Castanza

rb summed up the Intel situation without actually talking about Intel. Somewhere in the Apple thread he said something along these lines. "It's a massive company, with generally solid products and a sticky business that is trading below 10x FCF. So I backed up the truck." Sure, situation isn't apples to apples, and I don't want to speak for rb. But Intel is a massive company that produces competitive products and has solid entrenchment in multiple markets. As Spek said, the latest earnings report was actually pretty good. People love doom and gloom stories. Especially in the tech space. Apple wasn't going out of business and I highly doubt Intel will be out of business anytime soon.

Same

Looks like ET slashed their div 50% bringing it to .15 quarterly. Seems like a good move to focus on paying down debt and hoping to maintain credit rating.

The NHTSA won't do anything if they haven't already. We must protect our genius, after all. So much for FSD shadow driving the past 5 years and solving 'edge cases'. Thanks, Elon, for signing up everyone within 100 meters of a Tesla for your beta program. Cant help but laugh at the new ratio being used to judge effectiveness of Autonomous software... Miles to Accidents ratio ;D Can't wait to hear what the industry standard will be? LOL

If you have to go with public school, just make sure your kids are in the AP classes. At least where I am from this served as a make shift private school as those kids are generally isolated from peers in many ways. But my HS class size was close to 1k kids as the multiple upstream elementary and middle schools fed into the downstream single high school. I saw a lot of peers from MS dwindle academically as they got lumped into the mixed bag of classmates in non-AP courses. This doesn't solve your original qualm with the public school though.

Kelcy Warren is the main issue. He is a terrible operator and also screws his unit holders when he has a chance. Just look at the preferred he served himself in 2009. He stepped down as CEO but still lingers behind the curtain. I have both KMI and ET. KMI found discipline and is slowly and painfully deleveraging. ET should start seeing FCF starting 2021. As Spec said, KW is an empire builder and not a particularly good operator. What ET needs now is good operators. As far as ESG and solar/wind, these are immensely unprofitable for utilities and ratepayers. Lazard's most recent report is a shiny brochure for the stuff they are selling and has inconsistent assumptions that paint solar/wind better than it actually is. Check out Block island where utility had to buy energy at $200 MWh in North East (where electricity could be had for about $30 MWh). Southern chose Nat Gas over solar because their analysis put solar project is at at negative NPV. Crazy headlines (e.g., LA getting solar at 2 cents per KWh is a nice headline but if you dig into the pricing it's not exactly 2 cents). Basically, nat gas is going to stick around for some time and I say that while holding small position in Orstead and in the middle of putting solar panels on the roof of our house. Based on what I am seeing at Berkshire Energy and NÉE, renewables are immensely profitable for utilities. NEE has been a leader with wind and a monster of a stock. I agree on NG as a good and relatively clean source Of energy, but the Obstruction about building a pipeline To Long Island, where there is a shortage of NG and a lot of houses are still heated with dirty oil, is real, and imo here to stay. As an investor one needs to look at what is actually happening vs what should happen. Outside of major cities NG pipes are being laid all over. I just had it brought to my house for free. Probably distribution main? Was is plastic or steel? The hard spot is approval and easements for interstate transmission. Yeah just distribution under local roads. UGi was the company. I’m just saying, there are thousands of cities all over the US brining natural gas hookups to neighborhoods. Most of the time they run the line to the house for free. I find it doubtful that bat gas will be phased out anytime soon. Not to mention the costs the homeowner incurs when installing gas fireplace, furnace, stove, dryer, water heaters, etc. Purely from a consumption standpoint there is no way bar gas will be phased out anytime soon.

Kelcy Warren is the main issue. He is a terrible operator and also screws his unit holders when he has a chance. Just look at the preferred he served himself in 2009. He stepped down as CEO but still lingers behind the curtain. I have both KMI and ET. KMI found discipline and is slowly and painfully deleveraging. ET should start seeing FCF starting 2021. As Spec said, KW is an empire builder and not a particularly good operator. What ET needs now is good operators. As far as ESG and solar/wind, these are immensely unprofitable for utilities and ratepayers. Lazard's most recent report is a shiny brochure for the stuff they are selling and has inconsistent assumptions that paint solar/wind better than it actually is. Check out Block island where utility had to buy energy at $200 MWh in North East (where electricity could be had for about $30 MWh). Southern chose Nat Gas over solar because their analysis put solar project is at at negative NPV. Crazy headlines (e.g., LA getting solar at 2 cents per KWh is a nice headline but if you dig into the pricing it's not exactly 2 cents). Basically, nat gas is going to stick around for some time and I say that while holding small position in Orstead and in the middle of putting solar panels on the roof of our house. Based on what I am seeing at Berkshire Energy and NÉE, renewables are immensely profitable for utilities. NEE has been a leader with wind and a monster of a stock. I agree on NG as a good and relatively clean source Of energy, but the Obstruction about building a pipeline To Long Island, where there is a shortage of NG and a lot of houses are still heated with dirty oil, is real, and imo here to stay. As an investor one needs to look at what is actually happening vs what should happen. Outside of major cities NG pipes are being laid all over. I just had it brought to my house for free.

Anyone have any thoughts on ET? They seem to have similar issues to all the other pipelines. I think the Dakota Access Pipeline legal threat is a nothing burger. Cash flow doesn’t seem awful and I can’t imagine a world where oil and gas prices never go back up (never say never though). The dividend is also a crazy 20% yield right now. Divy doesn’t seem to be in any immediate jeopardy and insiders have been buying shares hand over fist this past year.

Tech seems to ebb and flow. Intel is out of favor like AMD was out of favor from 2005-2014ish. Sometimes the simplest thesis is the best. I think their fab facilities will become more crucial with time. They do have a culture issue and a leadership issue. But that is always fixable. I also still hold a position and will likely add a bit here and if it continues to down on negative sentiment.

AG small position Silver to gold ratio is currently 77:1. Historically it trades closer to 50:1. Current global consumption is 1b oz annually and production is 800m oz. Silver use in the auto sector from 2002-2020 has grown from 2m oz to over 40m oz. This is mostly outside of EV production which would increase demand even more. Solar panel production has seen similar demand increases 2m oz - 85m oz over the same time period. This is trending down from 100m in 2017 due to increased efficiency in solar panel technology. I think the electric vehicle boom is starting to kick off. Add in solar panels and the demand for silver is going to grow from an industrial perspective over the next decade. I'm not a gold/silver bug by any means, but the current situation seems interesting enough to take a small position.

It's easy to point to the "winners" which have cult followings and say this. If you took that advice in 1999 you would likely be bankrupt. There is no shortage of cult followings for a whole host of companies. I'm not saying PTON will fail, but it's not a good way to invest imo (and I don't think you're saying that).

It's probably worth owning a bit of both but I tend to agree that PM has more broad exposure to some attractive markets.

Financials are strong, guidance is strong, crushing deadlines, single family housing is starting to boom and Denver is a very attractive city. Outside of some totalitarian water regulation implemented from the governments, it's hard to understand what would cause funds to liquidate.

Lots of volume on this today. Anyone hear any news?

Some humor for your Tuesday

RTX at open

Van Trapp from VT if you can get it. Sierra Nevada also has an Octoberfest that’s pretty good. I do drink the Sam Adams Octoberfest which is easy to get where I live. From the German Oktoberfest beers, I prefer the Hacker-Pschorr and the Löwenbräu, but they are much harder to get. The Wegmans near my house has a pretty good German selection; I'll have to keep an eye out for it. Definitely agree on the Sam Adams. I would have to recommend Breckenridge Oktoberfest.

Some interesting talks coming up regarding Central Bank Digital Currencies https://meetings.imf.org/en/2020/Annual/Schedule/2020/10/19/imf-cross-border-payments-a-vision-for-the-future Interesting read by Mark Carney https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/speech/2019/the-growing-challenges-for-monetary-policy-speech-by-mark-carney.pdf

Any must try Oktoberfest brew recommendations?

PM, ATCO, small basket of ET, KMI, WMB, ENB

WFC - started a position again....just hard to not have a position at these prices....

CINR - Ciner Resources LP In short they are a low cost Soda Ash producer with mine location in the Green River Basin Wyoming with 51% ownership. Shout out to NoCalledStrikes. I stumbled upon his blog and subsequent excellent write up when Googling "Cinar Resources blog" after reading the VIC piece. He did a heck of a lot of legwork on this last September so much of the info is still very relevant. - https://nocalledstrikes.com/2019/09/23/get-paid-to-wait-with-ciner-resources/ Decent primer on the Soda Ash industry https://ihsmarkit.com/research-analysis/sustainabilitys-impact-on-the-global-soda-ash-market.html Upcoming conference https://ihsmarkit.com/events/World-Soda-Ash-Conference-2020/agenda.html ____________________________________ New information (post covid) - Soda Ash market has reached an oversupply due to less demand. I believe this will self correct as demand picks back up. Management also had this impression on their latest conference call. - Dividend suspended to reallocate capital - All work with third party contractors have been stopped to save capital. No layoffs reported on company work force - New facility planned for Wyoming has been postponed to free up liquidity This facility was going to lower production costs and increase capacity - ANSAC exit has been moved up one year. Looking at late 2021 ____________________________________ Concerns - Pricing pressure and covid longevity are a real risk to liquidity. Management does seem to be taking steps to address concerns. - Ownership structure - Turkey facility is taking a production from the GRB facility. Why is this bad? Because the annual consumption globally of Soda Ash is roughly 60m tons. The Turkey mines have roughly 2b tons in resources compared to the GRB which has 23b tons. I think the total resource tonnage is a bit irrelevant being as the Turkey mines are much better located logistically to service Europe and China. GRB production is down 33% yoy due to current high export costs and pricing pressure. ____________________________________ Simple Thesis I think this took a big hit simply to the covid environment. Ignoring long term pressure from the Turkey operations I think there is some case to be made for a quick bounce back once soda ash demand comes back. Management did not specifically address a divy reinstatement post covid but I have no reason to believe it would not be when cash flows begin to resemble pre-covid metrics. Lastly I believe there is a good chance this gets consolidated under the umbrella of We Soda (talks of IPO) along with the Turkey operations. No position currently (highly recommend reading NoCalledStrikes post) Thanks

BAC Started in CINR....has anyone done work on this? There was a decent write up on VIC. Looks interesting at these prices as long as they stay liquid (which they seem to be doing). Soda Ash consumption seems to be increasing globally. A few catalysts would be EVs and increased Solar panels. CINR seems to be positioned very well long term. If I had to guess the and some other subsidies will all be brought under the umbrella of We Soda (which has discussed IPO). CINR has no baggage like GEL which is also tied to O&G. Divy also seems like it will come back at some point. Unfortunately there is a K-1. Sorry a bit of a ramble.

PLTR

Closed DKNG put position. 26% gain