Liberty

Slip of the tongue. Not surprising because he probably spends his days thinking about Valeant and Herbalife, and the CEOS are called Michael Johnson and Michael Pearson. Immediately corrected himself and joked about it.

Please, you know that's not what she meant in the context. They do consume the stuff, but they don't go to the club because they want a shake, they go to get some form filled or because a family member said they needed their help so their could get their stamp, spending months to 'qualify' to get other trainees sent to their own club later, etc.

I think he was too good at marketing the event. A zillion people are hitting "reload" at the same time on the site and the servers can't handle it... Hopefully they have a good host that is adding more capacity as we speak.

They just made a big acquisition in Europe. I think that's what the recent leverage is for.

My understanding is that the best debt is bought at times likes the financial crisis, so levering up a bit to get more of it makes sense. Then as the economy recovers, you have more trouble getting as big a discount on what you buy, but what you do own starts paying better so that kinds of compensate. But as I said, it's not a business I know well, I'm just looking at it because it's been recommended elsewhere and it made me curious.

I don't know what's going on there. Haven't looked into him much yet. It certainly doesn't look very good. Isn't shareholder return over the long-term going to approximate ROE more, though? It's not like it's a useless BS metric, though it would be nice to have ROA/ROIC too. I was looking at that, and my understanding is that if your goal is to make the biggest absolute dollar profit, that will naturally go down over time, but it's not necessarily a bad sign. By that I mean that as a young capital-constrained company, you can be very picky and get huge returns, but as you get more access to capital, you then optimize for absolute $ profit rather than just % return. ie. It's better to have 180% on 1 billion than 300% on 300 million.

Should be streamed at the herballife site he mentioned on CNBC (http://www.herbalifepyramidscheme.com/). One of the articles said that Pershing spent 50 million dollars going undercover for the past two years. They must have a bunch of videos of 'distributors' selling each other products at official meetings to inflate sales on paper and juke their stats, and of company representatives making crazy promises to their members about how much they can make, or explaining to undercover members how things really work, etc. Should be interesting to watch.

I've only recently started taking a closer look at this one. I don't yet have an opinion on it, but it sounds like a business that could interest Glenn, considering the other things that he's been writing about lately. Curious to know if you've had a chance to look at it, Glenn?

http://greenbackd.com/2014/07/21/worried-about-a-crash-backtests-using-shiller-pe-to-time-the-market-1926-to-2014/

They can panic the other way. That's what people did in the late 90s. "Gotta buy now before it goes up more!"

Valeant files complaint with the SEC about Allergan claims: http://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanvardi/2014/07/21/valeant-complains-to-sec-about-allergans-war-of-words/ http://www.newswire.ca/en/story/1389296/valeant-pharmaceuticals-contacts-quebec-and-u-s-regulators-about-allergan-s-false-and-misleading-statements Allergan cutting 13% of its workforce: http://business.financialpost.com/2014/07/21/allergan-inc-to-cut-13-of-its-workforce-as-it-tries-to-fend-off-valeant-pharmaceuticals-hostile-offer/ Update: This website has been updated with the replay of the presentation, the slide deck, and other stuff: http://advancingallergan.com/

Can you share with us some of the things you have said that ended up on the cutting room floor?

Congrats Glenn!

Like a Malone business, you have to be confortable with the leverage, and trust that management is an expert at creating a capital structure that is optimized, but not too optimized. The current leverage is pretty high because they just levered up and paid big special dividends, but if you look at it historically, they delever pretty fast after these recaps, and a lof of their debt isn't due for a while. As with Malone, the question is: Are their cash flows durable enough to support that leverage. Each investor has to answer that question for himself... I kind of doubt they've just been riding one cycle. They went through all kinds of stuff just in the past 15 years and navigated all those situations admirably.

Grantham: http://online.barrons.com/news/articles/SB50001424053111904255004580037561004275500

They changed the language a bit in later years, but if you look on p. 45 of the 2013 proxy you'll see it's still there.

Management and culture within the broader company would be my guess, but I'm not as knowledgeable about this business as you guys.

Follow up by Damodaran: http://aswathdamodaran.blogspot.ca/2014/07/possible-plausible-and-probable-big.html

I knew you'd like it, Gio ;)

http://ir.valeant.com/investor-relations/news-releases/news-release-details/2014/Valeant-Pharmaceuticals-Files-Investor-Presentation/default.aspx http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/885590/000119312514272314/d761372dex992.htm Update on B&L growth. Paulson on merger: http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/07/16/john-paulson-allergan-worth-220share-if-valeant-bid-goes-through/

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/17/us-bskyb-itv-liberty-idUSKBN0FM0JZ20140717

Ackman's call just ended. Very good stuff, goes into a lot of detail about a lot of things (it's almost 3 hours long). I encourage everybody who's interested by VRX-AGN to listen. I'm sure the replay and slides will be available here soon: http://advancingallergan.com In the meantime, I have recorded the call, here's the audio file if you want it: https://www.dropbox.com/s/alrvrqs73lvycwl/2014-jul-17-ackman-AGN-VRX.m4a

Both CFX and DHR down a fair bit today, bad quarter for CFX. Haven't looked at DHR, but I think they have lower than expected guidance for 2014.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101839160 Who says things don't change?

The bottleneck is probably on the other side; He could be waiting for more money to come in to then invest and doesn't want the price to run up in the meanwhile...