Jurgis

I refuse to work for any company that adopts open space office (and forces people to work in said office).

Let's say PYPL were able to disentangle the network aspect of the Discover business from its lending aspect somehow, and acquires it. The question is after acquisition, what do you do with it, and how does the combined business benefit from the merger strategically or financially? Visa and Master are unusual businesses to compete with, part of the reason they are afforded such rich multiples. The consumer facing aspect of Discover makes it feel like it's just a smaller version of V/MA, but it really isn't. Merchant acceptance is just one aspect of the competitive dynamic which is already commoditized. Thinking through what sustains each of those businesses and how they compete in the market place, I think one quickly reaches the conclusion that maybe the DFS network is not afforded much value for good reason . PYPL already has its own network, the virtual one on line. Much smaller than V/MA, but significantly more profitable. That's why it's market cap is 1/3 of Visa, even though its transaction volume is nowhere near that ratio. It's kind of like looking at Wikipedia which is not run for profit, and asking whether Priceline should pay a search engine multiple for it on its traffic. Is the combined company now a better competitor to Google, even if you just look within travel? I think this is too simplified. And I think the comparison to Wikipedia is not good. Better, though not perfect, comparison might be Booking acquiring TripAdvisor - which it may or may not. 8)

Spek raised interesting question: why wouldn't someone buy DFS for their network? I wonder why nobody bought them for their network in all these years though. It would seem that the network would be valuable for any large fintech. E.g. why wouldn't PYPL buy DFS?

Now we know why this did not drop into the close. 8) I sold whatever I had at ~6.95. Did not re-buy.

Another win for writser. 8) Thanks.

BRK. 8)

Anyone knows what's currently in Rule Breaker portfolio? I believe that Netflix, Shopify and Amazon are in, based on what I heard in their podcast. AMZN and NFLX are their ancient picks - not that this disqualifies them as great picks. Apparently though Rule Breakers have way more picks than the ads seemed to imply. I found this: https://daytradereview.com/motley-fool-rule-breakers-review/ . Seems like a new recommendation every 2 weeks ::). That's way too many Rule Breakers IMO. This also explains why they can claim stratospheric returns on famous stocks: you pick 26 growth stocks a year, you have 260 stocks in 10 years >1/2 of SP500! You gonna have the 10x results on some of them ( here they also claim huge returns on BIDU, TSLA, ISRG: https://www.thestockdork.com/motley-fool-rule-breakers-review/ ). Looking at the 2016-2017 recommendation list, it's mostly known cos. Though perhaps they recommended them earlier than I looked at them. I'd have to look at my (nonexistent :) ) notes to compare. And I can't claim that I bought (substantial) positions in the winning ones. Anyway, it might be a good hunting ground, though I'm not sure I'm gonna subscribe. 8)

Anyone knows what's currently in Rule Breaker portfolio?

Somebody needs to tell Mike Fries that broadband is not an app it's the infrastructure over which apps ride. Should I be worried that he doesn't know the difference? How do you get broadband? You use broadband app. How do you get broadband app? You use broadband. How do you get broadband? You use broadband app.

FOXA is narrow moat with negative trend according to M* ;) I would tend to agree. If you want wide moat value stock, buy BRK. If you want wide moat growth stock, buy GOOGL.

They don't have orbit-capable ship. Edit: this has been under development from 2007: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LauncherOne Scheduled for flight in 2020. We'll see. Safety, cost, noise, etc. is not resolved. Space-X is way ahead of them and even Space-X won't have this for 10 years+. As long as we are in SciFi land, we should ship the hot air to space.

What does Lyft has to be with this thread? I'm designating myself as the official moderator for this thread so that it doesn't morph into something else. I was sincerely wondering if Lyft might be a company that matches this thread's title. It seems that this thread's title should be changed to "Multi-Bagger Opportunities With Realistic Positive Outcomes According to BG2008" Please carry on. I'm not gonna defend Lyft or its possible candidacy into future multibagger club. Some arguments pro and con can be found on Uber thread https://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/investment-ideas/uber-uber-technologies/ . I'm getting T-Shirts Made As We speak I'm happy that my post has suggested multi-bagger opportunity for your business. Although for environmental reasons, please send multiple T-Shirts in a single bag. You can thank me later. ;D

Some of these statements from Palihapitiya are just LOL: "The actual business performance looks like a software company" ... "We have spent 14 years de-risking alot of the technologies" Yes. Sir Richard looked quite uncomfortable during some questions.

I hate to join the macro predictions, but China coronavirus epidemic could hit economy/markets especially in the current risk-on state.

What does Lyft has to be with this thread? I'm designating myself as the official moderator for this thread so that it doesn't morph into something else. I was sincerely wondering if Lyft might be a company that matches this thread's title. It seems that this thread's title should be changed to "Multi-Bagger Opportunities With Realistic Positive Outcomes According to BG2008" Please carry on. I'm not gonna defend Lyft or its possible candidacy into future multibagger club. Some arguments pro and con can be found on Uber thread https://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/investment-ideas/uber-uber-technologies/ .

I went to read up on Lyft. I ended up in Twilight Zone Comedy Central: https://investor.lyft.com/ Was thys lyfted from We corporate docs? ::)

The video of Sir Richard and Chamath is funny: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/21/investing/ipo-direct-listing-spac/index.html

I'd probably be interested to buy, but there's no ADR and I don't have a tax deferred account that can trade on German exchange (yeah, I know IB would probably allow this, but I'm not setting up IB IRA just for RKET). And this is not a stock that I'm interested to buy in taxable account since the likely positive outcome is going private with possible short term taxable gains. Edit: Apparently there is RCKZF symbol but Fido is not happy: "Securities flagged as Rule 144A cannot be traded through this electronic channel." ( https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/rule144a.asp ) So I'm not gonna look in more depth. Thanks for the thread though. 8)

A company that produces no money can still be very valuable. The trivial example is a company that acquires appreciating asset that does not throw off cash. Its value still rises as the asset's value rises. Coming closer to E&Ps, if a company acquires land with potential oil reservoir, drills couple wells and discovers the oil, they have not made any money, but they are worth more than before they discovered the oil. Now, the real life is more complicated. No company just acquires the land, drills for oil, discovers the oil and sells itself. Usually it starts producing the oil - so producing some cash - but then plowing it into discovering more oil. If done well, the FCF still might be zero - "All the capital is just plowed back into the ground" like you say - but the company's value might be rising as it has more reserves. OTOH, due to capex, low oil prices, etc., it's possible that the value of the company actually drops even as it discovers more oil. Practically every E&P CEO expects (or at least pretends to expect) that plowing money into the ground is gonna grow the company. Depending on exploration results, oil prices, etc., these expectations might be right or totally wrong. Anyway, yes, E&Ps are usually not FCF gushers and are not valued per FCF. This is all very simplified.

+1 8)

Not true if they are trying to extract max possible price. Even if it sells itself at $2M (for example), it won't sell itself if they gonna try to get $3M. If timing is not an issue and they want max price, they should overprice it and then wait. But that's definitely not a setup RE agents like. They want fast sale for lower price - their profit is fast turnaround and more sales. So yeah maybe FSBO or really find an agent who's fine sitting on a house for half year+. There are more questions: do they want to overprice it at 1.1 immediate sale price? 1.2? 1.5? 2x? Are they fine to wait half year? Year? What if there's a recession and they won't sell? Is that fine? Not? In some of these cases realtor will still be best solution. Actually even in some cases of high overpricing and long wait realtor still makes sense - these $10M/20M mansions that sit on market for years do not sell themselves "by owner". But it would take specific realtor. Anyway, good luck. 8)

Sorry, I have no input on Calumet. Maybe to generalize, that's not an area/situation where I invest. Good luck.

The difficult part is predicting multi-baggers going forward rather than listing them going backward. 8) But you knew that. 8) My latest/current multibaggers (eyeballed by looking for >200% return): AAPL, SHOP, SPCEWS :P If I had to go with value stock that could go up 3X+, I'd say YY. But hey it's Chinese internet co, so there. IMO currently market is pricing most growth/steady-compounder companies pretty optimistically. You still might get a multibagger within >10 year timeframe, but likely with not great annual return. There are always opportunities in small/micro/foreign stocks. The difficulty is figuring out which ones are the real ones. 8)

Yes. https://www.bloomberg.com/quote/EVRA:LN

Tracy Britt Cool. This company is why she left BRK. It's her investment vehicle. I'm pretty sure she's not just gonna sit and collect director's fees. Now, there's a reasonable question whether even she can do well with cash in current business/market environment. And whether she's as good as she thinks she is.