Liberty

Loyalty apps can already exist. But they'll never have the convenience and deep system integration of Apple Pay, where you just have to put your finger on the fingerprint sensor and put your phone near the terminal (1 second, bam, or even faster with the Watch). They also won't be installed by default on hundreds of millions of devices. I think over the next few years our wallets will become ever more digital, and those who owns the platforms (Apple, Google) will have a big advantage over third parties.

http://www.cantorcanada.com/pdfFiles/20150609RX.pdf

Apple did announce store loyalty/reward cards will now be available with Apple Pay: http://i.imgur.com/vrDbsqjl.jpg

Maybe there's a deal to be made :) http://www.csisoftware.com/about-us/being-acquired/

Once they finish going all digital, that'll free a lot of space in the pipes to take speeds up. Analog video takes a surprising amount of space (which makes sense when you think that you can't compress it the way you can compress digital HD with something like h.264). It's a big opportunity to be on the cusp of higher speeds, and meanwhile it'll help with the government review to have a lower share of that arbitrary 25mbits number. Also: https://oraclefromomaha.wordpress.com/2015/06/10/charter-communications-time-warner-cable-betting-big-on-the-us-cable-industry/

http://www.wsj.com/articles/liberty-global-ceo-sees-mobile-services-as-important-growth-driver-for-cable-firms-1433864787

Don't forget FX.

+1. Not a shareholder of CSU (unfortunately), but Leonard is incredible. Just skimmed through a few years of annual letters. Wow, WOW, WOW This guy is the real deal. Shockingly good. I have some experience in software and am not easily impressed. He is impressive. (I'm sorry that I did not know about him 10 years ago and that he is looking to reduce his involvement in the company. I had exactly the same opinion. This is how to run a company. OK, so I'm gonna invert and prod people a bit: how come almost nobody from CoBF knew this company and/or invested a significant amount of money into it? If this is the best thing since the second coming of Buffett :D , how come this was mentioned only when it got to 10B market cap? If we missed this one, what other great small companies are we missing right now? What should we do to discover next CSU.to on time and not 10 years (or 2 years - that cost 4x return) too late? Thoughts? I've been invested in CSU for a while and it's my second biggest position, I just don't discuss all my investments. My #1 position has also never been mentioned here and it's 20% of my portfolio. Maybe someday I'll post about it. The problem with "discovering the next one early" is that when someone posts about it, people say it doesn't have the track record yet, and it's likely to look expensive anyway if it's growing very fast when small. Maybe the next one is already posted on the investment forum in a thread with no or few replies, buried on page 18... That's how it works. By the time there's the track record to convince people, many will say that it's too late.

New writeup on the VIC: http://www.valueinvestorsclub.com/idea/LIBERTY_BROADBAND_CORP/136618 Interesting excerpt:

The CEO tries to operate like berkshire. If you visit Berkshire website you can't learn a lot about the dozens of companies they own, it is created just for shareholders. CSU is the same, it is holding company with 125+ plus business, if you look for individual companies you can learn a lot. For example they bought TSS last year http://www.totalspecificsolutions.nl/ They bought this security software in Q1 http://www.interact911.com/ They bought this one few weeks ago https://www.optum.com/providers/clinical-performance/critical-care.html ( formely called picis ) Exactly. Nate, what you did was like going to Berkshire's website to look up Dairy Queens specials. If you go here: http://www.csisoftware.com/our-companies/ You can see some of the operating groups, and by following with them you can learn more about the businesses within each group. But most are selling pretty niche stuff, and probably tend to go to their potential customers rather than hope for customers to come to them, so they might not have big marketing presences. I suggest you read the letters from the CEO chronologically and listen to the calls. Good way to learn more about what they're doing and how he thinks.

Sure you just need to be careful: http://greenbackd.com/2010/03/10/simoleon-sense-interviews-james-montier/ Certainly I would have been better off buying a full position in CSU rather than scaling in as I gathered more information. That's a good point. Another good point is: be careful about hindsight bias. It's easy to say "I would have been better off buying a full position in CSU rather than scaling in as I gathered more information" after things turn out well, but in many other cases, I bet taking time to get comfortable and learn more has saved you from terrible mistakes.

Historically that has been the case, but they've started raising more long-term debt (in a pretty innovative way), and have shown more comfort with debt (see TSS acquisition).

Personally, I think this is noise. You could spend a lot of time trying to understand the competitive dynamics of the golf course management software but I don't think it would improve your investment decision. I agree on that level. No need to understand every single unit. But it's certainly good to understand enough of what VMS businesses do and what the dynamics are in the overall industry. There's a balance between trying to understand everything and understanding nothing...

I have just read Leonard's last AL and I have found it very complete. With much emphasis on the performance of existing businesses, which of course is what you want to see in any company that relies heavily on M&A. Gio I think what Phaceliacapital meant is that you could read all the letters and listen to all the calls and still not be sure what Constellation actually does except run vertical market software (VMS) businesses. You'd get all the financial details about performance, but not much talk about products, managers at the operations level, customers, etc. You have to dig by yourself to figure out more about all that stuff.

Yep, very little about operations is disclosed, which can be a turnoff for many. But there are so many businesses (it's not a constellation for nothing...) in so many niches that I'm not sure how they could disclose things without it it being really clunky. There are also a lot of things that you want to keep quiet for competitive reasons. I think the competitive advantage at the corporate level is capital allocation and M&A, and at the operational level, each tiny business tends to have very little competition because they operate in niches that are too small for the big software players to care about, and they are integrated into the mission-critical parts of various businesses with customized products (back-office stuff for a cab company, a hospital, a school district, whatever), stuff that doesn't change very often, very sticky once you're in, very recurring.

Is there a thread about Constellation Software? I agree its president is fantastic, but don't know much about the company yet. A thread on this board would be very useful! ;) Gio There you go: http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/investment-ideas/csu-constellation-software/ CSU has been one of my faves for a few years. Never really talked about it before around here, but since there's discussion about it bubbling up, might as well make a thread :)

Great Canadian software company focusing on a variety of vertical software markets. Been one of my faves for a few years, though I've never really talked about it here. A few people felt it deserves a thread, so let's make one! Mark Leonard, the CEO, is in my opinion one of the best managers and capital allocators out there. His letters to shareholders (used to be quarterly, now yearly) and calls are worth checking out. A lot of people will no doubt consider it expensive as it tends to hover in the 20-25x FCF lately, but it all depends how much you think quality is worth and what future growth/capital deployment for it is going to look like...

The plot thickens... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/telecoms/11655806/Liberty-boss-in-secret-talks-over-merger-with-Vodafone.html

I remember A Walk in the Woods being fun. Good pick. I recently saw the Reese Witherspoon movie where she walks the Pacific Trail, and it reminded me a bit of it.

Just starting to catch up with demand, making it available in more countries: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2015/06/04Apple-Watch-Arrives-in-Seven-More-Countries-June-26.html

Actually, I have changed my mind… It is not the price at all: I think it is not cheap, but neither too expensive. Imo a fair price to open a new position leaving some room to average down. What bothers me instead is exactly what bothered me with VRX: I cannot easily find organic growth results. Therefore, I cannot easily assess the performance of all the businesses they have bought and keep on buying, after they have been acquired. Liberty, You have followed TDG for a long time now: could you help me get a clearer picture of their organic growth? I know their aim is Organic EBITDA Growth around 10-12%, but what are the metrics you are looking at to monitor how Organic EBITDA is actually growing? I like TDG very much, but without the certainty I am able to understand their business results correctly, I must watch it from the sidelines, just like I watched VRX from the sidelines for a while. Thank you! Gio You are selling your 8% position the day after buying it? ??? They sometimes break down organic growth, and sometimes do a pro-forma of revenues by sector excluding recent acquisitions, but you mostly have to infer it yourself by keeping track of acquisitions. As long as I can keep an eye on organic growth once in a while, I don't mind not having an update every quarter. It would be nice to have it conveniently packaged at frequent intervals, but I tend to trust their track record on that front. With RPMs growing faster than GDP, they'd really have to screw things up to not get a lift from that.

Talks for asset swap: http://bloom.bg/1KItWqj

Don't know about god, but he seems to be good at what he's doing. http://brooklyninvestor.blogspot.ca/2015/06/jamie-dimon-for-dummies.html http://brooklyninvestor.blogspot.ca/search/label/JPM

Again: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-04/vodafone-said-to-discuss-options-including-a-merger-with-liberty

I think this could affect PCP more than TDG. If someone ever 3D-prints TDG's stuff, it's likely to be TDG. They own the IP and the only certification for most of what they sell, and most of what they make is under-the-radar because they are small, low-cost parts (not big sexy engine blades or whatever).