Liberty

It's a few weeks old, but I don't think it has been posted here before (sorry if it has). Part 1 & 2: http://www.forbes.com/sites/steveforbes/2011/11/30/steve-forbes-interview-whitney-tilson-hedge-fund-manager-part-1/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/steveforbes/2011/12/06/steve-forbes-interview-whitney-tilson-hedge-fund-manager-part-2/

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20111223193332457

Happy holidays to you too Parsad! Thanks for being a pillar of the community!

Makes sense. Thanks!

Could you elaborate on this? I'm not quite sure I get what you're saying. Thanks.

I never pay attention to analyst forecasts and targets. The only thing that I look for in these reports are facts like "is this mill running well" "how's the quality of the product" "any new orders?" etc. A lot of these reports are hedged anyway; if stock price goes down, they can say they were right because of the negative stuff in the report, and if it goes up, they can point to the positive stuff, or even say that they were conservative if their target price turns out to be low. Meh.

TDW apparently lowering target. Found this on some other message board:

That's entirely possible, but having followed this for a few years, it now seems like we are in the high part of the cycle. It could always go higher, but that's not as likely as if we were in the low part of the cycle. What it's likely to look like is that a few very big company will find that the costs, uncertainty, and tedium of patent wars is not worth whatever they stand to gain from suing others, so they'll pressure politicians for patent reform. There could also be some PR backlash; imagine if a company is successful in totally blocking a competing product, and consumer really want that product. This could be very damaging to a brand. And then there's also the 'mutually assured destruction' equilibrium that it looks like we might be reaching. Once most of the big players all have 10s of thousands of patents, a few more or less won't make a difference, so they won't be on the market to acquire as much. Google was a target because they're a much younger company with a less bureaucratic/patent-oriented culture, but now that they've acquired a zillion patents, things should start to stabilize once the current cases make their way through the courts.

One thing I'd be careful about is valuing patents. Lately they've been worth a lot, but the pendulum could swing back after a while of everybody suing everybody else for frivolous things. There could be a detente between the big players, so to speak, which would make the market value of patents less than it is in today's seller's market.

At these levels I'm kind of wishing they would use their 10m authorization for buybacks. But I don't know if they've set things up so they have an extra 10m for that or if they'd rather hold on to all their cash for future acquisitions and capex.

http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/fortress-paper-announces-4025-million-closing-of-bought-deal-offering-tsx-ftp-1601428.htm

Thanks! I already had the first one, but not the CS report.

I'm afraid that the link doesn't work for me. Can you repost, or attach a file? Thanks.

Great analysis. The margin of safety indeed comes from being a low-cost producer and from working hard at keeping that advantage (co-gen is a step to further reduce costs, the way the plant was built to allow more of the huge stainless-steel tanks to be installed for de-bottlenecking will also help down the road, and the fact that the other plants they are looking at seem to be even lower on the cost curve is very promising). As long as DP/Rayon is considered to be superior to cotton yet it costs less than cotton to produce it, there will be some margin to be had somewhere. If FTP stays a low-cost producer, it should do just fine at capturing some of that margin. Another thing in favor of FTP: They have a long time horizon. They aren't just looking at the next quarter. Some other companies will cancel DP plans just because of a few quarters of low spot prices and bad economic conditions (less competition will be good for FTP, obviously), but FTP will just take advantage of that to try to pick up assets even more cheaply because they understand the dynamic of the DP price that you've outlined and they're deep value contrarian investors.

http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/1338169469001/improving-the-insurance-industry-through-cloud-computing Short interview on FOX business. Nothing truly new, but Robin reiterates at the end that he's not looking for EBIX to be acquired any time soon and thinks the company is just getting started.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/housing/canadas-housing-boom-among-longest-in-western-world/article2277801/

http://i.imgur.com/dUc1K.png English and Chinese. guess it shows who they've been talking to lately!

Leverage/debt.

http://watch.bnn.ca/the-close/december-2011/the-close-december-13-2011/#clip585199 Chad speaking about currency in EU.

That's my feeling as well, hopefully it works out for them (and us). RIM now has a smaller market cap than FFH.

It's not a bad move per se, but it doesn't automatically have to come from an honest motivation. They own a lot of stock, and they could have figured that maybe such a move would have a positive impact on share price and more than compensate for whatever they're not getting in direct compensation.

http://www.miningweekly.com/article/paladin-gets-access-to-aurora-deposits-2011-12-15

Thanks LessthanIV. Your findings are compatible with mine, which I take to be a good sign ;)

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/story/2011/12/14/nl-uranium-ban-lifted-1214.html Looks like we might not have to wait until the 19th...

I was re-listening to the St-andrews presentation (for like the 4th time) and noticed a few things that could explain Dresden's position: According to Chad, their machine is 33% wider than that of their closest competitor, it is running twice as fast as the closest competitor (they've upgraded it 5 times since he acquired it), and they coat the paper online, while none of their competitors can do that. If you add all of that together, it seems to add up to a pretty significant cost advantage. They even seem to have some pricing power, as Chad mentioned that they increased prices by 10% and they still have to turn orders away. On top of that, they seem to have decent R&D, as they developed a thermally insulating wallpaper that might be hard to replicate by competitors. And if you also add back in what I said previously (competitors might not be focusing on just one product, might not be willing to invest the required capital to upgrade, etc), I think there's a pretty decent competitive position, though I'm not sure I would call it a moat.