jch548

Porsche is down equally as hard. I believe they own a large stake in VW. Maybe another way to play this...

As Songa operates in a high cost offshore environment the crash in oil prices has hurt the long-term viability of the business. They have a number of old rigs that could get taken out and stacked or salvaged. Statoil has reneged on a number of drilling contracts. If Songa loses these rigs it could mean insolvency. I have sold all my shares.

Someone on another board looked back on the past two years of contract awards and only saw something like a $50mm platform award on an oil project. So the debate is how tied to oil exactly is CBI. From what I have read they seem to be the masters of constructing oil tanks but I imagine that type of work isn't so material to CBI anymore. I saw an analyst claim that CBI will be a main beneficiary of completing the LNG build out in the U.S. On a more negative view Sinopec is stepping back from LNG as the economics are losing favor as China's domestic gas prices have fallen. Watching at the moment.

A few petro-chemical companies have been hit with the oil sell off. LYB and WLK are a couple I've looked at recently. Both are in the plastics end of things. WLK has a very strong record. Tripled ebitda in six years. Benefitted from the increased ngl supply made acquisitions and built up their facilities. Excellent balance sheet with no net debt. They recently made an acquisition in I believe France. Their first in Europe. Westlake will continue to expand with surplus funds etc. Just industry related stuff....

Still following HNRG? I had looked them over earlier. I liked the fact they had some growth in the pipeline but couldn't get a feel for what exactly they were up against cost wise to get the new mine going. Then they came out with a purchase that looked interesting but I still had trouble understanding the economics of everything. Not much info on their web site etc. Stock is down with the oil sell off I suppose. Read estimates have been going up. Anything good happening with HNRG these days?

I was reading a bit about demographics in Africa. Read there will be more births in Nigeria this year than all of Europe. Discretionary income is growing faster in Africa than India. Urbanization is taking hold in Africa. Seven of the ten fastest growing economies are in Africa. The banking market cap in Nigeria is $15B while Brazil's banking sector is valued at $300B. In ten years Nigeria's population will exceed that of Brazil. I know Africa is dicey with all the corruption etc. but you can't argue demographics. They are the antithesis of the declining populations of the developed markets. Besides holding some Conduril I picked up some Atlas Mara Co-Nvest ltd near NAV. They hold a minority stake in Union Bank of Nigeria and controlling stakes in two other banks located in Botswana and Rawanda. Very small position. Carlyle has also taken an 18% stake in Diamond Bank in Nigeria for $150mm.

Saw some old news on Mota-Engil a portugeuse engineering outfit where they had been planning a London IPO for their African sub.... The African sub was to be valued at over $2B. Mota doesn't have a English web site but as best that I can tell their African business was generating most of the profits. African ebitda is running at $360mm annually in 2014. Mota is also bidding on a state owned waste business in Portugal. Not much else going on in Conduril land. The shares never seem to trade though I did see what looked like a half million dollar trade awhile back. We must be trading at three or four times trailing eps. Mota-Engil Africa Postpones London IPO After Espirito Santo Woes By Henrique Almeida July 11, 2014 Mota-Engil SGPS SA, Portugal’s biggest builder, canceled plans for an initial public offering next week in London for its African unit after concerns about Grupo Espirito Santo’s finances roiled global markets. “Events and the performance of equity markets in the last 48 hours meant that the scale of orders was negatively impacted,” Mota-Engil Africa said in a regulatory filing today. Mota-Engil Africa, which was scheduled to begin trading on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) on July 16, remains “fully committed” to carrying out an IPO in the future, it said. Mota-Engil, which owns 100 percent of Mota-Engil Africa, fell as much as 11 percent to 4.40 euros, the biggest decline in more than a year, and traded down 3.8 percent to 4.77 euros at 12:21 p.m. in Lisbon. Portugal’s benchmark PSI 20 Index rose 1.6 percent, trimming this week’s slide to 8.4 percent. Portugal’s Banco Espirito Santo SA jolted global markets yesterday after a parent company missed short-term debt payments. Mota Engil Africa is the latest of a handful of companies to postpone a listing this year. At least five companies in London, including Eastern European (CEC) budget carrier Wizz Air Holdings Plc and U.K. retailer Fat Face Group Ltd. have postponed or withdrawn their sales in the busiest first-half for IPOs since 2007, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Mota-Engil and the Africa unit planned to offer 35 million shares for 920 pence to 1,160 pence each in the IPO, according to the prospectus of offer published last month. At the upper end of the range, that would translate into a market value of 1.33 billion pounds ($2.28 billion), based on 115 million shares outstanding. Mota-Engil Africa was scheduled to announce the IPO price today. “Despite a book of high-quality institutional orders within the announced price range, the aggregate demand was such that a successful listing and after market could not be assured,” Mota-Engil Africa said. Johannesburg-based Stanlib Asset Management Ltd., which manages more than 542 billion rand ($51 billion) of assets in Africa, said on July 8 it planned to buy shares in Mota-Engil Africa. To contact the reporter on this story: Henrique Almeida in Lisbon at halmeida5@bloomberg.net To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jerrold Colten at jcolten@bloomberg.net Marco Bertacche, Srinivasan Sivabalan

I have been out of the stock for awhile. Surprising how low the shares have tanked. I'm tempted to take another look but that can wait I suppose.

I had sent my proof of ownership to Conduril to get on their mailing list. IR said H1 results should be out by the end of September. Has anyone seen anything? Thanks.

The pe is higher when you back out the valuation gains. The thing that bothered me was the restaurant roll out seemed to be going very slow while they are incurring expenses. I like their prospects but want to see how they do the rest of the year.

I've sold my shares as have heard things are slowing down. They have so many things going on I want to watch for awhile. Invested the funds in TSEM. Trying to keep my positions down. http://seekingalpha.com/article/2450305-towerjazz-a-towering-double-in-share-price 100% upside is possible based on possible FCF. Using up idle capacity and taking out over $100 in fixed costs as they shuttered a fab. The numbers look pretty good when you pencil it out.

WAC reported this morning. Disappointing. Big goodwill write down in reverse mortgages and Servicing revenue down while expenses were up. They included a MSR fair value adjustment against revenue. Large jump in expenses for servicing. They cited increased costs associated with a growing portfolio. Confusing? I'll see how the earnings transcript reads. I wonder if this is increased compliance cost though they don't have the same regulatory pressures as Ocwen?

More news was out last night. they signed a ten year franchise agreement to operate two Korean restaurant chains for ten years. An Italian themed chain and an upscale Korean eatery. I was hoping to see something like this as it expands their offerings.

The roll out of restaurant openings is pretty slow. I think of the 158k sg ft they have slated to open maybe 10% has been achieved by the end of the first half. I wonder about this rather lofty 158k sg ft. projection. I have no idea how profitable these new locations will be as they seem to be stepping out of Macau here. I do like the stock with the new casinos and hotels opening up over the next few years.

The board (“Board”) of directors of the Company wishes to inform the shareholders of the Company and potential investors that based on its unaudited management information currently available, the Group will record a remarkable increase in profit for the six months ended 30 June 2014 (“Period”) as compared to that for the six months ended 30 June 2013. http://corpsv.etnet.com.hk/webservice/jsp/ETNET/CorpAn/eng/detail.jsp?VERSION=ENG&DOCCD=81269