Spekulatius

I assume it’s split evenly. I negotiated this rate when I sold my last house in Long Island and it was pretty straightforward. I sold my former house for a 5% commission where we picked the realtor from a website (after interviewing 3 of them). These commissions are all negotiable, that much I do know. I bet you could get it as low s 4% but I didn’t try.

Whatever you do make sure your negotiate the commission. 5% is easy and I got great service for 4.5% last time. From my experience, the highest volume realtors aren’t always the best.

When Italy had its Lira, they had high inflation and high interest rates. yes, they will have problems either way, one thing they will happen is they there will be an immediate and substantial loss in buying power though currently devaluation, which will make Italian goods cheaper, important more expensive and for new debt the cost much higher. Then there is also the issue that on day one, Italy’s debt will still be denominated in Euro, which then will be even harder to pay back. The only option for Italy’s government is to pull an Argentina and immediately default and cause an exchange of the current debt into Lira notes. Of course any of the above doesn’t solve the demographically issues (low birth rate etc. ) either.

Government debt will never be repaid. If any government on earth needs to repay debt, and can’t roll it over, they will default. This applies to the US as well. We are running 5% deficit as a percent of GDP in one of the hottest economy ever 10 years plus into a recovery, how would we ever repay debt? Give it a recession and we run at 10% GDP deficit quickly. Government debt is never repaid, it is only rolled over.

SafetyinNumbers, thanks for attaching the SA article which explains the mechanics about the PIK note. This is very helpful for me and probably for others on the fence. I have a small position only acquired recently (between $2.5-$2.6) and feel like I have now a better understanding of the situation. If the PIK note indeed becomes due by settling with shares and this flood the market, it would be a great opportunity to just add more shares.

I think this is a very good way/ mental model to look at this issue. Negative interest rates imply lack of growth or even shrinking GNP, which can’t be good for stocks.

My first thought when I see a lot of big names on the list of founders is “Who is going to do the work?”

CTL is indeed interesting. It belongs to the group of equity stubs ( where capitalization is mostly debt) that can become multibaggers, if the business performs well, debt is paid back and equity replaces is. The equity can become a multibaggers , even if the overall EV doesn’t change all that much. Examples I am watching are ETM, CTL, CCO, CX, TAST, AMC

I don’t think this would be allowed for competitive reasons. More likely, companies owning the customer relationships like the cable companies, Apple , Google, will make it easy to buy a bundle of services and/ or offer a transaction platform that makes it easy for customer to buy what they want.

CVET is a pretty levered bet. It can go up an down a lot. I think the last quarterly earnings report which wasn’t as bad as thought turned the stock around. Congrats to the win. I have kept it on my watchlist and will keep watching it.

So, CMCSA presented their Peacock streaming service today. It looks like they offer a mix of older shows, movies, live TV (news and sports) including the Olympics in either ad supported or without ads (charging $5/month more). Looks like a decent offering from a consumer perspective. I like that they cover the Olympics and my wife might appreciate the streaming news channel. Will likely subscribe to the premium service, at least for the duration of the Olympics. For us, it’s a better offering than Disney +. As for Comcast, it’s not a make or break product like Disney + is for Disney, but rather a supplementary offering to keep both their content and cable business relevant. https://www.cmcsa.com/static-files/0d39e63e-e9bc-4885-9345-0421ed299b37

Reduced FOX and BAESY a bit more.

It’s one of the issues with management, imo. Fries works from Colorado. It’s hard to keep grounded so far away from the action. I remember the oil service company Weatherford, who moved their headquarter from Houston to Switzerland, supposedly to save taxes. That didn’t work out well for them.

My guess is that they will need 2 years to work this out. FWIW, a new CEO is not incentivized to downplay the problem, quite the opposite. I also don’t think that they can reduce their capital levels much more, they will probably keep a buffer to their target capital rate, so the pace of buybacks will slow down.

Sal Daher's podcast on iOS Thanks, this “Angel Invest Boston” podcast is a great podcast series, especially since I live in the greater Boston area. Subscribed.

Interesting clinical candidate with an unmet need. It looks to me like they will need to raise cash with a secondary very soon though. It shouldn't be too difficult to raise money (they've already done some licensing deals - one with a Japanese major and they also got some funds from CF foundation). Their Ph 3 results for Lenabasum should most likely be great (their Ph2 data and recent hiring shows they are prepping for approval) - out in a few months. Stock is ripping. Up 60% since this above discussion. Funnily i discovered this stock from a podcast where a healthcare VC with a great track record was pounding the table on it like crazy. Yes, stock has rebounded substantially. Would you mind disclosing the podcast? I am constantly looking for new material.

Do you think anyone in a NYC apartment building talk to their neighbors or even say hello? I agree that probably should've been a first step. This is NYC, so in any case, the neighbor in question will tell you to GFY. Move somewhere, where you own all 4 walls of your place yourself. That solves this and many other problems.

Reduced GOOG and BAESY a bit.

If you consider the data per share, things don't look that bad. If they ever succeed in normalising the cost base, the culture and eventually the perception, the revaluation will be very considerable. At that time, this episode will seem a huge buying opportunity in retrospect. In this scenario, the buyback programme will appear to have been enormously beneficial. They also missed on revenues, not just expenses and litigation reserves. They have got years of work ahead of them, before things normalize while the competition steps on the gas. The stock is not as cheap as it looks, Imo.

Re SKY/ Comcast - it is my impression that SKY has their own internet network, they don’t have the last mile (or leg) and I am not sure how deep they have pushed into the neighborhoods. For the last leg, they indeed use BT. So I am not sure if merging their assets with Virgin Lightning is the best option, I much less if regulators would allow so. However, SKY is not just Britain, they are allowed Europe and they want to offer broadband everywhere it makes sense. Now with Telecom Italia forced to offer wholesale rates to resellers, they are going to offer broadband there as well, but I am sure they would go into other countries too, if it makes economic sense. That’s why I think that mergers with LBTYA or their subs are on the table.

Capex is 22% of the revenues now for LBTYA - if they can get it to ~12% like CMCSA or CHTR, this company will be gushing astonishing amounts of cash.

Party time:

So this is the next Amazon? AMZN 10 years ago didn’t trade at the valuation that SHOP is trading now.

You have got to dance as long as the music is playing, if you use other people’s money to invest. It’s as simple as that, if you are in the asset management business.

What would cause such a shaky financial future? The only thing I can think of is massive problems with the Trent XWB engine and so far as I know that engine hasn't shown any of the problems the Trent 1000 has and it has been in use for over 5 years by now if there was a problem we would know about it. https://industryeurope.com/rolls-royce-downgraded-to-triple-b-minus-one-notch-above-junk/ RR is barely investment grade with a BBB- rating. Because of thr long term nature of its service contracts, it is likely that customer would get nervous if RR credit fell into junk and that might well trigger a capital raise. They need to get their house in order with respect to FCF - the H1 2019 results were Ok operationally, but there was a huge cash outflow which supposedly will be reversed in H2. If that is not the case, I think we have an issue with the credit rating and I may well exit immediately since it could become very ugly for her equity. Some of this might be priced in, but I don’t think all off it. Anyway, one want to be close to the door if someone yells fire.