Liberty

Equinix

I just want others to see what I see ;)

Every presentation should have a slide like this, decomposing revenues by source into expenses and profits. Any of you is chairman of the Association of Investor Relations Slidedeck Makers? Please make it so. I was familiar with this in the context of energy flows thanks to the classic chart from LLNL: (Someone on Twitter pointed out to me that these are called Sankey Diagrams, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sankey_diagram)

Transcript/notes of the meeting by Adam Blum (posted on Twitter by Pabrai): https://www.dropbox.com/s/rp9ardwn6ywgwjp/February%2015%2C%202017%20-%20Adam%20Blum_s%20Daily%20Journal%20Annual%20Meeting%20Notes.pdf?dl=0

Bingo. They actually sold the SSL cert business in 2010 iirc, to focus more on the even more profitable TLD business.

I understand that there can only be one .com or .net registrar at a time. But why does it have to be VRSN? Right now it's them by default because they're already there and doing a good job, and they were lucky enough to be there at the start. But unlike a water utility, which is a natural monopoly that is incredibly sticky because you won't dig and lay pipes again, if at some point VRSN does something stupid, or the politics ruling ICANN change, or whatever, it would be fairly straightforward to replace them with another competent tech company, and what would VRSN stock be worth then? I'm not saying this is likely, I'm just wondering out loud of there's more to the moat than a regulation.

Indeed, I'm not saying that they aren't doing anything. I just meant that they don't seem to be doing something that another competent tech company couldn't do at half or a quarter (or less) of the margins if not for the regulatory situation.

What value does VRSN provide to its customers? Genuine question. I looked at the company years ago, but don't remember much, and recently saw the John Huber piece while reading the Saber Capital letter so I put it aside to read later (maybe he answers all my questions). But I guess my first worry would be that this is a business with a regulatory moat (which can in theory be taken away by the same regulatory) that extracts more value from its customers than it provides. Couldn't anyone else offer the same service for a lower price if they got regulatory approval and just accepted lower margins? Why are customers paying for these huge margins? Is it a historical accident that Verisign got monopoly on these top level domains, and is it likely to be changed at some point? What do they do that makes them special apart from having this government license? Thanks, and sorry if my questions have obvious answers.

Bit of a slower quarter for CSU: http://www.csisoftware.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/SR_Q4_2016.pdf But still a bit over 23% FCF growth for the year. The FX for the debentures is still making things a bit fuzzier ($25m swing from revaluation of the Company's unsecured subordinated floating rate debentures (CAD) between 2015 and 2016.) Also, new acquisition announced by Volaris this morning. Press release threshold is $10m: http://www.csisoftware.com/2017/02/volaris-group-a-constellation-software-company-enters-into-agreement-to-acquire-provider-of-digital-financial-services-to-mobile-operators/

Q4: Presentation: http://www.libertyglobal.com/pdf/presentations/Liberty-Global-Group-Q4-2016-Investor-Call-Presentation-FINAL.pdf

Q4 is out. Here's the presentation: http://www.libertyglobal.com/pdf/presentations/LiLAC-Group-Investor-Call-Q4-2016-Presentation-FINAL.pdf

Cool story: https://jalopnik.com/heroic-driver-sacrifices-his-tesla-to-save-unconscious-1792349590 Musk said Tesla would pay for the repairs.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/top-business-stories/drop-the-pretence-toronto-region-in-housing-bubble-bmo-warns/article34027681/ https://twitter.com/RenJohnston/status/832279432320659457

AIG down over 9% right now. Haven't looked at earnings yet, so not sure what displeased Mr. Market.

I'm sure you're right, as I mentioned earlier on Twitter, I just eyeballed it 'back of the envelope' looking at the market caps, so it was a very rough number. Embarrassing that I was this far off, though. Oops, mea culpa.

That's a great idea. Let's use our powers for good, guys and gals.

Buffett is flexible, and he's a learning machine. Maybe it's not him, but it's not because at one point he said something that the situation can't change. Look at airline purchases.

They now own about 7.5% of the non-Liberty float of SIRI, and about 7% of the whole company if you combine both stakes.

Could be cooperative. Maybe Buffett was starting to be interested and got comfortable after showing with them. In other words, might be him, but might not have happened without them there..

Having fun with your copywriting skills, eh?

Either Ted and Todd got more play money, or Buffett got involved. More likely T & T, though, but will probably find out at some point soon.

The new census gives new data about population growth in Toronto: http://www.macleans.ca/economy/economicanalysis/population-growth-isnt-driving-toronto-house-prices-so-what-is/

TSLA stock is up 57% since November. Who said shorting was easy?

I probably read books 50/50 on the iPad Air 2 and on paper. All company documents on the iPad or Macbook Pro.

While Amazon is a major player in all of those industries it isn't a monopoly in any of them. Unlike say google in search or with YouTube. Google is more of an antitrust parodox than Amazon. Yeah. Berkshire is also huge and plays in many industries as a major player, but that doesn't make it a monopoly either.