Liberty

http://www.euwid-paper.com/news/singlenews/archive/2012/january/Artikel/soedra-commences-dissolving-pulp-production-at-moerrum.html

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-25/apple-investors-await-dividend-gusher-as-cook-ponders-cash-hoard.html

Thanks!

Updated presentation: http://www.fortresspaper.com/pdf/Fortress_Paper_Investor_Presentation_Aug_2011.pdf

Wasn't he the COO of RIM, though (unless I'm misremembering)? Seems like he was already in a position to do most of what he's now saying he's going to do.

Interesting. Will be curious to see how the new guy does. This quote from the G&M isn't very reassuring: "Research In Motion Ltd.’s new chief executive officer says the company is doing everything right and does not need a change in strategy, and must instead focus on harnessing its talent to improve the BlackBerry and revive sales." http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/at-research-in-motion-a-new-ceo-vows-to-silence-the-doomsayers/article2310968/

FTP got a good deal from Mercer only because they knew how they wanted to improve the assets and get a lot more cashflow out of them. If they had kept running them as Mercer did, it would have been a bad deal. It was win-win, but a bigger win for FTP, IMO.

Thanks for posting this. I've been quite interested in MA and V for a while, but I haven't yet gotten to understand them well enough to get an IV estimate.

Ok, had a chance to listen. Some highlights for me: -Not even started tweaking process and they are already hitting 96-97% alpha DP, highest quality in the world. -Ramp up to 80%+ should be very quick, few weeks, it's the last few percents that could take longer. -High quality DP means they'll want to get certified for high-grade specialty DP that can sell for a few hundred $ more /ton. -Chinese DP mills = high cost producers. It just doesn't sound like a very good place to produce DP because of the types of mills and of fiber supply. -Their collared contracts with the chinese are set to "prevailing market prices" and not spot prices, so if their DP is higher quality, they'll get the ~$100/ton extra that it is worth on the market, not the lower spot price for average alpha DP. -Been working on 5-6 acquisitions simultaneously for 2 years, saying that some are very advanced, mentions one where papers have been shuffled for 18 months and made mention again of picking up a billion dollars asset for $1 (LSQ?). -Building relationships with speciality DP buyers (pharmaceuticals, electronics, etc) for later transition. -Very promising words on Landquart, seems like 2012 will be a good year with full order books. Two more upgrades planned for Dresden over the next two annual shutdowns. -Loved how he talked about the capital structure and worries about dilution. Overall, two thumbs up for strategic vision.

http://webcasts.welcome2theshow.com/whistler2012 Audio recording of a panel with CEO of Alderon. (I haven't listened to it yet, but it should be interesting) Free reg. required.

http://webcasts.welcome2theshow.com/whistler2012 Audio recording of a panel with Chad. (I haven't listened to it yet, but it should be interesting) Free reg. required.

Are they just pulling number out of a hat?

I think that there are two scenarios there, though. 1) Cash doesn't show up for temporary reasons, but the underlying secular trend in cotton/DP supply-demand is still there or 2) the trend changes for some reason or other and doesn't reappear any time soon. #2 would be a big disappointment, but #1 could still lead to a very good outcome if one is patient, and the temporary low could allow FTP to deploy more capital at bargain prices and position itself even better for the up-cycle, so it might not be wasted time.

I second what Tom said. Mr. Market got too greedy about this stock in the past, but now it's too afraid, and that's an opportunity.

That's also been Microsoft's strategy from the very start. It's certainly not a bad business.

All right, I've now finished it. Great book, surprisingly inspiring and emotional in part, but also contains lots of ideas that can be applied to investing.

It does seem a little strange to me too when the only new public information that I could find was that analyst upgrade. Some of it could also be people who sold for tax loss reasons coming back in. But trying to explain short-term moves in share price is usually futile, so we'll just have to wait and see if anything is announced soon... btw, welcome to the board!

I won't go down this path again, I know it leads nowhere. If you want my opinions about all this, re-read the pages and pages that I've written in the past. Cheers.

Some commentary about the recent developments at ADV: http://www.grandich.com/2012/01/grandich-client-alderon-iron-ore/

Ha! I wish I knew more about Liberty llc, actually. But if they are a quality partner with deep pockets (and I'm sure Alderon-Altius management would settle for nothing less), then I'm happy about it. The more people have a stake in getting Kami to production, the better. Price is based on the average over a period of time, and it could have turned out much worse if ADV hadn't climbed back up. Right now I'm more concerned about them maximizing the probability of getting Kami to commercial production than anything else. It would suck if they focused on minimizing dilution and missed a chance of going for production; winning a battle that costs you the war..

Old habits die hard, I guess. I think my first browser was Netscape Navigator 3.04, and before that I was on local BBSes with my U.S. Robotics 24000/9600 bauds modem.. Heh I guess the importance of the quality of the results depend on what you search. I spend my days doing research for a living, and then some more when I'm not working, so I guess I'm what you would call a power user.

And I'm sure that was their thinking with the nice images. Perosnally, when searching I care more about content than form, though. I find that a bit strange. With auto-fill, dedicated search fields, homepage settings that can be set to whatever you want, and the smart URL bars of all modern browsers, who ever actually types a search engine's address manually anymore? You could save yourself that trouble very easily.

It's not the only variable here, so of course you won't see a direct relationship between the two. But that fact that Yahoo gets none of it while both Google and Bing get some is notable. And as I explained in the past, Bing is a smaller player but has the biggest browser. Google is a much bigger player with a smaller browser (growing, but still relatively small). The impact of a big browser on a small player will be relatively much bigger than of a small browser on a big player. Simple bayesian math, afaict. Another interesting to note is that I think Google's market share isn't climbing with Chrome because if you are savvy enough to install a third party browser, chances are you are already a google user. Google's main benefits from Chrome as pushing forward the development of the web (they've had great success there, with everyone pushing javascript performance to match Chrome's V8 engine, allowing all kinds of new web-apps to exist) and keeping it as open and standards' compliant as possible. Same reason why they have helped Mozilla/Firefox for a long time.

Just started reading the book (saw the movie a few months ago). Definitely all about identifying value and separating price from value. Good to revisit these themes over and over again...

http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/547026