Liberty

Is there a way to track stock buybacks in the US markets (NYSE, NASDAQ) in the same way that it is possible to do it in Canada with a site like CanadianInsider? I know that corps report their buybacks in their 10Q and Ks, but I'd love to be able to do it on an almost daily basis, if a way exists. Maybe there's something obvious out there, but for some reason I'm drawing a blank.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204012004577073932113176106.html Funny, I'm currently reading a book on accounting shenanigans, and this smells fishy. By taking a big charge below the line and maybe writing down too much in Q3, they could improve margins and operating income in Q4. An optical illusion that wouldn't really help the fundamentals of the business, but we'll see if it works with wall street and bay street.

I think some of it - like the St-Andrews thing - is just that with success comes more invitations to speak at conferences, and he probably expected only a few people to ever see it (we FTP stalkers aren't exactly average invetors), and some of it - newspaper interviews - is probably to pressure politicians. If he has a higher public profile, it's easier to get the kinds of deals that he got for Thurso, which require government action to get the fiber rights, advantageous loans, union deals, etc. As for over-promising and under-delivering, I think it's still too early to tell. He's sometimes said "at today's prices, it would generate $X in EBIDTA", so it's normal that at lower prices - and more disadvantageous exchange rates - those numbers would be lower. But most of the problems of FTP have been from things that were out of management's control (market prices, union delays, equipment delivery delays, etc), so I'm not holding it against him. I really appreciate the more negative view on FTP, and I'm always afraid of becoming biased about any of the companies that I follow, but I also don't want to take the opposite view just for the sake of it.. It's a delicate balance. In any case, I think there are some interesting insights here about the TD report and DP prices/inventories: http://www.stockhouse.com/Bullboards/MessageDetail.aspx?p=0&m=30426827&l=0&r=0&s=ftp&t=LIST

I've watched the St-Andrews presentation a second time yesterday, and here's a few things that stood out for me: The Bank of Canada assets they picked up for 750k include two machines with replacement costs of $15m each + all the IP and patents developed over years at the cost of millions. This division helps make Landquart more competitive. Chad mentioned that he's looking at 5-6 mills that could be converted to DP, and he's including two of them in 2013 predictions of the competitive landscape (has enough confidence that he'll close those deals to put it out there). These two new mills are both even lower-cost than Thurso (at least in the estimates), and one of them seems to have a little more production (the bar is wider on the graph) while the other is smaller. He says that one of the mills he's confident he'll get has had 600-700m of investments in the past decade and he expects to get it for one dollar. FTP is the first new entrant in DP in the past 40 years. Only a handful of conversions have ever been made, and FTP has hired most of the key players that worked on those conversions. Asian mills use the more modern continuous process, which makes them lower cost for pulp, but means they can't be converted to DP (which requires the batch process). Also, one of te big China player doesn't have easy access to lots of fiber; they have to import 7 tons of fiber to make 1 ton of DP, and that makes them a high-cost producer. Cotton prices can go down in the short-term, but I think there's a secular trend pressuring prices up. Even if China's economy slows down, clothes isn't the first place people will cut, and competition from food and tightening environmental regulations will mean that cotton acreage won't grow too much, or might even decline. Since Rayon sells at a premium to cotton because of its better characteristics but costs less to produce, even if cotton goes down a lot, there should still be some margins for the low cost producers, allowing them to survive the down cycle without too much red ink. Thurso's fiber supply includes the fiber from two other mills that have been shut down. Should be very safe. I also love it every time to hear the stories of how he picked up the Mercer and Thurso mills. Great deep value investing, paying pennies on the dollar for assets making niche products with high barriers to entry and good margins, and then improving their productivity and focusing them on the highest margin products to get a double-whammy.

I'd guess that iTunes was actually pointing to files hosted somewhere else (Geoff's site, or another hosting site) and that they have been taken off from there. If there is interest, I can upload any of the podcasts I have listed above to a hosting site and make the available for general download. Let me know which episodes you want. Cheers!

I found this posted on another board. Sorry if the formatting is all weird: http://www.stockhouse.com/Bullboards/MessageDetail.aspx?p=0&m=30425693&l=0&r=0&s=FTP&t=LIST

Thanks a lot for posting this. I've just finished watching it, and I'm more impressed with Chad W. than ever before, and I was already a big fan.

Thanks! I had seen that, but didn't have the login/pass.

Personally, I think this is a major overreaction. If all went to hell, FTP could probably earn at least $5/share in 2012.

Down more than 8% today, guess the secondary market didn't like the news. They'll soon have a smaller market cap than Fairfax.

Page is the CEO now, not Brin. And he did refocus the company a fair bit in the past 6 months by closing down lots of projects, but I doubt that he would ever literally stick to only 4 products. IMO it's different to have a look at the Apple store and not having too many products as it is to go to youtube, do a search, check gmail... The offering isn't quite the same, since you don't have to choose between products - you can use all of them for free if you want. I'm not expecting much, but I'd love them to surprise me, especially as a consumer (not a shareholder anymore) since any competition for Amazon can only make prices and services better.

SEDAR is such a crappy site, I had to do print to PDF to save it.. Too bad about the report -- I like how it saves money, but I also thought they had some of the nicest-looking reports around.. If I might ask, are you still accumulating or do you have all that you want? If not, you once said you might reveal your average cost once you were doing buying :) I'm still curious.

Indeed. I can't say that I like it much at first glance, but I'll reserve judgement until I have more details and figure out what the strategy is. I guess there could be potential (and maybe even margins) in becoming a kind of inventory-less shopping hub, but it seems hard to pull off.

I kind of like that. With some luck, it'll mean that a few more DP projects will be cancelled, and this will be good for FTP in the long-term. They're only interested in being low-cost producers and they pre-sell/hedge a lot (70%+) of their DP production, so while their margins could be pressurized by low cotton prices, they should be able to come through on the other side of this cycle in a stronger position. In fact, if they make 1-2 other DP acquisitions, they might be able to find the equipment to do the conversions cheaper if fewer players are scouring the world trying to buy DP stuff.. But that's just my guess. Also, Landquart uses a lot of cotton to make banknotes, so lower cotton prices will be good for it.

I've ordered the book on Amazon.ca since I couldn't find it at the local public library. Thanks for the recs.

I don't doubt that all kinds of things are said by all kinds of people. The real question is: Is that your view?

Are you for real? :o

Thank you, I had put that in my bookmarks a while ago but had forgotten about it until I refound it earlier today after asking here. I definitely won't forget about it a second time! Thanks for the link :)

Via SH board, Alderon Helicopter crash: http://www.cbc.ca/labradormorning/episodes/2011/11/29/labrador-west-helicopter-crash---update-from-alderon/ Thankfully, only minor injuries for the people on board, apparently.

Of course they are increasing their sales, the whole smartphone industry is exploding. If their sales were decreasing in the absolute, they'd already be dead. They still have the best security, but they can definitely be touched. They used to have the best phones and best security, and now they just have the best security. The way things are headed, at some point, either having that won't be enough, or they won't even have that anymore. They could certainly turn things around, but so far they haven't shown much capacity to do that. Lol, yes, it's because non-RIM phones are 'crappy' and insecure that they are progressively taking over the business side after utterly dominating the consumer side...

Apart from the fact that Buffett has already endorsed Obama multiple times, he wouldn't endorse Palin because their political, social, economic, scientific, etc, views are so different, and because Palin lowers the level of political discourse and makes it more adversarial, which is the opposite of what Buffett wants to see happen. It doesn't have to do with the number of X chromosomes or whatever. In any case, now seems like a good time to leave this thread and never come back, because nothing good can come of it. Sorry I even asked for clarification.

That's excellent! Thank you for posting it! Anymore like that, either from Klarman or from other greats?

Was that a joke? I can't tell.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/altius-tsx-als-provides-update-of-labrador-west-iron-ore-option-agreement-with-rio-tinto-exploration-canada-2011-11-30?reflink=MW_news_stmp

It's an interesting idea, thanks for posting. I'll definitely dig (ha!) into it at some point.