Liberty

Q3 (fiscal Q4): https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171218006149/en/HEICO-Corporation-Reports-Record-Net-Sales-Operating Fourth Quarter and Full Year of Fiscal 2017 Net Income up 21% and 19% on Net Sales Increases of 16% and 11% and Operating Income Increases of 18% and 16%. DEPS of 62 cents.

First off, a warning: This isn't about investing. I think there are lessons to be learned from this history that can be applied to investing and thinking in general, but this is on a second level reading. https://www.amazon.ca/Legacy-Ashes-History-Tim-Weiner/dp/0307389006 This book won the Pulitzer prize. Part of what was impressive about it was the depth of research. “The book is based on more than 50,000 documents, primarily from the archives of the CIA itself, and hundreds of interviews with CIA veterans, including ten Directors of Central Intelligence.” Unless you are already super familiar with the agency and it's declassified history, you're bound to learn a bunch of things, as it's very different from the common image that is portrayed in books and movies. I thought a lot in this book was fascinating and shocking. Recommended. I've also just learned that the same author has written a history of the FBI based on recently declassified materials, but I haven't read it yet (h/t Jamie Pastore): https://www.amazon.com/Enemies-History-FBI-Tim-Weiner/dp/0812979230

https://qz.com/1155843/amazonbasics-is-moving-well-beyond-the-basics/

http://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/how-do-machines-learn Good introduction for those not familiar with machine learning/neural networks.

https://towardsdatascience.com/napoleon-was-the-best-general-ever-and-the-math-proves-it-86efed303eeb H/t Tobias Carlisle

This is some Black Mirror shit...

How did you get the 35% growth rate? They've been growing much faster than that in the past few years with their premium-priced vehicle, and are expecting to grow even faster once they transition to their more mass-market model.

Yeah, the Daily Mirror, ok. Finding an overworked delivery person in the holiday season isn't hard at any company, I'm pretty sure. But because this is about Amazon, it makes for good click bait for a tabloid.

Scary big brother stuff.

Chanos thinks Tesla is a zero: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/14/jim-chanos-we-think-tesla-is-worth-zero.html

http://thereformedbroker.com/2017/12/14/a-twist/

https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2017/12/12/the-amazon-machine

FX makes a pretty big difference. In CAD, it's 12% YTD.

I'm not sure... I kind of feel like the fact that they've announced the change for a long time would've led to the market pricing that in (forward-looking..). It's not like it'll happen as a surprise and suddenly it'll gap up. Though I suppose on the other hand, maybe some investors are prevented by their mandate from owning odd instruments like tracking stocks. In short: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Here's the 30-min video: https://www.cnbc.com/video/2017/12/13/watch-cnbcs-full-interview-with-legendary-investor-stanley-druckenmiller.html

https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Batteries-could-replace-three-California-power-12428238.php https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/battery-storage-is-threatening-natural-gas-peaker-plants

Exactly. I'm just saying it's worth tracking both the aggregate organic growth number and the maintenance organic growth number because it sharpens your understanding of how much value is being created. If organic growth was down but maintenance was flat, I'd be less worried than if it was the other way around. But you can't track every business unit at CSU anymore than you can track how the stores in ever city are doing if you're an investor in Starbucks or Home Depot. I track the acquisitions just to get an idea of the pace of deployment and out of curiosity, because it's interesting to see which verticals they're seeing more opportunities in.

Good write-up on FSV here (sub required): https://www.scuttleblurb.com/fsv-cwd/

Last I checked the FCF multiple was something like 24x. For a lot of the past couple of years it was around 20x. Doesn't seem high to me for this business. A lot of VMS businesses trade for lower multiples than CSU because they don't have reinvestment opportunities. Once entrenched in their niches, they're cash cows growing at 1-2x GDP. CSU does have reinvestment opportunities. It has developed a repeatable process of deploying capital at high ROICs. I think this partly justifies the higher multiple (along with management's discipline, the internal diversification vs being in just one vertical, etc). Most of the value is created by maintenance revenue. It's high margin and recurring. That's why management focuses on it, sometimes even sacrificing other things that don't provide good returns or that can be used to get those recurring revenues (f.ex. they'll sometimes drop hardware sales or consulting segments when they acquire new things, or lower licenses--you can see the impact of this in the margins going up over time--this can make the aggregate organic growth seem worse, just like when they buy shrinking businesses for bargain prices). That's why I find it useful to look at both overall organic growth and maintenance revenue organic growth (they break it down). Over longer periods, the maintenance organic growth has been pretty good (esp. ex-FX, there's been headwinds in recent years) and as long as it's the case I'm not worried about the amortization.

One at Jonas: https://globenewswire.com/news-release/2017/12/13/1261083/0/en/Constellation-Software-s-Jonas-Operating-Group-Completes-Acquisition-of-Bookassist-Holdings-Limited.html

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-12/facebook-to-start-paying-tax-locally-instead-of-through-ireland

And Reid's out: http://www.cwc.com/news-and-media/press-releases/cable-wireless-announces-john-reid-ceo-to-step-down.html

https://electrek.co/2017/12/11/vw-ceo-phasing-out-diesel-subsidies-to-electric-vehicles/ That would be a good move.

It's been going in and out the past few days. Hopefully they just leave it on in parallel with the new thing, and over time do some maintenance on it to keep it going (HTML5 charts would be the obvious thing to make it more future-proof).

http://www.leveragedloan.com/amid-investor-appetite-loans-charter-communications-eyes-12-3b-refinancing-package/ Looks like they're lowering further their cost of debt..