Liberty

And you can look at how TDG performed during those, including the biggest hits to RPM (revenue-passenger-miles) in recent memory, 2001 and 2008-2009.

Note that the amount of equity that would've been issued to get Allergan was a compromise. Pearson said that he wanted to issue less, and Ackman was pushing for more :)

Not sure, I haven't looked at PCP in a little while.

In my "to read" pile. Looking forward to it :)

TDG, because of all the proprietary sole-source aftermarket content they have. A good proxy for that is just to look at the margins of the 3 companies you list. TDG has made a bunch of acquisitions that have depressed its EBITDA margins a bit recently, but on a steady state they would be in the mid to high 40s. If they didn't have a moat, those margins would no doubt get eroded by competition.

It's hard to say. There are many moving parts and thing I don't know. IMO the bottom line on any equity issuance is getting at least as much, or more, value than you are giving out. So maybe if VRX valuation multiple keeps going up at a certain point it makes sense, or maybe if Pearson and his team see a lot of value that could be unlocked at ZTS (big synergies to effectively significantly reduce the price, growth opportunities, good new platform to do lots of bolt-ons, etc), maybe it would make sense. I'm not knowledgeable enough about ZTS and its niche to know how much the company is really worth, so that makes it hard to judge. It seems expensive if I just look at the multiples of earnings and FCF, but I have low conviction on that belief because there could be a lot of fat to be cut or significant tailwinds on the horizon. In any case, it would certainly be less painful to issue equity around 230+ than it would've around 110 less than a year ago...

Veterinary?... Ackman?... Zoetis?... We will see! ;) Cheers, Gio Pearson previously commented that he thought Zoetis was too expensive, but we'll see, maybe there's a way to make it work eventually and he's just playing it close to the vest.

They periodically disclose how much content they have on various airframes, and the numbers seem to be going up with new ones. The numbers also go up over time with acquisitions, of course. Here's a recent slide: http://i.imgur.com/R5qVbVI.jpg The note at the bottom says that these numbers don't include the acquisitions since june 2013, so the actual numbers are higher.

I think you have most of the big ones. Howley's great, but he also seems to have built a really good team and culture, so I'm don't think things would necessarily go down the drain if he was gone. The existing businesses would almost certainly keep chugging along, the question would be on the M&A front and how clever they are at optimizing the capital structure. To me that falls more into the "less upside" than the "big downside" bucket.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/20/us-amounpharmaceuticalco-m-a-valeant-pha-idUSKBN0O519P20150520 Valeant Said to Be in Talks to Acquire Egyptian Drugmaker Amoun

Solar will crush all fossil fuels eventually, just a question of when. Removing all subsidies on all sides would help it, but hard to do that retroactively, so I'm in favor of helping solar a while longer. http://costofsolar.com/management/uploads/2013/06/price-of-solar-power-drop-graph.jpg

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-19/malone-says-liberty-vodafone-make-great-fit-in-western-europe Malone Says Liberty, Vodafone Make ‘Great Fit’ in Europe

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/may/18/fossil-fuel-companies-getting-10m-a-minute-in-subsidies-says-imf

Why are star athletes paid more than coal miners?

Except Denmark and Germany have highest electricity prices in the world. Several times higher then the US. This hurts the poor. So it is much more expensive, while not being that much greener. I didn't say that renewables were cheaper right now, but they'll soon be, and prices are more complex than that. Fossil fuels get lots of direct and indirect subsidies that are paid by taxpayers even if they don't show up on the electricity bill. There's no doubt which way things are going, and you can't get to the endpoint without starting first with the higher cost and transitional period.

Whoever said that utilities are scared and trying to shoot down their new competition had it right. On some days, countries like Denmark and Germany can be almost entirely powered by wind and solar, something that not so long ago the scaremongers said was impossible and the grid couldn't handle. Sure the grid was designed for centralized power. But we can change the grid. We'd still be in horse carriages if we couldn't move forward once in a while...

Nice presentation at the AGM: http://ir.valeant.com/files/doc_presentations/2015/AGM-2015-Final_v001_g2962l.pdf

Thanks for the reminder, that book has been on my to-read list for a while but I still haven't got to it. I'll bump it up :)

All airlines would have to ground their planes at the same time to have an effect, just 1 wouldn't be material (and they also have a decent chunk coming from defense), and as far as I know, except maybe on pilot strikes, planes keep flying. High fixed cost companies don't want to ground their assets. But also remember that the cost of TDG's parts are very small compared to the overall maintenance and operational costs of flying airplanes. We're talking about small parts that are replaced every so often. Almost immaterial compared to fuel costs, the cost of pilots, the cost of engines, etc. That's part of why they have pricing power, most of their parts are below the radar financially but are crucial if you want to fly.

New open letter by Icahn: http://www.shareholderssquaretable.com/carl-icahn-issues-open-letter-to-tim-cook/

Thanks. So basically, those of us who said that Munger wasn't very familiar with the situation and just said that based on surface level pattern recognition were right.

Couldn't have happened to nicer people.

http://ir.charter.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=112298&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=2049347

Sometimes the perfect is the enemy of the good. I'd rather have many extra gigawatts of solar power that are less efficient per unit than not have those and wait around for utilities to pick up the slack. All those extra panels and systems are helping drive us down the price curve through higher volume and everyone will benefit.

http://brooklyninvestor.blogspot.com/2015/05/market-valuation-scatter-plot.html