Liberty

From brk letter: A “non-real” amortization charge at Wells Fargo, however, is not highlighted by the company and never, to my knowledge, has been noted in analyst reports. The earnings that Wells Fargo reports are heavily burdened by an “amortization of core deposits” charge, the implication being that these deposits are disappearing at a fairly rapid clip. Yet core deposits regularly increase. The charge last year was about $1.5 billion. In no sense, except GAAP accounting, is this whopping charge an expense. It makes me wonder, does BAC has the same thing?

Is the letter usually put up on Berkshire's site right after 4 PM, or later in the evening?

Hopefully it's a typo and they actually wanted 150,000,000 shares ;)

I believe these were different warrants... My bad. Thought they had kept some tarp warrants.

At today's price, that's about 1.825 million warrants.

I don't know what is more likely, but I know what I would like: No dividend increase and big buybacks. That way, the market might react badly to the dividend, allowing buybacks at lower prices :)

+1 :D

My wife has been making fun of my anticipation for it. Ha! Mine too. :-[

I can't wait to get the letter. It's like xmas in March!

Finally getting a chance to listen to this. Makes a lot of sense to me, as expected. Sad what these manipulators are doing. One could go through filings of almost any complicated company and write a short report that cherry picks and distorts info to make things look bad, and that's basically what has been done apparently. It's easier with EBIX because they are unconventional and unpolished with PR, so superficial investors who only take a closer look when there's a crisis like this can be more easily confused and made to feel like something might be wrong.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-27/canada-losing-debt-halo-as-bull-market-housing-peaks-with-carney.html

They sure went out of their way to make the whole piece a big ad hominem on Ackman that covers very little else.

Posted in general forum, but this probably belongs here (if only for the record): http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2013/02/bill-ackman-daniel-loeb-bike-ride

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2013/02/bill-ackman-daniel-loeb-bike-ride

Sirius XM Canada Holdings (TSE:XSR) is up 100% in the past year. I wonder if Malone's been buying it too.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-27/gold-miners-come-clean-on-costs-after-lost-6-years-commodities.html

Found this via PlanMaestro's twitter (thanks!); As someone who was too young in 1997 to see all this first hand, it was very interesting to see how the mania was seen at the time (and not just in retrospect).

Jamie Dimon took good care of him today. Can you elaborate on what you mean? What happened?

For those who have an account, there's a new writeup on Markel on the VIC.

To reiterate, the big picture that I'm looking at is: Within a few quarters we'll see the cogen come online and thurso finish its ramp-up. Finally some good news for Mr. Market. Within a few years, Dresden will probably be sold for something like 200-300m (by then it'll likely produce 60k tons/year or more). Landquart will either start making some money or be dumped. There's been signs for a long time that more orders are coming in, that delayed orders are being reinstated, etc.. We'll see if that's real or not, but it's probably worth something in a sale to another security paper company or a printer. We saw what just its hydro assets and some farmland that they're trying to get re-zoned are worth, so the whole thing, including the patents, customer relationships, high-security facility, and modern papermachines, must be worth something. We can zero it out to be on the safe side, but I wouldn't be surprised if we got something ok for it. Unfortunately though, a lot will depend on the swiss franc-euro exchange rate, as that has been eating margins. Will we see a reversion to the mean over time, or do we have a new normal exchange rate? Then what you end up with is a DP company that is much simpler to understand (and probably would get rid of the conglomerate discount) with Thurso and LSQ each with their cogens, hopefully with the LSQ conversion having gone more smoothly thanks to new management and Thurso's experience, and because LSQ seems like a much more modern plant than Thurso -- no old pipe problems there, please. (and if housing in the US picks up a lot, maybe the LSQ sawmill would generate something too) At that point, if they produce about 450,000 tons of DP at around 750/ton, and if DP price is 950/ton (which seems conservative to me), that's $90m of ebitda. The total share count will depend a lot on the convertible debentures, but if they convert it means the share price is in the 30s, so that's not too bad for shareholders. With 18m shares, that's 5$ of ebitda per share, with 16m that's 5.62$/share, etc. At $1100/ton for DP and 16m shares that's $9.84/share ebitda. Obviously, a huge leverage to DP prices. That's been hurting lately, but it could also go the other way. If they sell Dresden, what will they do with the surplus money not used to convert LSQ? Keep a rainy day fund? Retire their most expensive debt? Do share buybacks? All mix of all those? Interesting possibilities.

Off-topic, but this thread is making me thirsty for my fave: http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2526/4066897475_5c814b48ff_z.jpg

Found this randomly via a youtube recommendation, and I remember seeing it a while ago, and iirc it's a BBC production. Most here have probably seen it, but if some haven't, it's always fun to watch Buffett.

Thank you. Update: So if AIG gets to 10% ROE in 2015, I'm curious to know what their ROE number would be like without the DTA inflating the "e"...

I think they posted it here: http://www.bloomberg.com/video/interview-with-elon-musk-in-the-loop-02-25-hymuBpXpTp~b0AYlLTBU7A.html Musk starts at 11 minutes in, but then it'll all cut up within the hour... I'm hoping they'll release it as a continuous video soon.