Liberty

Sorry to hear the bad new, Gio. That always sucks.. But just never stop investing in yourself - and I don't mean financially - and I'm sure things will turn out well.

I don't think I was expressing myself clearly, because that's what I meant. I just thought it was an interesting thought that came to mind when thinking about dialysis, but that doesn't mean that you should give it meaningful weight for for an investment today, at least until you start seeing more signs that it's approaching. For the kind of time frames I was thinking about, absolutely. And I'll certainly reconsider any cable investments if I see signs of that becoming more viable than it is now. The difference here I think is that dialysis will never give someone the quality of life that brand new kidneys will, while inside a home or office (which is where people spend most of their time), cable + wifi can give you the same thing that wireless would but with a more predictable signal source (radio waves will always bounce off thick walls or off hills...). At first, certainly. But that's the same for every technology, and I think that over the long term biotech will follow similar trends (it might be slower, but we're going in that direction -- again, look a genomics). Just think of how expensive the CPU in a modern desktop computer would seem to people just a few years ago. Billions of transistors and multiple fully functional cores on the same die for a couple hundred bucks? And they use less power than old CPUs? If we think from first principles, like Elon Musk, the raw materials of a kidney are not expensive, right? You could grow one with few sacks of potatoes and a jar of multivitamins (I'm exaggerating to make the point). The very hard part is the IP around it; how to get the extracellular matrix to form properly, and then grow the right types of cells in the right places, all that inside an environment that mimics conditions inside a body (a kind of incubator). We already know that our bodies can do it, so we'll probably harness some of those mechanisms at first, rather than reinvent the wheel and try to do it all ourselves from scratch (in biotech, there's a lot of stuff we can know how to do without having to understand how every minute detail works -- ie. the engineering approach). Heck, we might even grow human kidneys inside of pigs and then harvest them or whatever. All that will be very hard and expensive to develop. But once it is developed, at some point it'll become routine and cheap, just like making multi-billion transistor CPUs the size of postage stamps or boxes with lasers that can read billions of microscopic bumps at high rotational speeds in a dusty living room (DVD players) or whatever. I know I'm kinda dreaming here. Sorry, didn't mean to take the investment thesis in a direction that is probably not useful. I just wanted to share because I thought it was interesting and thought maybe others would think the same. Back to our regular programming now :)

Here is the official answer to the question: Is Bitcoin a safe store of value? [glow=red,2,300]NO[/glow] The people who stole those bitcoins from Mt. Gox probably think they're pretty valuable ;) I see it a bit more as back in the day when someone stole your money from the bank, or the manager of the bank disappeared in the night with sacks of gold coins, and there was no insurance to protect depositors. Doesn't mean whatever currency was in the bank isn't a store of value, but it's definitely more of a Far West, you're on your own kind of world. Glad I don't own any and don't have to deal with these headaches, but it's fun to watch from the sidelines.

I was just mentioning an interesting fact for the long term, not trying to scare people out of this investment in the short term. I don't think anyone has good visibility into the next decade or two of medical applications, probably not even the people working on the stuff. Could most doctors have told you how cheap it would be to sequence a genome today 10 or 20 years ago? It doesn't even seem that big a deal anymore -- we get used very quickly to big advances (same with things like the iPhone, we're not impressed by the tech anymore). I mean, we have surgical robots and augmented reality apparatuses being used to operate on people... It's likely that in a while, we'll have replacement organs and it won't seem a big deal. I just don't know when.

Thanks, good one.

http://www.bloomberg.com/video/comcast-said-to-weigh-subscriber-spinoff-C4ZWR5TfTROqvLMo9FSFcg.html

Anything specific makes you think that or just a gut feeling?

I'm excited. This is so much better than xmas! :D

Yeah, that's too bad. Maybe they felt it wasn't their track record and wanted to start fresh..?

Yeah, that's why I mentioned decades. But I doubt the rate of progress will be linear and predictable. Breakthroughs can speed things up after long periods of slow progress (ie. when we figured out how to turn regular cells (like skin cells) into stem cells, that helped that whole field quite a bit). We'll start with the easier organs and move up and reach kidneys at some point. No reason why not.

I think he just enjoys it now, as long as they come to him and it's people who he already knows (he wouldn't fly out to some studio in NYC to talk to some random talking head). He used to be so shy, but I think Kay Graham taught him that these social things could be fun once in a while.

I doubt they'll spend their energies designing buses, but they could definitely sell powertrain technology to other companies making all kinds of things including buses, large trucks, construction equipment, military vehicles, whatever. They already have deals with Toyota and Daimler. As for electric planes, Musk said he had a design for an electric jet that could take off and land vertically. Not sure if he'll develop it himself or release the design ideas in an 'open source' way like the Hyperloop idea.

And his other company just docked with the space station, is testing re-usable rockets, and plans to send people to Mars. I have to give thepupil some credit for having brass balls that I don't have. If I was short anything Musk was involved in, at any price, I wouldn't be able to sleep at night. Yeah, not betting against Musk probably ranks somewhere along with 'Don't get involved in a land war in Asia' to me. Doesn't mean the stock isn't overvalued or there won't be massive volatility both ways along the way, but definitely in the 'too hard' pile.

Looks like Francis Chou has been buying some debs: http://www.choufunds.com/pdf/Bondport1213.pdf

Just throwing that out there, but at some point in the coming decades, they could hit a wall when we have lab-grown replacement kidneys that have the patient's DNA (no transplant rejection). Probably over the horizon for now, so no big immediate worries. But it still seems like there's a clock on the business model...

Something is definitely happening all right... Down over 6%.

Thanks Makisig, that's very interesting. One thing I would add, though, is that to me this is a bit like talking about general market valuation. It's useful if you're going to invest in an index, but if you're going to invest in a single company, it probably doesn't tell the whole story. I think Valeant is very interesting. If all they did differently from others was make more acquisitions, then I'd be worried. But what interests me is a combination of how management thinks and operates and the business model as a whole, of which acquisitions are only a part (an important one, though). In other words, I think they have a good chance of success because they do many things differently (and better) from most of their peers. I could be wrong, though. I have been in the past :)

Q4: http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/ABEA-4CW8ZW/2990427397x0x729869/6cb98dae-5dac-48f8-a73a-cbb98d4f3424/LMCA_News_2014_2_28_General_Releases.pdf SiriusXM reported strong Q4 results ❍ Subscriber base grew to 25.6 million ❍ Revenue of $1 billion, up 12% from the fourth quarter of 2012 ❍ Adjusted EBITDA(2) grew 41% to $326 million ❍ Net income of $65 million ❍ Repurchased $1.8 billion in shares in 2013, including shares from Liberty Media ❍ Affirmed 2014 guidance: revenue of over $4 billion, Adjusted EBITDA of approximately $1.38 billion, net subscriber additions of approximately 1.25 million and free cash flow(2) approaching $1.1 billion ● Completed sale of first tranche of Liberty Media owned SIRI shares to SiriusXM in November 2013 for a total of $160 million ● Announced proposal to acquire the remaining equity of SiriusXM not owned by Liberty Media ● Live Nation reported record performance in 2013 with revenue up 11% to $6.5 billion and profitability in operating income of $140 million ● Repurchased 5.8% of LMCA outstanding shares in 2013

Q4: http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/AMDA-GY7JI/2847738156x7456752x729868/6dc59434-81c9-42e5-81d7-da57087c517d/LINTA_News_2014_2_28_General_Releases.pdf ● Grew QVC US revenue by 6% and adjusted OIBDA(2) by 2% in the fourth quarter ❍ QVC US operating income increased by 4% ❍ QVC.com revenue as a percent of total US revenue increased to 45%, a 246 bps increase ❍ QVC US mobile penetration was 32% of QVC.com orders ● Grew QVC US revenue by 5% and adjusted OIBDA by 5% in 2013 ❍ QVC US operating income increased by 4% ● Achieved revenue growth of 12% for the eCommerce group in 2013 ● Repurchased $309 million LINTA shares from November 1, 2013 to January 31, 2014 and $1.1 billion in 2013 ❍ On February 27, 2014, the Board of Directors voted to increase the stock repurchase authorization by $1 billion update: Today's price action is funny. Mr. Market has no idea what to think, apparently.

Q4: http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=123046&p=irol-newsArticle_print&ID=1904734&highlight= Company expects to close Paladin Labs transaction on February 28, 2014. Full year 2013 adjusted diluted EPS exceeds previously issued guidance by $0.04. Total quarterly revenues of $585 million, reported diluted (GAAP) loss per share of $6.74 and adjusted diluted EPS of $0.96. Company expects 2014 revenues to be in the range from $2.50 billion to $2.62 billion. Company expects 2014 reported diluted (GAAP) EPS to be in the range from$1.36 to $1.81 and 2014 adjusted diluted EPS to be in the range from $3.40 to $3.65.

A crypto-currency for residents of Iceland, 50% premined to be distributed: http://www.auroracoin.org/ Interesting what bringing currencies in the digital world can lead to.. They need to create one for Canadians, just in case it ever is worth anything.

Yeah, they waited a while before giving the "recommended" seal: http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2013/10/tesla-model-s-recommended-reliablity/index.htm

"Biglari buys Maxim" For personal use? :-*

More about biotech, but interesting: http://compoundingmyinterests.com/compounding-the-blog/2014/2/21/biotech-popping-the-allegations-of-a-bubble.html

I don't spend too much time on macro, but I thought this was an interesting read: http://compoundingmyinterests.com/compounding-the-blog/2014/2/27/the-markets-betting-line-a-look-at-implied-growth-1.html