bargainhunter

Big hit after that Citi downgrade. The sellside is typically a great reverse indicator. Does anybody have any insight into the graphic electrode pricing issues/capacity expansion in China they reference (don't have access to the full report)?

Good discussion here. I am also long (but small speculative position only). My thinking is very similar to petec's. I like the deal for the same reasons. FWIW, I do think the Nicaragua risk is somewhat overstated. For one, the World Bank is financing their geothermal project. Never a good idea for a country like Nicaragua to earn the wrath of international lenders. That said, this is Latin America and anything can happen. I take some comfort from the fact that the risk of Ortega nationalizing this project should be almost totally uncorrelated to a lot of the other risks embedded in my portfolio -- Trump doing something else dumb on trade, oil falling further, or even a global recession. Relatively uncorrelated bets like this are not easy to find. So each to his own but I do not view this as a reckless investment.

I own all four of these... do we know each other? ;) BLX in particular very interesting here. BLX intrigues me. I don't see a thread on the company. What's your 30-second elevator pitch? :) Or can you point me to a decent writeup somewhere? I don’t do elevator pitches :-). There is a good write up in VIC from 2014. The stock is significantly cheaper now in termsmof P/B. The ROA improvements that the author eluded to never worked out. I have owned this several times in the the past and bought it below tangible book sndmit always worked out. https://www.valueinvestorsclub.com/idea/BANCO_LATINOAMERICANO_DE_COM/117860 Much appreciated. I will check out that VIC writeup!

I own all four of these... do we know each other? ;) BLX in particular very interesting here. BLX intrigues me. I don't see a thread on the company. What's your 30-second elevator pitch? :) Or can you point me to a decent writeup somewhere?

Total disaster. I was wrong about this one. Made out with a small profit after massively averaging down below $1 (was a total no brainer there), but this is a really disappointing result for long-term shareholders.

This is old news. Management has been pretty candid about mistakes made in the early years. They have tightened their underwriting. And I don't have the numbers in front of me but the size of the average streaming contract has significantly fallen. That of course has created worries that the TAM here is much smaller than some of us thought. Hence where the share price is today. The new mortgage streaming product could change this. Management estimates a TAM 3x the size of the working capital needs that their legacy streaming product addresses. There are other benefits too. Interest payments will be accrued monthly, smoothing out their earnings (rather than just a big annual lump sum which moves around depending on the harvest). Only the interest payments will be delivered in canola (principal repayments in cash) so Input's balance sheet will over time become much less volatile. Early pace of capital deployment is promising. I've followed these guys for a long time. Only a small position currently but I would not write off this management team.

Thanks TwoCities. You make a good point -- in the past my "best ideas" too have not always been the best performers. That argues for a bit of humility. A question on the rolling back and forth you describe above. Would you do this regardless of the tax consequences? What if the unrealized gains were still short term?

Let's say you are running a concentrated portfolio and have the fortune to see your largest position (a microcap) go up 3x or 5x. Suddenly it makes up more than half your portfolio -- a position size you usually would not be comfortable with. However, even at the higher price it is still your best idea -- and you see a lot more long term upside in the stock. What do you do? Sell down part of the position and reallocate into ideas I have less conviction in? Let your winner run and become a larger and larger portion of the portfolio? Thoughts welcome!

Yes, I realize it's no Horsehead or Valeant... ;)

Clearly not a very popular idea, but this one is up almost 40% since I posted. For what it's worth, still looks pretty undervalued. Recent WIN earnings confirmed that things are slowly turning around there. CSAL has a growing deal pipeline, too, and a higher equity price makes it easier for them to get these deals done. Meanwhile, CSAL still yields 11.5%. There is just no reason for such a distressed valuation. If it traded at 8% like GLPI (a similar triple net lease mostly dependent on a single tenant) we get a $30 share price. And remember the dividend will grow over time as they execute on deals. The first of these, PEG, is set to close in April.

Thankyou again Omar. The nice thing about the analysts being a couple of quarters behind reality is we get more time to accumulate at what should be very attractive prices looking back 12-18 months from now :)

Omar, I've been watching this one silently for a while (and also have a small position). Congratulations on your analysis. A very strong quarter -- just as you forecast. In fact, even better given the unexpected return to net profitability. I'm curious - does this change your 2016 estimates at all?

A much unloved REIT spin-off of Windstream's network assets. The stock has been more than cut in half and now yields over 15%. CSAL is trading as if its parent company and sole customer (but not for long as it signs new deals) Windstream is at imminent risk of bankruptcy. Yet the vicious selloff appears totally unwarranted: - WIN is in the midst of an impressive turnaround that the market is yet to catch on to. I expect a much more upbeat outlook from them for 2016 when they report later this month. They are doing all the right things (selling assets to deleverage, using secured debt capacity to cut interest costs, improving their network, etc). The market will soon come around (similar to CTL). - Even if I am wrong and the steady low single digit decline (which has actually halted in the last couple of quarters sequentially, but let's ignore this for now) in WIN's revenues continues, they have plenty of levers to reduce capex and maintain the lease payments to CSAL. Play with the numbers. It is almost impossible to come up with a bankruptcy scenario in the next few years barring some kind of economic catastrophe. - CSAL has already inked one deal diversifying around 10% of their revenues away from WIN. They have a pipeline of 100 deals and the depenendence on WIN is set to steadily decline in the quarters and years ahead. What is the risk here? The plunge in the share price raises CSAL's cost of capital and makes doing non-dilutive new deals more difficult. True. But the current dividend is sustainable as long as WIN doesn't fall off a cliff. In the meantime we can afford to wait and collect a 15% yield. What's not to love?

CSAL. Ridiculously undervalued at these levels. Now yielding 15%.

I'd be adding too if I had the funds. Have been hit by a perfect storm of events like this in my portfolio in the past few weeks. Note to self: Always keep some cash at hand!