Ballinvarosig Investors

Biglari still buying, even with the stock hitting 52 week highs. It seems like this will only continue to go higher. The restaurant biz is likely got some decent momentum, the oil business will do well with increasing prices, the insurance operation is continuing to grow, even Maxim is making a tiny profit. If SNS can be turned around, I would even go as far as thinking that this could be a double from here. https://www.dataroma.com/m/ins/ins.php?t=y2&po=1&am=0&sym=BH&L=1

It's not quite as black and white as that. Berkshire had a long history of share buy backs and dividends before Buffett arrived, so while Stanton was committed to the textile business, capital was being returned to shareholders throughout.

Bill Brewster did a podcast with Preston and they discussed it. TIP began as a traditional value investing podcast, but then crypto became a thing. Investing and crypto have two very different audience's, so they made a decision to side pocket the crypto material away from the main investing channel. Both Stig and Preston like crypto, but Preston likes it more, so he's now fronting the crypto section. It's all very amicable, they just realised two things are going in different directions. The irony is that the crypto stuff they do is 10x more popular than the traditional "main" content.

https://www.otcmarkets.com/stock/SYTE/news?id=304071 Remaining stake in Mt Melrose has been flogged. What a disaster that was.

2021 Q1 13-F out - https://www.dataroma.com/m/holdings.php?m=BRK Very little buying activity there.

Any thoughts on the recent results? The market seems to love them, even after stripping out the release of the loss reserves, earnings were at about 70c, which is decent all things considered. I wouldn't be surprised that for 2022, we're going to see Wells earn somewhere in the region of $1 a quarter as the economy continues to pick up. That would put fair value at about $50 for me, maybe a little more if this can start growing again. My thoughts are this still has some more room to run, unfortunately the problem is if I sell, I am not sure where to put the money. Insurance/financials/energy were the few cheap sectors in 2020, but nothing is screaming cheap now.

What a ride this has been. Six months ago, no one wanted to know about Wells, Warren was selling, it had conduct issues, rates were going negative, Wells was never going to make money again. Everything's (apparently) changed since and now it's up 50%+

Wow.

I bought my kid $15 worth of Roblox credit as a treat last week for good behaviour. I asked her yesterday how much credit she had left, she said she spent it all and would like some more. All her friends play it, and likewise are pestering their parents for Roblox credit. It looks a great business model and it's going to continue growing for awhile yet. Looing at valuation, Microsoft paid $2b for Minecraft, but that seems to have a different business model. It seems to be more a one-off purchase (I bought my key for it off Ebay for $2). Whereas Roblox on the other hand is free, but makes a lot more on the in-app purchases. Roblox is still very much in its infancy in terms of revenue generation. I can see them getting into licencing, merchandising, and who knows what else. I have yet to see it making the same sort of penetration like Minecraft has done on that front yet. The valuation is racy, but I can see how Roblox can grow into it, certainly a lot more so than the likes of DoorDash or Uber for example. Also, in terms of valuation, $30b is nothing in the grand scheme of things. I can see the likes of Facebook or Google being very interested in this company, it's target market is 6-12 year olds, and these are EXACTLY the types of people you want to be integrating into your eco-system. So yea, all in all, I think I would buy this at $30b, but my guess is that the day this IPO's, it will probably open up at like 50% up.

I sure hope he doesn't understand supply and demand and its effect on prices and he tries. Supply and demand? Pffft. That's some first level thinking. Elon playz some seriouz 4D chezz Tesla market cap ~= BTC market cap. Offer Tesla shares for BTC and boom done. In a way, that's what Elon is doing. Raise cash by issuing more stock to shareholders; use cash to buy BTC; rinse and repeat...? :o Tesla market cap $820b. Bitcoin market cap $600b. Elon can keep issuing Tesla stock and using the proceeds to buy Bitcoin until he controls the price and can then force a short squeeze that drive up both Tesla and Bitcoin in a virtuous circle :o

https://art19.com/shows/the-investors-podcast/episodes/668756b9-55bc-466c-9389-3a6611d2eeea Has anyone listened to this? Cathie Wood actually characterised herself as a "deep-value investor". Her words - not mine. As an aside, The Investors Podcast is something I had a lot of time for when it started, but what a dumpster fire it has turned out to be. How do you start off with Warren Buffett and end up with $hitcoins and ARKK? By the way, I am very much cognizant that as I type this, Cathie Wood and ARKK have hit an all-time high.

Gamestop opens at $300+

I really hope that Prem is standing on a table somewhere in Fairfax HQ with his team of traders around him, beating his chest and telling the assembled traders that he wants them to ram shares of Blackberry down the necks of the WallStreetBets crowd. Epic Wolf of Wall Streets-style ;D Seriously though, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity for Fairfax. We've stood by this thing for 8 years for no reward. If the market wants to take us out, then let it take us out.

I think the migration of Blackberry to a SaaS company is probably not entirely understood. Blackberry is probably a work in progress in that regard, but it's still a different beast from the cell phone company that it used to be (gross margins are much higher, revenue is more recurring/sticky). Looking across the industry, it should command a premium. At the same time the premium here has gotten detached from reality. Citrix is in a very similar domain to Blackberry, except it's a far, far better business with much high revenue (3.5x Blackberry), higher cash flow, it's actually growing, and has a huge share buyback. It's a comparative bargain at $16b compared to Blackberry. I would be absolutely shocked when we revisit Blackberry and Citrix at the end of this year that Citrix doesn't out-perform Blackberry.

Insiders dumping shares - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-22/blackberry-insiders-unload-shares-amid-biggest-rally-in-21-years Probably too much to hope that Prem is unloading his shares.