Liberty

Thanks for sharing. He's always a bit painful to listen to (which I don't mind as long as he does a good job running the company -- he's not an actor), but he actually got eloquent at the end this time, talking about how long BAC has been around and such. Quite clear that he truly loves his job and the company.

So I've been keeping an investing journal for a little less than a year (76k words since February -- guess I'm prolific). I write various thoughts about various things, keep notes and links, quotes and excerpts, etc. I recently wrote some thoughts about Amazon. Nothing ground-breaking or super insightful, but I figured, why not shares them? So here we go:

this looks like it's from 2013? ??? It is. ??? I saw that in my twitter feed, posted from the NYT Dealbook account, and didn't notice the date (assumed it was new -- they usually don't post old stuff). Now I can't find it anymore so it might have been a mistake. Sorry for the confusion.

Memory could be failing me, but I think the Google guys tried to sell their technology for $1 million in the early day but were turned down.

Allergan buying MAP for about a billion: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/01/22/allergan-to-buy-map-pharmaceuticals-for-958-million/

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=112298&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1982904

LMCA back to being cheaper than LMCK, which doesn't make any sense. Those of you with LMCK, now might be a good time to consider a swap. :) Update: Well, it was briefly. Still pretty close. Update 2: Charter: http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=112298&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1982904 Update 3: Recent writeup: http://seekingalpha.com/article/2605245-liberty-media-is-trading-at-a-meaningful-double-digit-discount-to-its-nav

Thanks. He also mentions Valeant and Transdigm, among others.

http://investor.siriusxm.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=878541

Based on what I've seen, it could certainly appear to be a classic case of bullying. Allergan has leverage over the magazine because they represent a large portion of their advertising revenue, and they used it to kill an article (and fire someone) because it didn't serve their interests. It's even worse, IMO, because the piece was pretty tame. Just Valeant talking about how they do things, even praising Allergan, saying it "has done a great job". Nowhere near as controversial as the stuff that Allergan has been saying about Valeant, attacking their model and accounting and management every chance they get. Can you imagine AGN's reaction if it came to light that Valeant had pressured a magazine to kill a pro-AGN piece and got an editor fired? Also: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-28/ackman-s-5-3-billion-allergan-bet-examined-before-vote.html

Look what I found: http://i.imgur.com/N1J29Sh.png :-X

http://qz.com/287510/where-in-the-world-you-should-rent-instead-of-buying/

Looks like maybe Apple Pay is just the beginning of the replacement of cards & wallets: http://9to5mac.com/2014/10/27/iphone-6-nfc-hotel-keycard-more/

In my mind the true risk is: with a $200 per share offer are they overpaying?! ??? Gio I don't think so. They wouldn't do a deal that is good at $180 but isn't at $200 anyway (you don't start at your max price, and you want a big margin of safety). They're always conservative with their projections, and if you go back to the original deal details, even at 200 it would be great, and if they exceed on synergies - as they usually do - it could be a big homerun. How many opportunities do you get to deploy that much capital at once?

Yesterday, I was re-listening to Ackman's presentation from July 17 on Allergan. Man, I had forgotten some of the crazy anti-shareholder stuff they did (there's so much, hard to keep track of everything). Anyone who hasn't listened to that presentation and is interested in this saga should have a listen, IMO. Here's AGN's Q3: http://agn.client.shareholder.com/earningsreleasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=878172 Looks good at first glance, but I take it with a big grain of salt. This management team will do anything to keep their jobs. When the stock was half the price that it is today, insiders were selling big amounts of stock. Now that they could lose their jobs (they are not significant shareholders) and the stock is much higher, they raise guidance, talk about a buybacks, and say Valeant's offer "grossly undervalues the company"...

Valeant letter to Allergan's board: http://ir.valeant.com/investor-relations/news-releases/news-release-details/2014/Valeant-Delivers-Letter-To-Allergan-Board/default.aspx

I find this and the international sales nice bonuses on top of the great model executed well. Not sure about next year's earnings, though, the range is quite wide with all the new products... But it's wide mostly on the upside so I'm not complaining.

Good job Norm, congrats Packer!

Hydrogen is not a hydrocarbon btw.

You are a pirate!

http://iextrading.com/insight/stats/ Their volume seems to be going up, so that's good. But for other changes, it could take a while. These things are always very slow, but there are certainly a lot more people aware and thinking of these issues than before (regulators, politicians, voters, investors, etc).

http://nypost.com/2014/10/24/editor-firing-eyed-in-botox-takeover-battle/ Wow.

Toyota is a leader in hybrids. But their plug-ins are basically glorified hybrids. Not much extra pure EV range or technology, and they haven't done much of note in the EV field. Like Honda, they missed the boat on EVs, despite a few token concept models and low-volume models to meet California's ZEV regulations and such. Fuel cells probably won't ever amount to anything in transportation (might have more success with stationary applications, though). We already have an electric grid, but we don't have an hydrogen infrastructure, and hydrogen is hard to move around (very 'leaky') and getting it in the first place either requires lots of electricity or natural gas reforming or whatever. If we could just mine pure hydrogen somewhere on earth, maybe they'd be more viable, but as things stand, hydrogen is not an energy source, it's just a carrier, like a battery -- the energy has to come from somewhere else.

Transcript from Ackman's deposition in the allergan court case: http://go.bloomberg.com/assets/content/uploads/sites/2/ackman-depo.pdf P. 139-142 nails it.

Q: How do you make Sears stock returns from the past 10 years look good? A: You cherry-pick dates! ;)