loganc

lognac, I don't think that I've replied to your post. Putting all that aside, I don't know exactly what you mean. My post was in plain English text and I can see it with no problem. I don't know what you mean by formatting that is decipherable. Can you send me a screen grab? Maybe we're having a technical issue. I misread your post. I apologize.

What?? 2000 was not even referenced in the post. The post started with Bush in office. If you don't think the weaker economy in the rust belt had any effect then you need to do more reading. It doesn't take a national issue like 2008. Regional can matter too. Against my better judgement, I am going to try to shift this political discussion to something that is more relevant to investing. Tim, I have seen some of your investing commentary and I respect that you are thoughtful in that regard. I have also seen some of your political commentary and would say that I am generally in disagreement with respect to Trump. To be clear, I am certainly no "Liberal" as it pertains to economic policy. Given that I haven't read everything you have written on all things Trump, I am going to make some assumptions here about your support for his economic agenda generally and as it pertains to trade. If I am wrong about this, I apologize. That being said, I am curious as to why you think the Trump economic policies that we can make reasonable predictions about at this point are going to actually help, rather than hurt, the rust belt areas. Specifically, I think it is pretty clear at this point that there will be some sort of anti-free trade legislation passed in some form. Given the EOs so far, the Trump trade rhetoric during the campaign, and the commentary from Navarro, I believe that is a near certainty that either (1) the corporate tax reform bill will include some sort of border adjustment tax or other measure that will be a de facto tariff on imports or (2) direct tariffs or border taxes (the same thing) will be implemented against China, Mexico, etc. I am in agreement that things like lower tax rates (individual and corporate) and deregulatory measures will be of some help to the rust belt areas. However, it seems to me that there is a very high likelihood that border adjustment taxes or tariffs are going to ultimately be a net negative. I am EXTREMELY skeptical that such anti-free trade measures will ultimately result in any significant increases in jobs for low skilled labor and that the nearly certain rise in consumer prices will be a net negative for these individuals. Further, the second order effects from ad hoc economic policy (e.g. border tax on Mexico to pay for the wall) are very likely in my view to have very negative unintended consequences. So, I am just curious if you have any specific empirical data that would support the notion that a border adjustment tax or some similar measure will yield a significant net positive benefit to low skilled labor in the rust belt.

For that we'd need to hear from the divine master WEB (and/or his foil "the West Coast Philosopher") Why do you keep referencing Buffett with respect to the DVA investment? It is very well known that this is Weschler's investment.

How exactly do you come to the conclusion that Trump represents fairly accurately what the Republican party wants? First, he is a protectionist, which is just about the most anti-free market position possible. Second, he has proposed fiscal policy (to the extent that one even exists) would result in massive deficits (i.e. cut taxes, increase military spending, 500B+ infrastructure spend, no cuts to entitlement spending, and ??B on the wall and other nonsense. Essentially, his budget plan is like Obama's stimulus plan on steroids. So, you are telling me that these two pretty major talking points of his campaign are in line with Republican thinking? Do you not remember the massive fights that have happened over the last 6 years over the debt ceiling? Does the Republican party all of sudden not care about the national debt? Does the Republican party all of sudden not care about entitlement reform?

If you can't tell the difference between comments about sexually assaulting women and those comments from Clinton, then you have serious problems. Edit: As a matter of fact, the response from the hardcore Trump supporters on these comments simply validates the accuracy of the "deplorables" comment.

With a few words snipped that is a excellent summary of this election. The dangerous, corrupt, bloodthirsty, war hawk politician vs. the dangerous populist xenophobic demagogue that, well, who knows what he will do. I find it fascinating that "war hawk" would be a pejorative for Hillary Clinton from the standpoint of the Trump supporter given that a consistent rhetorical position of Trump is that the military has been underfunded (good luck proving that based on military budget allocation through the Obama administration from actual data). Further, a major talking point of Trump is something like knocking the hell out of ISIS (whatever that means - he apparently knows more about ISIS than the Generals) and encouraging increasingly brutal "enhanced interrogation." How is increasing military spending, increasing military actions against ISIS, and encouraging more intense "enhanced interrogation" (plus, encouraging war crimes by "kill[ing] their families") not the actions of a bona fide war hawk?

How do you know the 7 won't have "wow" features? One interesting thing to note: A lot (most?) people are still on a 2-year update cycle. Since the 6 year was such an anomalous spike, the 7 year should get the "echo" of that year, which could boost results. Liberty, What if the 2-year cycle changes? What data do you have to justify the 2-year cycle will continue? I think it is hard to see greater than modest growth from AAPL over the next several years. Logan

This might be off-topic, but I'm curious. Why is it that, without fail, the statement/question "I have not done any work on this"/"How do you value this?" is always followed by the author's supposed variant perception on the stock in question? Why don't you show me your math to rectify GAAP income to Free Cash Flow for FY15?

Why is anyone trying to value this based on EPS? It appears to me that FCF is much lower. For example, management provides an "adjusted automotive free cash flow" of 2.2B for 2015 (3.1B for 2014). I realize that this discounts the value of the finance arm. But, how do you want to value GM finance? Some multiple of book? I don't know. Ultimately, I think GM represents a business that generates far less in FCF than reported GAAP net income with very limited near term growth prospects. I don't think it is close to as "cheap" as many think (e.g. Pabrai slide deck showing >10B of FCF).

I appreciate that everyone wants to talk about the strides that NFLX has made with respect to exclusive content. The company has done a great job in that regard over the last few years. However, HBO continues to deliver on that front and Amazon has obviously made strides to that end as well. I have a few comments for NFLX bulls: (1) Contribution Margin from Growth I think the math that has been thrown around in this thread is highly suspect. I think it is fairly clear that the contribution margin from incremental subscriber dollars will not be 100%. First, the International streaming business is sub-scale and incremental international subscriber revenues (i.e. the high growth engine) are not flowing directly to the bottom line. Second, management is guiding for a contribution margin target of 40% for the Domestic streaming business in 2020. Even in the Domestic business with scale, the assumption of incremental subscriber revenue [1] flowing directly to the bottom line would imply well north of 50% contribution margins. I think the back of the envelope math is hard to justify here. (2) Content Liabilities & Capital Requirements As of 3Q15, 90% of 10.4B of total content liabilities are due within three years. I believe this necessarily means that NFLX is going to be renegotiating these costs within that time frame. What sort of terms will NFLX be able to negotiate? I think this is a very tough question. Further, given the lack of scale in the International business and the fact that the major growth driver is in the International geographies, I believe that NFLX is going to need to raise significant capital to achieve the growth that is implicit in the stock price. To this point, it seems to me that the profitable DVD business has more or less offset the losses from the International streaming business. The DVD business seems to be in decline and the International streaming business is the primary growth engine. It seems like this dynamic is going to break soon and, while the margin from the Domestic streaming business should expand, I think the NFLX shareholder has to assume that quite a lot of additional capital must be raised. Management appears to be guiding for a capital raise in late 2016 or early 2017 and it would appear that they expect to do a debt financing. Perhaps they will be able to pull off a debt financing at that time. Obviously, it is hard to prognosticate the state of the credit markets. However, I find it very interesting that management states their intent to lower the "blended cost of capital over time, while maintaining financial flexibility." It seems to me that achieving that objective would necessarily include issuing NFLX common stock. At present, a convertible security or common stock issuance seems like the best way to achieve that objective. (3) Competitive Advantage When I think about NFLX from a very high level, I struggle to understand the competitive advantage of this business. I don't believe that streaming technology is a competitive advantage as it is ubiquitous. I would acknowledge that the "discovery" aspect of NFLX is very good and that they have done a great job of "curating" content. In terms of the proprietary content, I am not sure how much anyone is going to care about House of Cards in five years. I am not sure what kind of terminal multiple one would put on NFLX if the end game is to turn it into a de facto movie studio. [1] I am assuming growth to 64MM subs and $10 ARPU in 2020.

Perhaps, rather than shit on Rometty, we should all provide a nice "slow clap" for Sam Palmisano for the timing of his exit.

Would anyone with access care to DM me a copy of the MS report? Thanks in advance.

I love these posts. It reminds me of that age-old qualifier: "With all due respect, ..."

I agree with this. I think what Malone meant was that he would give up some voting control at CHTR to facilitate closing the deal. I am not sure that he meant to say that he would exit his investment entirely. Regardless, the statements about DISC are obviously very bullish and correspond with the recent $2B increase to buyback authorization and moving the gross leverage target to 3.25x to 3.4x.