Liberty

If Buffett doesn't qualify as genius to you, who does in the field of business/finance?

They sure know where to recruit the best talent: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-05/want-elon-musk-to-hire-you-at-tesla-work-for-apple

That's fair. I didn't start the thread, but the quick version (from memory, I could be making mistakes) is: KLXI is a spinoff from B/E Aerospace (BEAV). The CEO and CFO are going with the spinoff (maybe more of management). They are basically 75% the distribution/consumables aero business from BEAV and the rest is an energy service business. It seems cheap on a FCF multiple basis, but obvious the energy business will face hard times ahead, and competitors like Wesco aren't getting big multiples either. As I said above, I'm not a big fan of this part of the value chain, but some people really like it (FAST has big fans, obviously). I wish I could say more about it, but as I said, I just had a quick look. What I saw didn't impress me enough for me to keep going much further, though I plan to keep an eye on it.

I know almost nothing about it, but had a quick look. Certainly a good sign that the management of BEAV jumped ship (almost a textbook Greenblatt thing), but I'm not a huge fan of distribution businesses. Middlemen isn't the best place to be in the value chain, IMO. On the energy side, management certainly said some of the right things (I listened to about the first 20 minutes of the presentation this morning), but I have no ability to predict energy prices, and if I wanted to play that rebound, I'm not sure which company would be best positioned to do that. Maybe this is cheap enough that you get the energy upside for free, I don't know. But that was just my uninformed 2 cents CAD.

http://m.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/new-alarm-bells-ringing-over-household-debt/article22797037/?service=mobile

They increased their bid for Dendreon to 400m: http://ir.valeant.com/investor-relations/news-releases/news-release-details/2015/Valeant-Enters-Into-Amended-Agreement-To-Remain-Lead-Bidder-In-Acquisition-Of-Dendreon-And-Its-Leading-Immunotherapy-Treatment-PROVENGE-sipuleucel-T/default.aspx

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=112298&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=2014001 If anyone wants the audio of the call: https://www.dropbox.com/s/gg42q2kfh0621v3/2014-Q4-CHTR-cc.m4a?dl=0 Update: I liked this slide posted by Bluegrass Cap: Here's the source: http://www.mediaredefined.com/the-digital-future-of-tv-netwo-968095512.html

Thank you for the video links, I appreciate it.

SIRI Q4: http://investor.siriusxm.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=894894

SIRI Q4: http://investor.siriusxm.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=894894 If anyone wants the audio of the call (sorry, didn't catch the very beginning): https://www.dropbox.com/s/zozpfag6oias1cr/2015-Q4-SIRI-CC.m4a?dl=0

Does anyone has a link to an online video or transcript of the Buffett appearance on Fox? TIA.

Wheeler wrote: Pretty sure Malone is smiling.

I'm assuming Wheeler is on TV somewhere. CHTR just went vertical for a moment. Update: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/05/technology/fcc-wheeler-net-neutrality.html Wheeler's op-ed: http://www.wired.com/2015/02/fcc-chairman-wheeler-net-neutrality

That's the best kind of journey to follow along! Sometimes when you hear from someone who seems to have it all figured out, they have a hard time putting on the "veil of ignorance" and actually remembering how it was to not have it all figured out. It's sometimes best to learn in real-time with someone else. I'm still going through the Mr. Money Mustache blog article by article in chronological order. I'm almost done with 2012. It's very motivating. I'm so happy I got on this path almost 10 years ago, then kind of put things on autopilot and didn't think much about early retirement, and now I realize that I'm pretty much there if I want to actually pull the trigger. Going back to the well to make sure I'm covering all the basics and tighten things up in my life feels like a good challenge. I plan to finish reading MMM and then read Jacob's ERE book. I might actually 'retire' within the next year, we'll see. I'm looking at my options and taking my time to make sure I have a good margin of safety (I'm just 32, so there's no big rush).

Thanks to moatsandvalue for mentioning it in the Transdigm thread. I had a quick look and thought we might as well have a thread for it. Didn't take a deep dive yet, but it seems interesting. It's an aerospace manufacturer and distributor (not just for planes, but also satellite stuff, etc), mostly operating in various niches. Doesn't seem to have the focus on sole-source that TDG has, and their margins are a fair bit lower because of it, but at least the focus on niches and equipment that saves money to their customers through higher efficiency puts them in a fairly good competitive position. They've been compounding at very high rate for a few decades (around 20% for past 10-15 years, even higher in past 5 years), with FCF being much higher than earnings (over 150% in recent times). Most of it seems to be redeployed in M&A, as well as in regular and special dividends. They seem fairly prudent with debt (debt-to-EBITDA at 1.23x), though not focusing on sole-source stuff where there's literally no competition, I don't think they could pull off safely the kind of gearing that TDG has. The current CEO has been there since the early 90s, is 75, and owns 8%. His sons (I'm assuming -- same names, 46 and 48 years old) run the two main divisions and each own about 4%. Total insiders own 25% of the business. They've been paying semi annual dividends since 1979 without missing one. They just increased it 17%. One strange thing is that the HEI.a shares sell for a significant discount over the HEI common despite the only difference being that the .a has 1/10th the votes (47 vs 62). Certainly not something you see with the Malone companies, where the C shares with no votes often trade at par or above the class A... "No one customer accounted for more than 10% of net sales and our top five customers represented approximately 17% of consolidated net sales." You can see the company history here: http://www.heico.com/about-us/who-we-are/our-history/ Here are their subsidiaries to give you an idea of the kind of things that they make: http://www.heico.com/about-us/subsidiaries/ ROIC with Greenblatt's method is pretty strong (mid 50s for past few years, barely dipped below 40 in 2009). HEI.a is selling for about 18.5x TTM FCF, which isn't cheap, but might not be expensive if the business is as good quality as it seems on first glance. As I said, this isn't a deep dive. I just spent a couple hours on it, so there might be tons of stuff I'm missing (maybe including big cockroaches). I just found it interesting enough to create a thread and see if others an opinions on it. Cheers.

http://www.macrumors.com/2015/02/04/iphone-sales-overtake-android-q4-2014/

Or they could build their own spaceship and... oh wait! http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/design/2013/11/APPLREND00.jpg

Rumor that Valeant is looking at acquiring Salix... http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-03/valeant-said-to-weigh-takeover-of-salix-in-latest-pharma-contest

Thanks!

http://www.newswire.ca/en/story/1479643/valeant-selected-as-lead-bidder-to-acquire-dendreon-and-its-leading-immunotherapy-treatment-provenge-sipuleucel-t Could be the beginning of a new platform.

Nice to see Jeff Williams get some public kudos, he deserves them: http://daringfireball.net/2015/01/jeff_williams_apple_executives

Samsung's mobile profits plunge 64.2% after Apple's iPhone 6 devastates premium Galaxy sales http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/01/28/samsungs-mobile-profits-plunge-642-after-apples-iphone-6-devastates-premium-galaxy-sales Wow, Samsung has a 4.5% cash tax rate. And people complain about Apple's tax rate?

Sorry if this is a repost, but Gates did a 3rd AMA:

Canadian dollar is now around 79 cents US.

Apple market cap: 681bn ex-out just 100bn in cash: 581bn TTM FCF = 59.7bn FCF multiple = 9.7x FCF growth rate NTM >20% Apple's ROIC during the last Q (using Greenblatt's method): 472.91% Per share will look even better over time because share count is going down... Horace Dediu: "Apple probably captured more than 90% of available profits in the mobile phone market during Q4."