those things were hot. Would have been a hoot.

In my opinion, if crypto becomes large, it will be regulated by governments, it‘s that simple. As long as crypto stayed small in terms of total transaction value or total market cap relative to the government sponsernd currency, it can stay under the radar. Now, that the cumulative market cap has cracked 1T in USD value however, it has become a factor and attracts attention because they basically become a competing currencies. No government in the world gives up control over their currency without a fight. The reasons are many - if crypto becomes more valuable and Acts/Substituts currency, it is like printing native currency and causing inflation without the government benefiting from it. The government also will lose control over payment flows with the obvious effect of benefiting the underground economy and tax evasion and organized crime. For those reasons, government have an incentive to keep crypto small. Governments cannot really eliminate crypto, but they can probably limit the total size (in terms of market cap) by discouraging institutions from using and owning them by various means. Institutional assets are where the real money is and if you prevent adoption by various means, the size of crypto should remain small compared to the flow of government government sponsernd currency and the total market value of printed USD. Of course I don’t really now what will happen, but I do think any government will absolutely prevent a competing currency from becoming a large factor, if they can. Crypto is just that, a competing currency, printed by private parties often located outside the country borders.

HBO would be an interesting asset by itself and wish ATT would have spun it off. I think they didn’t because they needed to structure a deal so they could get cash out. HBO by itself would need to invest heavily and cannot support a debt burden, but it would be an unique asset, if they concentrate on high quality content and play a different game. Maybe ATT has damaged it already too much, that’s hard for me to judge.

Easy answer - zero. I have Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu (because cheap for $2.99/ month for one year) , Apple TV (free, because of iphone purchase) and Peacock ( free Version). Quite frankly, I can live well with Netflix and Amazon Prime alone. I cut the cable years ago and never looked back.

Sounds like you have and drink a lot of coffee. My coffee can Holding is LAACZ. I have owned it since 2012 and added in 2018,19 and 2020. Another coffee can holding was Nestle, which I held in a German brokerage account until I was forced to shut it down (because they didn’t want to deal with US persons any more). I decided not to buy it back in my US accounts because the valuation was rich, which I think was the right decision, even though I regret it sometimes. I have held it in this account for more than 10 years, before I was forced to liquidate.

Weekends in crypto are always like Wild West, I am guessing this is because institutional players are not participating and all you have got is a bunch of gunslingers that are buying and selling on their mobile phones while gulping white claws or harder stuff. BTC down ~11% as I write this while drinking Cabernet like a boomer. If you are trader, this is probably more a feature than a bug.

This is a speculative position in a recent IPO that I established after the last earnings call. It is a cybersecurity play with a focus on training. They are the only public company in this particular niche that I am aware of, but there are several private competitors. Market cap is $3B and revenues $2.8B and revenues are north of $200M, so it‘s not cheap, but almost reasonable priced for a SAAS play. My thesis is first order thinking - the phishing scams are becoming an epidemic (Colonial Pipe, CNA) and very costly and now chief IT officers need to do something and offer better training to employees which might lead to KNBE‘s phones ringing hopefully. There is no second order thinking or thesis; that’s it. The question really is if above comes to pass and if so, is KNBE‘s software really differentiated to justify the lofty valuation? I don’t really know, but I think there is a chance that this is true. FWIW, I learned about this stock/ IPO in MF Industryfocus podcast and they seemed to like the stock. Twitter thread, where I threw this on the wall:

Reduced BABA on Thursday at a loss (few %). The main reasoning was that I did not like the last earnings report, not matter how you slice it. The reduction in core market profitability is the most bothersome to me. I expected a blowout quarter due to economic recovery and similar to what we saw with GOOG, FB and AMZN and this was nothing like this. I know, I know, paper hands. @LearningMachine also asked some good questions regarding GMV and there aren’t really good answers. One can question how much it matters, but it‘s just another incremental negative. BABA’s accounting always was murky (which deterred me in the first place ) and I would never make this a huge position, not matter what. Now it‘s a smallish starter position which I intend to keep.

FYI:

@LearningMachine thanks for putting up the table, it is very helpful for perspective. I have been invested in DISCA and SNI (Scripps) from ~2015 to 2017 and made some money (mostly on the Scripps side) and have played this game too, with some success but not really a great IRR. I am not convinced that scale is the solution to DISCK problem and I know that Malones does, hence the support for a merger. A few thought that are loosely related tp each other: 1) DISCA‘ content is a commodity. Many of their channel have lost relevancy (the former Scripps channels are actually amongst the better ones) as there are ready replacement with YouTube and Netflix 2) DISCA‘s true competitors aren’t other cable channels any more, they are Facebook, YouTube /Google, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney. Compared to those, DISCA looks like the patsy on the table. Some of these play and entirely different Metagame and seem to be winning (Netflix, Amazon). DISCA plays the cash flow game, but seems to be losing. Now we can say the market got it all wrong, but this has been going on for 10 years now at least. Mr Market very rarely is wrong for 10 years. 3) Mega mergers are hard, especially on a business like Media, where people really matter. This is not two companies that make plastic containers in difference Geographie margin (Berry) which is something that almost always works. Most large mergers fail to create shareholder value and I think base rates matter. 4) Even if you think the merger is ultimately a good idea, the timing to invest seems early. lots of folks are probably eager to dump their stock. ATT is likely a structural seller in the long run. No buybacks for a while to delever. Think CVS - Aetna (different industry, same setup) and how long it took for the shares to move. Anyways, those are just my thoughts, all of which are qualitative. Tables and spreadsheet are useful but only get you as far as getting a sanity checks. You have got to be right about analysing the business and in that regard, the current setup looks anything but a one foot hurdle to me. If I am wrong, so be it, it’s a no called strike for me. Hope everyone here makes money by the boat load.

The renminbi is pegged against the USD and pretty much trades in synch. There is no reason for them to be hedging.

Now do the debt and add back interest expense to the FCF to strip out the financial engineering. The way the numbers are achieved matters. DISCK started as a high single digit organic grower in 2010 with a pretty clean balance sheet and it ended up as a melting icecube with a rather iffy balance sheet. That's why the multiple has collapsed. it's a buy if they can reverse the trend and it's not if they can't. The financial engineering is of lesser importance than the business performance and just enhances the trend in either direction. Each of the Malone controlled business, that has been a melting icecube or lacked organic growth has failed to create shareholder value (LILA, LBYTA, DISCA)

For me, the main benefit of this forum is not to present a full fledged research report, it is crowdsource research. I post what (little) I know and hope that other posters add to it and fill in some blanks or prove me wrong. I found this to be a hugely beneficial. I welcome full fledged research, but don't expect it here and think this is generally found behind some sort of paywall that supresses the crowdsourcing aspect that I think is more valuable. That said, there is nothing wrong with a tip jar, some authors that publish research have those and I occasionally tipped.

I think the variance is sharecount is somewhat normal with the potential for earnout shares, warrant's and sometimes redemptions, but in this case, the range is large. Kyle somewhat explains why in his AMA.

Yes, i am going through the same process right now and told my insurance broker to shop us around. FWIW, we have homeowners, 2 cars and umbrella all with the same company and I would jump ship with all of them. @rkbabang gave me a good triangulation point (he lives almost in the same area) that tells me I can do better. Also, related, I tried $LMND a few days ago, because it is supposed to be so easy. Went through a bunch of questions with them, which took a while, but in the end their AI decided our house is no bid, because the fire department is not up to their standards. I did get a quote from Liberty Mutual after going through their online questionnaire, that was cheaper, but those are nonbinding estimates (teaser) and the real quote is almost always more expensive when you follow through with it. I will now wait what my broker comes up with. If they cant come up with something better, I try another broker. Now, I have totally derailed @DooDiligence thread.

^ I missed the annual meeting. The result speak for themselves: https://backend.otcmarkets.com/otcapi/company/financial-report/282848/content Earnings ~$40/quarter (almost $50 with tax basis adjustments), $26 distribution. Their leverage is getting lower with depreciation > Capex now after the buildout of the self storage units is mostly done. This is now worth almost 18% of my taxable portfolio (my IRA's are much larger than taxable portfolio and unfortunately, I can't hold it in those any more). It is not my best performing stock, but it's the one that made me the most in absolute $ with very low risk.

10k is the reporting threshold for any cash transaction in the US, it makes sense to extend this to crypto.

Anyone noticed that DISCA actually has underperformed T over the last ten years when you account for T‘s dividends. Also look at Zaslav‘s pay Package: Frankly, DISCA is a sh$tco, just like T, except that DISCA‘s management is better paid. What is the baserate for two sh$tco‘s merging becoming just a larger sh$tco? I think it‘s pretty high.

KNBE - recent IPO that I learned about in the MF Industryfocus podcast. Cybersecurity play that focuses on Training. Seemed like a timely pick after thr Colonial pipeline disaster that sure must have raised the visibility about fishing attack risks. The stock tanked after earnings and I am not quite sure why. Earnings and CC seemed fine to me.

This is an open forum and should stay that way Imo. If you want to get paid for your research just start your own substack and see how it goes. I have quite a bit value from this forum, both in terms of new ideas as well as feedback on my own ideas.

Thanks. I am with an insurance broker who gave me a good enough quote a few years ago, but then rates started to creep up. I suspect then they just auto renew and don’t really look at the price until you ask them too (which I just did).

@DooDiligence what percentage of your home or structure value is your current premium? I am surprised it is possible for them to cancel the insurance before the contract is up. Generally, I would recommend to go with a good insurance broker and get a couple of options. FWIW, when i lived in CA, my homeowners insurance for my crappy ~350k value house was only $500 (no earthquake insurance and this way before the wildfires). Currently, I pay ~1.7k for my house that is worth a bit north of ~600k (in MA). Feels a bit high and I want to investigate options upon renewal. Again I never had claim in 20 years of owning homes. We certainly have a hard market, insurance rates have been creeping up.

What a time to be alive - AMA session with Kyle Cerminara regarding the FGNA- OppFi SPAC. So far, he has dodged my question ( or wabuffos ) why they switched to fair value accounting on their receivables.