Liberty

Someone's tweet just made me realize I hadn't heard about this company in a long time. Back when I subscribed to The Economist, seems like I was constantly reading about it, and I remember Buffett investing in it at some point... I guess this is why: "Since 2009, PetroChina has lost $800 billion in market value. That's larger than the entire Italian stock market." That's kind of like Apple going *poof*.. Ouch. I'm not sure how Eddy did the math. Not taking into account shares outstanding and just getting the FX from the ADR, seems like there was a much higher peak in 2007. Down over 73% since then.

Full spin off was scheduled "before end of the year", but might be pushed back because of the situation caused by the hurricanes. We'll know more during the Q3 call, I'm guessing. I'm assuming that the tracking stock will stay the same, it'll just now be asset-backed.

Hindsight is 20/20 no? The original thesis got blindsided by the oil price drop. How could we have known? Its funny how everyone is an expert after the fact. What you see in this thread is real time speculation as to what was going on. Had the oil price not dropped PWE would have quickly delvered and turned around and made a fortune. But that is not how it unfolded. The company that incinerated billions of capital no longer exists. The continuity was broken in June 2016. Liberty, I respect you alot but you haven't done the work on this one. My point is that I'm not comfortable investing in capital-heavy, cyclical, commodity businesses, and sometimes I have a hard time seeing how others get comfortable, so I like to read these threads to try to learn. My point is not that I'm an expert - I said that I didn't know - my point is I wonder how others think they can know what will happen considering how unpredictable and brittle these things seem to turn out to be. The whole "the company no longer exists" is very convenient. Kind of like hedge funds who blow up, close up shop, and start a new one. I get that it's new management and everything, but people liked the previous business a few years ago and thought it was very cheap too, and that oil was sure to go back up, so who says this new one has a different future? That's more my question. I'm not saying it'll do well or that it'll do badly, I'm just curious how it's possible to even know. Even Watsa was hugely bullish on Tom Ward when I went to the AGM. Maybe I just have PTSD because when I used to invest in related-types of companies years ago, none really did well despite everybody's strong belief at the time that they had good management, were cheap, there were structural/secular reasons why they were going to do well, we were at the bottom of a cycle/riding a decade-long super-cycle, that the market was overlooking them, they were high quality compared to their peers, etc (ALS.to, FTP.to, EGD.to, PSD.to...).

If you actually read what I wrote, it's that I thought housing in Canada was too expensive for me and that I couldn't predict when things will change. It's still too expensive, and I still can't predict when things will change, so rather than have my money in a house, I've had it compound faster than the housing market elsewhere. It's very different from saying that PWE is cheap at $6, buying it, and having it fall under $1.

Good if it's the case that it has actually turned. Past couple Qs have less negative op margins, so I suppose that's something. I was taking the high-altitude view, not looking at this particular moment in time. And reading some of the first pages of this thread which began in 2014 and have some very similar commentary to what I'm reading now, including some disbelief at oil being as ridiculously low as $90 for any extended period. Looks like this thing has incinerated billions in capital... I wonder how many millions management made during the past 10 years. GLTA

Just for fun, a 1997 buy recommendation for Amazon: https://www.fool.com/archive/portfolios/rulebreaker/trades/1997/09/08/the-rule-breaker-portfolio-buy-amzn-september-08.aspx Split adjusted, the cost then was $3.21

You forgot to mention what price you'd be willing to pay for it. Or did you mean you'd buy it at 1x FCF? I'd do that too.

I guess that might have to do why no one wants to touch this stock. But isn't that where we come in? Value investors. Also why I do not think the public markets are benefiting this company anymore. The markets can be inefficient, but they aren't quite as inefficient as most value investors seem to want to believe, especially over very long periods of time. Is it really the market's fault or is it that this company's revenues are shrinking rapidly, its profit margins negative, its cashflows often negative and smaller than capex, its equity is shrinking, etc. Does it really have something like 10 billion of PP&E with 7bn of accumulated depreciation or am I misreading that? It's not your job to buy things just because others don't want them. You also have to be right on your variant perception of the value of the company, and with melting ice cubes in commodity sectors, that's particularly tough because nobody knows what commodities will do and time is against you with the melting. And if it's capital-heavy on top of that, whatever they make usually just goes back in to maintain the asset base and isn't going to owner's earnings. By the time you start expanding another down cycle begins because everyone was expanding at the same time... I just quick-glanced it. I'm sure its presentations are full of slides about the riches it possesses just under the ground and if it only can get them out it'll make multiples of market cap and get out-of-this-world IRRs, but history isn't on your side. I think base rates are more useful than most people think. Most turn-arounds never turn. But it's certainly volatile, so I suppose if your skill is trading in and out of things at the right moments, maybe that works. Or it can be speculation on commodity prices, but I haven't seen people with consistent track records of forecasting that. As a long term investment, something pretty dramatic would have to change to make the future different from the past, and with all the capex that will be required just to maintain that huge PP&E... Anyway, I'm probably super wrong, don't mind me. I just like to sometime be a tourist on companies and industries I know little about because I learn things that way, and sometimes an outside perspective can spur fresh thinking.

I guess it's hard to make money on a stock that is down 97% since its peak 12 years ago, and down 57% compared to the price in 1996 (and that's not adjusted for the inflation in the intervening 21 years). Talk about a reverse compounder. I'm not judging, I've ridden some of those a good way down in the past. But still, when Buffett talks about 1-foot hurdles vs 6-foot hurdles, this kind of stuff comes to mind for me :-\

Merger talks: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-axalta-akzonobel/exclusive-akzo-nobel-approaches-axalta-about-possible-merger-sources-idUSKBN1CW2FO

Thank you. We think we're already seeing some signs that the first one is reacting to the pregnancy... But we're trying to keep our eyes on the long-term rewards when we're feeling the short-term pain :D

Doesn't change anything about what I'm saying. When deciding to buy, cars get compared to cars, houses to houses.

I don't believe that's correct. There are definitely non-economic factors at play, just like with buying a car (what brand projects the type of image that I want to show? Will it attract a mate? etc), but money is still a big factor and not everyone is driving a Tesla or Maserati just because that's what they'd really want deep down. Right now what pushes people to overpay for real estate is the belief that prices can't go down for any period (so FOMO + fear of being priced out + we'll just take the equity out later to pay for consumption). If that psychology changes, or if lots of people start being unable to make ends meet as interest rates keep raising and RE rules are tightened, things will change... If you adjust for inflation, most generations in the past didn't buy the equivalent of million+ dollar houses (especially not ones that are just regular houses and not luxury mansions).

I've been buying back the CHTR that I sold at 390 last July...

https://www.aboveavalon.com/notes/2017/10/26/apple-is-facing-a-double-standard

And a new acquisition above 10m in the food industry: https://globenewswire.com/news-release/2017/10/27/1154727/0/en/Volaris-Group-a-Constellation-Software-company-Enters-into-Agreement-to-Acquire-Software-Provider-in-the-Food-Service-Industry.html

Got an X with 256gb coming for Nov 3. Was worth staying up late. Looking forward to taking photos of the kid (soon to be kids) with the new dual lens camera.

Q3: http://www.csisoftware.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/CSI-Press-Release-Q3-2017-Final.pdf

http://www.stltoday.com/business/local/amazon-gains-wholesale-pharmacy-licenses-in-multiple-states/article_4e77a39f-e644-5c22-b5e6-e613a9ed2512.html Amazon gains wholesale pharmacy licenses in multiple states

Yup, but it emits green house gas. But so does a coal burning power generator that fuels our power grid. That's going away over time, and even with the US coal mix, an EV is still much much cleaner than an ICE car. The thermal efficiency of an internal combustion engine in the real world is in the 20-30% range, meaning that 70-80% of the energy in a gallon of gas is wasted as heat. Not that hard to be more efficient than that.. Even coal plants are more efficient than that, and their pollution isn't released right where people breathe in city centers (though burning gasoline is cleaner than burning gas... But anyway, EVs will get progressively cleaner a the grid changes, gas cars get progressively dirtier as they age).

One more for Harris: https://globenewswire.com/news-release/2017/10/26/1154385/0/en/Constellation-Software-s-Harris-Division-Completes-Acquisition-of-Offender-Management-Systems-Provider.html

http://www.bnn.ca/canadian-households-nowhere-near-prepared-for-higher-rates-survey-finds-1.892780

CHTR Q3: http://ir.charter.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=112298&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=2311569

Visa Q3: http://s1.q4cdn.com/050606653/files/doc_financials/2017/Q4/Visa-Inc.-Q4-and-FY-2017-Financial-Results.pdf

http://investor.siriusxm.com/investor-overview/press-releases/press-release-details/2017/SiriusXM-Reports-Third-Quarter-2017-Results/default.aspx