ratiman

IT expense increased from $.7mm to $2.2mm, there was no capex. If you normalize the IT expense you get an extra $1.2mm last quarter and another $.9mm this quarter. That's where the margin is going, the notorious investing through the income statement. The mysterious reference to "global" expansion is strange because they've barely made a dent in the US market. The increase in inventory to $29mm is strange. They carry more inventory today than when there were 250 stores.

That would be nice if it happened. I don't know what post-Covid revenues will be and how many who ordered during lockdown will come back. The Christmas results were disappointing on both revenues and margins so this quarter will be important. Without as many mall stores DT is less seasonal so Christmas wasn't as big as usual. The monitor report said that raw product costs (ie tea and a few teapots) are about 23% of revenues and with those kind of gross margins, DT should generate better margins than they currently. Maybe margins will improve when DT starts to adjust to the new revenue mix.

@ricksalin on Twitter says earnings power is 50c and he does his homework so I'll take it although I'm a little more conservative. There is probably $1 of cash and tax assets so this is trading at 8x earnings for a stock that should be able to generate 100% returns on tangible capital. The economics of this business are Sees Candy-like. They are actually similar businesses - both are mall retailers that sell comestibles and enjoy high margins and regional moat and well-liked brand although I'm not sure if Sees Candy is sold wholesale. When I see people say this is worth 10x ebitda I ask myself, have we learned nothing from Buffett? The economics of this business are much better than any 10x ebitda business. There is also the possibility that a Tilray will make a stupid expensive bid and the Tilray CEO has mentioned that he's interested in the tea business in a recent interview. There's also a chance that DT makes some sort of announcement during earnings (Tuesday) about expanding into US wholesale.

Yeah I saw that. It's pretty nuts if he can't get funded, or maybe the problem is with institutions? None of my business but he should be a source of entertaining COBF content for years to come. Some of his conference call rants are ????

The latest 13F doesn't show any new positions except Playboy, which has already had a big move. PAR is an interesting one because I've seen some shorts circling it but I haven't looked at it. https://finviz.com/screener.ashx?v=211&t=PAR,APG,RICK,GFL,PLBY,FAT,&ta=0&p=w

The photos are something else https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoinegara/2021/05/25/how-this-democratic-senators-son-made-100-million-in-stocks-and-why-he-fled-to-low-tax-florida/?sh=3e1a88973cbc

SMB Twitter has some personalities that could probably sell shares in a roll-up company, like in self-storage units or Amazon FBA companies. SYTE has a valuable currency and should do something with it, and it could be powerful combined with Twitter celebrity. Do a reverse merger with some Twitter celebrity.

Buy some offshore drilling rigs and turn it into the best way to speculate on higher oil prices. But this third tier fund management business is just a way to bleed shareholders dry while collecting a lot of fees. The only way a fund management business works is if you can ride the success of a fund manager like Bill Gross, Gundlach or Ken Heebner and I don't see that in any of the managers here.

They own like 10-30% of managers that manage under $100mm, right? I couldn't find the latest investors presesntation but that is roughly correct I think. A typical mutual fund is worth about 1% of assets (generously) so even if SYTE owned 100% of the managers it would be worth the proverbial 1 million dollars. That's not even worth as much as a deli in NJ. Why not find some manager with a big twitter following, create a closed end fund and try to hype it up? Because these small cap value managers aren't going to get it done. Get some twitter personality like Puru or Kuppy to create a closed end fund and then hype it up and sell it a premium to NAV and everybody's happy. Or do an ISP roll-up strategy under the old Sitestar brand and get lots of credit cards on autopayment from 80 year olds who never check their credit card statements. That's what B. Riley did with United Online and he turned it into a hugely successful venture fund/i-bank. Let's think big here. No more HVAC or small time fund managers. Something really big to get the market excited and do something interesting with this vastly overvalued stock.

Look at the comps. Tazo went for 3.4x sales. Unilever's declining black tea business is estimated to go for 2.5x. Teavana went for 4x. JDE Peets coffee and tea business goes for 3.5x. An acquirer looking to hop onto the fast-growing botanicals trend with access to online platform would have to pay over the Tazo multiple (3.4). IN my opinion of course. I've been wrong before about DT so I wouldn't listen to me about DT or in general.

It would be surprising if they just shafted their suppliers like that. It makes more sense if the $18mm applies to the leases and the suppliers get fully paid off one way or another. We might find out Friday.

CCAA payment is CAD$18mm, cash on balance sheet is C$30mm, so DT should be able to run the business with ~C$15mm of cash flow and ~C$15mm cash on the balance sheet (right now inventory is very high, probably because supply chain is slow). Capex is very low, this business just churns out cash. Here's an interesting fact: 2/3 of DT drinks are not tea! It's all just artificial flavors that are called tea. I heard an interview with David and he said that anything that isn't coffee or soda is just dumped in the tea category.

Isn't the problem with "asset lite" businesses today that they're all valued on 2050 earnings? OK so your business was insulated from inflation but the multiple was sliced in half, that seems like a loss. If the business is priced like a bond, it will be hurt by inflation no matter what.

Gotham filed 13gs in 1999 at Sbarro, Old Guard, Commonwealth and Key3Media. It probably wasn't Sbarro, Key3 went under, and it might've been Old Guard, which was bought out at $12.

Social security and Medicare or another fleet of bombers, what is it going to be?