Liberty

Look at prediction of the future from 50 or 100 years ago. How off base were they? So I think it's hard to say what we can and can't do. Progress can go in reverse (look at the dark ages). We need people who are pushing things forward. It doesn't just all happen by itself. People like Musk are making a real difference. If they thought the way you think, our civilization would be much worse off.

Humanity's practical spaceflight capacity was actually going backwards until SpaceX came around, with prices going up, not down. Better materials and computers from other industries are great, but they don't get you a foot off the ground. What you need are better rockets...

Musk doesn't want to go to Mars for the money. He thinks it's good for the human civilization to eventually become multi-planetary, and Mars is #1 on the list of places where a self-sustaining base could be possible. We're not going to terraform the whole planet any time soon, but you have to start somewhere. He's mentioned it many times in interview. I suggest you have a look. yeah but good for human civilization = economic reasons. And to make it cheap and practical, we need a new technological break through. The size of things we can launch into space is limited by our shitty fuel sources we have now. And it is still somewhat risky. If something goes wrong, you are toast. It is not like the work for this new necesairy technology is not being done, as the world is hugely benefited from it if you exclude space flight. His argument is, if nobody does it, then no progress will be made. But Im not so sure about that. You don't think that SpaceX has been making pretty good progress on making it cheap and practical, and making technological breakthroughs, in the last than 12 years that this private company has existed?

Musk doesn't want to go to Mars for the money. He thinks it's good for the human civilization to eventually become multi-planetary, and Mars is #1 on the list of places where a self-sustaining base could be possible. We're not going to terraform the whole planet any time soon, but you have to start somewhere. He's mentioned it many times in interview. I suggest you have a look.

http://ir.valeant.com/investor-relations/news-releases/news-release-details/2014/Valeant-Commences-Exchange-Offer-For-Allergan/default.aspx

That's exactly why Buffett might be open to having someone like 3G shake things up. No idea if it'll happen, but if it can be done, I think it would create a lot of value.

Very possible. I don't think it matters. It's obvious that he's just theorizing and that he didn't look super deep into it. Doesn't mean 3G couldn't cut costs by a lot like they did everywhere they went.

Here's a theory: http://brooklyninvestor.blogspot.ca/2014/06/big-dream-anheuser-busch-inbev-bud-coca.html

http://online.barrons.com/news/articles/SB50001424053111904651304579599960752903986 (If you search for the title of the piece in Google, you'll get the whole thing)

Thanks. Look at SLM's recent price action. Ouch.

Some thinking about bubbles and the people who try to predict them: http://aswathdamodaran.blogspot.ca/2014/06/bubble-bubble-toil-and-trouble-costs.html

http://www.bnn.ca/News/2014/6/17/CMHC-to-return-to-lower-risk-roots-.aspx

Just curious, do you have any examples of this phenomenon?

Don't recall any like it offhand. I wonder why I care if I'm an AGN shareholder getting paid in cash. Feels like they ran out of rational arguments and have to resort to 'unapproved' quotes: *Permission to use quotations was neither sought nor obtained. ;) Delivered by Berkshire's BusinessWire ;D Kind of pathetic, really. Fat Tail Capital said it best on twitter: As Pearson clearly explained on the call, when there's a big merger like this, all the banks send their pitches to both sides, and they'll tell both what they want to hear. Banks are profit-motivated, not really known to take stands on principle. Goldman who worked with Valeant in the past is now with Allergan, and while they were working with Valeant they underwrote an offering and ratified their business model, etc. Now they're probably telling Allergan it's crap. Bottom line is, this will go to a shareholder vote. Shareholders own the business. If Allergan management is so sure that they're right and that they have shareholder support, they should welcome that vote and get it happening as soon as possible rather than try to delay it. The sooner they win the vote and their business gets back to normal, the better, right? But I think they know they'll very likely lose, so they're desperate to try to create as much noise as possible in case something sticks. This is because management has different interests than shareholders (they'll lose their high-paying jobs, and they'll lose some power and reputation if this goes through). edit: Unrelated, but there's a good point made in the call this morning. Pearson points out that VRX is the only pharma that breaks out organic growth. Allergan talks only about overall growth, but they do acquisitions too. So who is it that's not disclosing enough?

SolarCity buys a solar manufacturer: http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/AMDA-14LQRE/3257317271x0x762403/aa368a6f-c0ba-4164-8068-be869edd4e98/Sunflower%20Investor%20Presentation%20FINAL.pdf

Here you go (attached to this post). VRX-2014-jun-17-AGN-4th.m4a

http://ir.valeant.com/files/doc_presentations/2014/VRX%20Rebuttal%20Deck%20Final2.pdf Call going on right now. Worth listening to (there's good stuff in the Q&A part that isn't on the slides -- I'm saving the audio, if anyone wants it). Saying they'll keep posting corrections to misrepresentation later this week and over time as needed, too. What the CFO is saying right now basically destroys what Bronte has been saying. Lots of good stuff in the Q&A part. One interesting thing that they pointed out is that for some products, they don't have the worldwide rights. I think some people assume that because they have the rights in some countries, they must have them everywhere, and so they assign some things to VRX that actually belong to other companies. They also reiterated that without acquisitions, GAAP and non-GAAP would converge, and that since the AGN process is slowing them down on the M&A front, people will see over the next quarters how the business performs with that type of noise. They also implied that they'd be doing buybacks right now if they weren't prevented by the AGN offer.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/06/23/140623fa_fact_lepore?currentPage=all This criticism reminds me a bit of the Halo Effect (excellent book). The piece is long, but it gets really interesting in the middle when he looks at the case studies on which the theory is based. Not saying it means it's 100% flawed (it isn't), but like most theories about business, I think it's wise to take it with a lot of salt and not give it more predictive power than it actually has.

Interesting piece: http://philosophicaleconomics.wordpress.com/2014/06/15/whos-afraid-of-1929/

Anyone ever seen something like this? http://www.marketwatch.com/story/allergan-reiterates-its-belief-that-valeants-business-model-is-unsustainable-2014-06-16

2014 sales from the Medicis assets after the divestitures are going to be around $500m and there are some relatively big product launches coming. Medicis had a pretty big dermatology portfolio, not just the toxin + fillers that they sold. I'm not sure where you get that they sold everything except one drug. (note that they include the costs of restructuring in the cost of purchase below) http://i.imgur.com/1563ULr.png

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-14/citigroup-bofa-said-to-face-u-s-lawsuits-as-talks-stall.html

http://daringfireball.net/2014/06/only_apple Good read on Apple's position and how, in many ways, it has improved itself under Cook as CEO.

Misleading? Shareholders asked them to break out the growth ex-generics so things would be clearer. You now have a more granular view of what's taking place, 2 metrics instead of one (not like they stopped publishing the other), how is that more misleading than a single metric that hides what's going on? And we've been over the rest many times... You know what, your last message reeks of bad faith. You didn't even look at the less-than-15-minutes I suggested that would answer many of the same questions you've been asking 15 times. Good day, sir, and good luck.

http://www.vpsevent.com/may-webcast/ Anyone who wants to understand the growth-or-not of Valeant should watch this video from about 21:30 minutes to about 34 minutes (it's faster than reading a 10K, so no excuses, and quickly scanning the presentation slides doesn't give you the same depth of info). Early in those times in the video they explain how they buy drugs at the end of their lives that nobody else wants for 1-1.2x sales and milk them for cash for a few years very profitably (established products so almost no promotion needed, so very low costs). At around 32 minutes they explain the biovail transaction where they got the big declining assets that are masking organic growth lately, and how they're using it as a cash cow, what are the cash on cash returns of that transaction so far, and how it was very valuable because that's how they got their tax structure. Before that they look at their 3 earliest acquisitions and look at the same products over the whole period until 2013 (so many years) and show the CAGR in revenue for those very same products they bought at the start since then, as well as what they got out of those pipelines (Dow has been particularly productive). At 2 hour 29 minutes the CFO discusses the acquisition model, along with the declining tail drugs they buy that mask organic growth, and talks about the returns on all their acquisitions so far. I encourage you to watch the whole thing, as well as the April presentation, but at least watching between 21-34 mins on the May presentation should explain how it doesn't make sense to mash everything together when you look at organic growth.