AJDelphi

Do we know when he sold the Hyundai Preferred's and what he did with those proceeds? Saw that they mentioned a Korean security in the 2019 10-K but not in the 2020 10-K

Yea I noticed that in the filings too that's why I checked my math and asked the question. Weird situation I've seen a couple other securities on the LSE that are in Euro's too so I always watch out for that. I guess Interactive Brokers doesn't have the LSE Ryanair shares available so going to get them in Ireland. Still Euros

Anyone have a good explanation for why the ADR's trade at a 15-20% premium to the shares in London or Ireland? Seems like they historically have too. I'm just going to buy it in London but was curious

CAAP, Corporacion America Airports is the Argentine operator. Which I think is an interesting one. A lot more potential operating leverage there but have to deal with inflation in Argentina. Management has mentioned a lot of the fees are paid in USD, so maybe its not that big of a deal. GAP is the western Mexico airports. Nice work on Aena Own The Rails . It's one of the cheapest of the big publicly traded airport companies and traffic should continue to grow at good rates in Spain. The government ownership made me less worried about any issues with the concessions as well. Definitely something I'd be comfortable holding for a long time.

I think it would be great if we as investors were fully informed in the filings for any company. Would make our work a lot easier. But I just don’t think that’s reality anywhere in the world. There’s always the dynamics of not telling your competitors too much, leaving things out for legal reasons, not having as high of a standard of reporting for smaller public co’s. If you don’t listen to conference calls, investor days, industry conferences, or have conversations directly with management you are going to have blind spots. Especially on the business strategy part. I feel like that really isn't addressed in public filings well. Sure, there’s the argument that a CEO will sell you on some BS but hopefully that is rare. So yea I got in contact with Glennon and was totally upfront about that. The guy knows more about the business than anyone so I think it’s a good idea to ask him questions. With any small cap company I get in contact with management because it helps a lot. And I don't always like what I find out.

NeverLoseMoney, I understand you disagreed with CMI starting a new business venture and that you wanted to sell out at a price that was equal to the $1.25 tender offer. MOST shareholders are from New Zealand or Australia and they were able to tender their shares easily. In my case, I thought the company was (and still is) worth considerably more than the market price, so I had no intention of tendering my shares. You seem to agree the stock is mispriced and I would think that would make you want to hold onto your shares. Since I had no interest in tendering my shares at what I consider a very cheap price, I didn’t check to see if the tender was available to me as a non-Australian investor (I also use Interactive Brokers btw). But if I wanted to, I’m sure I could have found out if the tender was available to me with a simple email to Glennon. So, I emailed Glennon last night and he responded just a few minutes later. You claim to have read the tender offer documents: I agree, fillings don’t lie. Lets take a look what they say. It sounds like you missed this section: From the 2018 buyback booklet: “CMI retains the discretion (to be exercised on a case by case basis) to extend the Off-Market Buy-Back to Shareholders residing in jurisdictions outside Australia and New Zealand where CMI considers it reasonable to make invitations to participate, provided at all times that the Shareholder’s participation in the Off-Market Buy-Back is permitted under the laws of Australia and the jurisdiction in which the Shareholder is a resident without the need for any filing or approval by any government agency (except one that CMI is willing in its absolute discretion to comply with). Any Shareholder with a registered address outside Australia or New Zealand who believes that they are entitled to participate in the Off-Market Buy-Back in accordance with the laws of Australia and the relevant jurisdiction in which the Shareholder resides (without the need for any filing or approval by a government agency) should contact Link Market Services Limited on 1300 658 099 and +61 1300 658 099 (for overseas holders). The distribution of this Booklet in some jurisdictions outside Australia and New Zealand might be restricted by law and does not constitute an invitation to participate in any place where, or to any person to whom, it would be unlawful to do so.” It clearly states that the 2018 tender offer was available to shareholders in other countries (as long as law in your jurisdiction allows it). The 2016 tender offer was also available to shareholders outside of New Zealand and Australia. It clearly states that in the buyback booklet from 2016: Section 1.3 Page 4. Now it was up to CMI's discretion, so assuming no massive costs in doing so, I suspect they would have extended the offer to you. But you didn't get in contact with CMI or Link Market Services. If Interactive Brokers would not let you participate, you should have addressed that with IB at the time. http://www.cmilimited.com.au/Investor-Centre/?page=News---Announcements The company did not change business direction. They did however change their listing classification. They have always had a mix of businesses. They created a new JV and partnered with Glennon to create Excelsior Asset Management. They used to own TJM and a finance business that were later sold. They still own CMI Electrical. I don’t think this is a change of business direction as the asset management is a small piece of the company. I am also a small shareholder. I have not found it difficult to get in touch with Michael Glennon and get my questions answered. You could have reached out to him at any time and he would be happy to speak to you (even after your unfair comments here). A brief phone call or an email to management and you could have had your questions answered. Glennon is very willing to talk with any shareholder large or small and explain to you what the intention is with Excelsior Asset Management. At that point you could have made an informed decision on how to vote your shares. The buyback booklet explicitly explains who you needed to contact to get your shares tendered. You also could have reached out and had a discussion with him about the new investment mandate, you instead concluded management was acting “unfairly” without any effort on your part to reach out to them and perform your proper due diligence. Maybe contact Glennon directly with your questions. He's very open to answering them regardless of how many shares you own (His email can be found with a quick Google search: michael@glennon.com.au). Again, I’m a small shareholder and management explained the thinking behind the asset management venture to me. After I gave them the time to explain their reasoning, I agreed and I support the new venture (Excelsior Asset Management) because it will cost shareholders very little and has very large upside. I believe that, generally, a control premium is paid once a party goes over a 50% holding in take-overs, etc. I think that should have been required here if the Board had done its job. Changing the business direction of the company, while instituting a limited buyback of 10% to allow shareholders "to get out" (we already saw that was nonsense) at an inadequate price (due to the largest mining downturn in recent history) - all this was just handing Catelan a gift. 1. Leanne does not own over 50% of ECL. Because of the 2016 share buybacks, her ownership went from 38% of the company to 44%. After the 2018 buyback, she now she owns 47.7%. 2. What control premium are you referring to? Leanne didn’t purchase the shares, ECL did. And why would the company pay a control premium to repurchase their own shares? Furthermore, you make a claim that the board didn’t do its job. Could you explain what they didn’t do? The board acted in shareholder’s best interest by using excess cash to repurchase shares at a bargain price. I’m quite happy to see the company prudently using cash to repurchase shares at these prices. This is an intelligent use of cash and I fully support it. Since 2011, they have returned all accumulated earnings back to shareholders via dividends and buybacks. Again, if you thought the stock was undervalued, like I did, you were not forced to sell when the stock declined after the tender offer (that you could have participated in). Also, the stock did not close at A$.83, they were there briefly and then jumped. But never closed at that price. I think shares were very mispriced at that level and it sounds like you agree. If you believed the stock was undervalued the best course of action would have been to patiently wait for the price to better reflect fair value which would have worked out quite well. This is a value investing message board after all. Shares are now at $1.37 and you would have received significant dividends along the way. If you are worried about short term declines, owning illiquid small caps that tend to have volatile stock prices is not where you should be investing your money.

Haven't listened to the podcast yet but seems very relevant considering 5G, Fiber, Backhaul etc. https://www.recode.net/2019/1/10/18175869/susan-crawford-fiber-book-internet-access-comcast-verizon-google-peter-kafka-media-podcast

Why $12 billion? Maybe just being conservative but wanted to check. Liberty is getting $1.054 billion from the sale of Austria. And $12.7 billion from the Vodafone deal. Probably some additional costs there from the transactions but Liberty also gets the free cash flow from those assests until they close. Which should be something, maybe a few hundred million. What I might be missing is paying down debt which would explain why my numbers are a bit different.

vince Yea your math seems on to me. Telnet trades at about 6.8x EV/EBITDA now. They probably wouldn't sell it for less than 10x given the recent transactions. At 10x for Telenet That's about $8.50 per share Liberty value. Ziggo's EBITDA is like $30 Mil more (adjusting for Liberty's 57% of EBITDA at Telenet, and 50% from Ziggo) at $985 million like bigbluffzinc said. So probably another $8.50 there. $13.7 billion of cash for $17.73 per share. That get's me to $34.73 per share. And now we have $4.1 billlion of EBITDA on $25.974 billion of Debt to work with for Virgin, continuing CEE, and Switzerland. With the stock at $27 hopefully they are aggressive in they buyback like Fries is hinting at.

I agree with Spekulatius. Verizon&co have incentive to advertise their best tests and fast rollout. In reality performance will likely be much worse and the rollout will likely be quite slow. How fast will they invest? Will the cut their dividends? I'd be shocked if ATT/Verizon cut their dividend. If they want to compete with a wireless broadband product it will take a TON of small cells and probably new fiber being laid to get closer to their connections. It just seems like it is going to take a while until they can get a dense enough network to get reliable wireless broadband service through buildings. ATT is already spending $20 billion a year in capex so maybe they can fit that within the budget. But if it doesn't which I suspect (already increased 2018 budget to $23 billion), because of those dividend obligations, it will be a slow rollout and don't see why Charter or Comcast wouldn't be able to compete well. If Charter and Comcast wanted to offer a wireless broadband product they could acquire DISH, with it's spectrum, and start building out a network themselves. Or could Charter or Comast make agreements with some of their customers to build small cells to serve other customers in the immediate area? Don't see why not and they already have fiber in the ground on that last mile so wouldn't have to build that out like ATT/Verizon. I assume they are thinking all of this through rationally so I'm not terribly worried about Charter's future in respect to wireless broadband. I'm certainly paying attention though.

I'm estimating owner earnings of about $.38 this year. EPS around $.25 so yea your math checks out with the stock at $6.95. I own it through Liberty though so getting a massive discount on that right now.

So they sold Austria at 11x EV to OCF and Germany, Hungary, Romania, Czech Republic to Vodafone for 11.5x. Looks pretty straighforward what they value the business at. When they bought Virgin Media in 2013 it was at 8.8x OCF. With the 10 billion in cash I'd be totally fine with them buying back the stock heavily with the shares around $30. Could make a large acquisition too though. Maybe Telecom Italia.

Totally agree that it could easily double in 3 years. They used $250 million of the buyback in Q4. Edit: And another $250 Million in January, just checked the 10-K. So $1.5 billion left. Hope they are buying more now.

I tend to think this business can service quite a heavy debt load as the cash flows are very stable. Not quite Utility like but still very good. In relation to Williams and Energy Transfer it’s at roughly the same valuation 13.2 and 14.1 https://www.gurufocus.com/term/ev2ebitda/NYSE:WPZ/EV-to-EBITDA/Williams-Partners-LP https://www.gurufocus.com/term/ev2ebitda/ETP/EV-to-EBITDA/Energy%2BTransfer%2BPartners%2BLP 13 is also much cheaper than the average of 20 EV to EBITDA multiple of all industries excluding financials. The data was from Jan 2017, but with the market being up I’d suspect that ratio is higher than 20 now. http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/New_Home_Page/datafile/vebitda.html Utilities traded at an 18 multiple, and KMI deserves a lower multiple but I think it has better growth prospects than most utilities too. Honestly, I don’t really worry about that relative valuation that much. But more importantly the $2 in owner earnings, DCF, that I think will be at $3 in 5 years.

So it looks like Kinder has weathered the lower natural gas prices just fine. Oil is important, but gas is (edit: 55%) of this business and I think some people miss that. There are some nice tailwinds with the LNG facilities coming online and with exports to power plants in Mexico too. DCF, basically owner earnings, should be $1.99 for the year. The dividend will be $.50 this year and management plans to raise it to $.80 in 2018, and then up to $1.25 in 2020. Backlog is $12 billion, and they expect those projects to have an average capital to EBITDA multiple of 6.8x or 14.7%. Roughly half that is the TMEP project in Canada. If they get those returns, which I suspect they will, I get to roughly $3 in DCF. I’d guess it takes 5 years or so for the backlog to be completed. In addition, they are budgeting to be able to self-fund this and not have to access the debt or equity markets. This is very different than the pre-2014 Kinder Morgan entities where I couldn't stand all the equity issuance. If they have $3 in DCF I think this will be selling for MUCH higher than it is today. At $18 I think KMI is one of the more interesting things out there.