dontdodebt

Where can I see this information, that he is using margin?

I couldn't agree more. Malone made his money investing in the cable industry with high leverage and operating with minimal capex. It's been a successful playbook but then cable has done well for the past 40 years or so, at least until recently. You have also had interest rates steadily grind their way down. I sometimes wonder how smart he is versus just, maybe just a little bit, lucky. Well, I didnt necessarly say that the buybacks were crazy, stupid or risky.. It´s a sincere question. IF the operational risk is this high like many in this thread seems to claim, wouldnt it be mad for them to do this HUGE recent buy back? It seems like an act of insanity if so.. My question is more in the line of "Is it likely they would be THAT stupid ? " As an investor, you shouldn´t invest if you don´t understand something because sooner or later you really will go on a mine.. but the signal value of their huge buy back signals to me that they in general are not seeing much of _serious_ and significant technical/regulative/operational risks going forward. If they do, they are maniacs. This is an interesting case.. but overall too many question marks..

Ya the 750m fcf number didn’t make sense to me either. I think what’s lowering it is “principle payments on amounts financed by vendors and intermediaries”. This line is in the reconciliation of ocf to fcf in there appendix of many of their reports. They sold a big business so now they are paying down debt. In a more representative state of the world this should be 0. Zeroing this line out gets about 3b fcf for last 9mo. Maybe just wishful thinking, but my guess they are hiding true FCF in the appendix to keep prices depressed for buybacks. Malone comes off as a guy that really understands value....but I´m not sure if he/they really go to this length to maximize value. I feel that they would be aware that this kind of tricks other stock holders to feed them self and Malone do not come off as a guy that would do that. He is famous for doing a lot of intelligent financial engineering to erase operative earnings, but I do not think he would work it like this without being transparent about it.

If the operational risk and technical and regulatory risk is this high as it seems reading this thread....who in there right mind would do that massive buy back of share instead of derisking as good as possible by pay back debt for example? It seems insane if there is significant operative risks going forward

I also think that their strategy going forward of having the goal of selling at premium prices when they can, buy back stock and maybe deleverage all in all will decrease risk and in the end will have a lollapalooza effect. Obviously, if they manage to succesfully divest the less efficient operations for premium prices to someone that will have a better use for the asset, focus and keep their best assets WHILE the stock price is depressed, then this could turn out to be one of the best investments world wide the coming 10 years. The problem I think is that, at least for me, it is very hard to build a good understanding of the business as a whole, risks, opportunities, regulations and so on. My understanding of it in general is so bad that a lot of bad things could happen that I´m not aware of, and that is why I still don´t want to build a major position in this.

I would also be thankful if everyone that see risks with this business to explain what they are. Obviously there business has a lot of complexity and because of the high leverage, you do not want anything to go south since the equity can easily dissapear. However, given their new laser like focus on divesting business they can sell for premium prices going forward, all time high quality of premium services and products, bringing down the complexity, increasingly cash flows because of lower need for growth/upgrade costs going forward, massive share buy backs....given the cash flows and the strategic plan this have the potential to be a 3x or with some luck even more per share or something like that in 5 years IMO. Clearly, the market is very skeptical and I would like to learn why.

In general you will only get some extra interest rate exactly like alwaysinvert. In general it takes 1-2 years here in Sweden. Alwaysinvert is right.

Sorry for nitpicking, but it was ~1.8 million shares from a pool of about ~46 million shares which means ~4 %. Correct me if I´m wrong.

Ok thanks.

Sorry for being a bit slow. This means that if you hold nasper today, that holding will be split up and you will own one part that is listed in Amsterdam and the other part still listed in Africa?

I wasn´t sure if I had missed something plus I´m under the regulation of not be allowed to sell any financial instrument withing 30 days with profit, so I had to hold it until it got liquidated... So no quick buck for me. Pain!

Yeah, pretty weird pricing from the market yesterday imo. To buy now to this price can not be such a good idea. It can take a long time before the shares get liqutidated at ~42.5 SEK

Last day to accept the bid for 42.5 SEK was yesterday. So if they get over 90% ownership it will probably be "forced redemption" (I´m ashamed, don´t know the english word for this) which means it can take a lot of time (1,2 years) until you get ~42.5 SEK per share. If they don´t get 90% they still could delist the stock (as long as they have at least 50% of the votes and that the majority votes yes on delisting). However, if they just delist the stock it may be a good value buy and hope it to be listed again sometime in the future? Above is my understanding, correct me if im wrong.

But the dialysis industry isnt overly profitable right? Dosent this mean they (which includes Davita) cant lower prices much? Sure they can lower to some segment of the consumer type (like insurers) but then they just raise prices for medicaid. A business have to have some profitability to exist and this business have to exist. Consumers (medicaid/medicare and insurers) have not much choice then to pay up. If goverment force the prices down so the most cost effective company (davita) loose its profitability people will die, its not rocket science.

Ok. "Good" sign then. Big liquidty problem it seems but the hypothesis about a future bid is not as far fetched.