Liberty

Zuckerberg interview with Ezra Klein: https://overcast.fm/+F_9F-g8iA

The only people that are saying "I've got to get on the Facebook and be more active" are in India. Everyone in the developed country has Facebook if they want it. I'm not surprised you don't see any growth where ever you live. That doesn't mean growth isn't happening. You very well may be right... And not to be rude...but I am going to guess that the average FB user in the "West" is going to be worth orders of magnitude more in advertising & revenue than the average FB user in India or other 3rd world countries. So what is this growth in India really worth? There's a slide each quarter showing the ARPUs around the world. But the idea is to skate where the puck is going. And as they say, at some point a big enough quantitative difference makes a qualitative difference... There are so many users outside of NA and Europe that even at lower ARPUs they add up to a lot, and since there's a lot of room for growth left in ARPUs and in unconnected users (millions join the internet every month still), that's runway.

Thanks, that *is* better. Appreciated.

Compilation of all Howard Marks meme between 1990-2017: https://twitter.com/VenkateshJayar2/status/980026327255388161

Thread:

With the caveat that "more stable" doesn't mean "stable", because nothing is 100% stable forever... MCO and SPGI, or things like aerospace parts (TDG, HEI).

Not to nitpick, but I think regulatory moat are very much so not the best moats of all, exactly because the regulations can either change, or they lead an industry to become fat and unresponsive to customer's need, creating a huge umbrella under which better competitors can come in (often assisted by new technologies that give them an edge). Regulatory moats seem more stable when they deal with B2B stuff rather than B2C.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/29/microsoft-reorganizes-splits-company-into-2-divisions.html

http://ritholtz.com/2018/03/jeff-bezos-anti-trump/

I think you're over-thinking it. Google had basically already abandoned Google Finance years ago. It just kept running on inertia, but after a while, technical debt catches up with you... The charting engine was build on Flash, which is being pretty much deprecated all over the web and wasn't going to be tenable much longer. They decided to build a new minimal version inside the search so it's additive to the core product (even if everyone agrees the new version sucks) rather than being something on the side to keep maintaining (even if millions relied on it and it did the job). As for SeekingAlpha, seems like they're just trying to squeeze more out of the model, but there's a danger of killing the goose if they squeeze too hard, which is why they're still keeping the paywall not 100% airtight.

Gotta love that Trump can't even conceive that Bezos is letting the WaPo editorial alone. Trump knows that if he owned it, he would use it as his personal vendetta tool, so he figures Bezos must be doing the same and it must be personal rather than just standard good journalism to scrutinize the POTUS. Here's the original Axios story, btw: https://www.axios.com/trump-regulation-amazon-facebook-646c642c-a2d7-454b-a9a9-cdc6e4eaef2c.html Anyway, accusing Amazon of not paying enough taxes is pretty rich from the man who bragged about it: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-taxes-smart/

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/28/president-trump-reportedly-hates-amazon.html Mr. Banana Republic wants to go after Amazon because some of his friends in retail are being hurt and because of his personal grudge against Bezos...

Do you read conference call transcripts? What is your source?

There's been some M&A speculation premium in the past year that seems to have been unwinding in phases too. I don't think Rutledge wants to sell, and I don't think Malone is going to get a check big enough (and not a bunch of stock that he doesn't want to own), so this has depressed the stock. They've also been in an investment cycle that is temporarily depressing FCF. The market is short-term enough that this probably puts pressure on the stock too, but all these investments will pay off big over time (transition to all digital will free up lots of bandwidth, improve the product, the MVNO should help reduce churn, the new "insourced" support infrastructure should help take transactions out and improve margins, etc). Also, the whole sector has been moving together (CMCSA), so there's definitely some non-co specific forces at play (interest rates do matter, but they're still very low).

4m shares offering with 600k option for more: https://seekingalpha.com/pr/17112023-overstock-com-announces-proposed-public-offering-common-stock

Thanks Alpha23!

Ok. Glad it fixed your problem. Whatever fixes it for you was the right thing to do, I suppose, but with this context, it pretty much has nothing to do about cable vs fiber as technologies.

I'd be buying CHTR, but position already big enough...

https://www.totaltele.com/view.aspx?ID=499718 Liberty Global scraps $876m bid for Multimedia Polska

Good point, RB. I would add that Buffett went to a local restaurant in Omaha and determined that folks were still using their AMEX card. Fast Forward today an investor would be able to track FB downloads on the Apple app store and Google play, in addition to any anecdotal evidence about family or friends deleting their FB. https://www.buzzfeed.com/alexkantrowitz/nothing-is-going-to-happen-to-facebook-or-mark-zuckerberg "And though users posted #DeleteFacebook en masse, Facebook actually rose to 8th place from 12th in the iOS mobile App Store since the day before the Cambridge Analytica news broke. It’s holding steady on Android, too. After examining whether first-time US installs of Facebook were dropping, Randy Nelson, head of mobile insights at app analytics company SensorTower, told BuzzFeed News: “The short answer is no.” App Store rankings don't directly reflect user numbers, but they're a good of indicator of interest." Also: https://www.appannie.com/en/apps/ios/top/united-states/overall/iphone/ https://www.appannie.com/en/apps/google-play/top/united-states/overall/

I doubt that your packet losses and ping spikes are due to neighbors sharing the network and/or inherent cable (vs FIOS) issues. I'm pretty sure it's due to either the infrastructure the company has locally or losses on physical cable or possibly even connection to backbone (I've even had one game where the issue was backbone to another backbone connection that was being crapped by whatever the backbone interconnect politics was playing at the time). IMO and from what I've heard all of these can occur with FIOS too, so it's somewhat a crapshoot what you gonna get in specific location/specific companies/etc. Best bet is to have a house that has multiple providers and test all. And even then the quality may change in couple months (for who-knows-what reasons). However, I can't prove any of the above, so FWIW. 8) First question I'd ask if he was on wifi or on a wired connection...

These costs cited don't mean much because they'll vary a lot depending on where you are (population density, regulations, labor costs, etc). Fiber in rural alabama won't cost the same per passing as in Hong Kong. Extending fiber to somewhere that already has it is one thing, bringing it to somewhere that doesn't is another, etc.

I have got. FIOS Gigbit and cable can’t touch it. I actually tried it and switched it toi cable for a while l because they gave me a good offer with 250Mbit, but the issue is not speed, it is ping and packet losses. I ditched cable fairly quickly. Fiber, where it is available has high market shares and houses when sold listing the availability as a plus. I think it is also getting cheaper to get fiber to the house. Fiber is great. Cable has tons of fiber up to local nodes too. The point is, building new fiber where it doesn't already exist, especially in areas that aren't super densely populated, is VERY expensive. Anything where you have to dig trenches and deal with permits and such, and get new wires to houses will be expensive. If you had to re-build a cable network from the ground up today it would be astronomically expensive too. Over most of Charter footprint, overbuilding fiber doesn't make much sense, especially since most people don't even know what latency or packet losses are (guessing you're a gamer). Even Google has found Google Fiber harder than they expected...

I am guessing that Malone purchased and valued cable assets at lower EBITDA multiples back then when interest rates were higher.I also think that the price increases taper out and are lower than they used to be. just my guess, I have not looked at historical numbers closely. Cable systems do have competition in most areas. Where I live, FIOS for example eats their lunch. There are many variables. He bought the assets at lower multiples, but they were also much smaller and less developed (scale is the most valuable thing in cable), as he was doing a roll up of the industry... Rutledge said that his whole footprint can pretty inexpensively get to a gig, and has a path to 10 gigs of bandwidth. Fiber is competitive but much much more expensive, and so the ROI for overbuilds doesn't make much sense.