Liberty

Hitting 52wk lows.

I love buybacks when they are done right, but I agree with others here that unfortunately, that is rarely the case. The best historical example is no doubt Teledyne. Among the companies I follow closely, I really like how Altius bought back over 2 million shares at very depressed prices in 2008-2009. Also love how EBIX just bought back close to 10% of the company way below what I consider to be IV. I think Bill Berkley of WRB has a pretty good record with buybacks too. I think part of the problem (and solution) is incentives. Some managers are probably decent capital allocators, but it pays more for them to reach certain EPS and SP targets, so they do stupid buybacks. This temptation is reduced when you have an owner-manager who owns a large fraction of the business, as in the case of the examples above.

Looks like a very good deal, but outside of my circle of competence for now, so I'm not touching it.

One word: Tilson.

It is, but it was my impression that maybe these were not drilled in the most promising areas (which are those that were drilled first and used for the official estimates), but rather that they are 'bonus'. I could be wrong about that, though.

Some interviews with Chad W.: http://business.financialpost.com/2011/11/21/c-suite-paper-profit/ http://innovators.financialpost.com/2011/11/14/contrarian-investing/

http://www.alderonironore.com/_resources/news/2011-11-22-NewsRelease.pdf

That's exactly what I was going to write, but only because it's the only thing that came to mind, not because I know it's the most attractive of what he's looking at (it's the availability bias :) )

Looks like inventories were getting pretty high, doubling in 6 months: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/investment-ideas/features/vox/rims-inventory-overhang-could-crimp-future-results/article2244022/

I'd also be curious to know how big the inventories were. It's possible that they are just now finishing the first batches that were sent a while ago, and that they had little choice to discount them heavily because it's expensive to keep big inventories.

http://www.airspacemag.com/space-exploration/Visionary-Launchers-Employees.html I know many people here have been following him, so I thought you'd enjoy this one. It's a bit long, but well worth reading IMHO.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204517204577046590844614210.html

I don't know. Developing a new OS is great, but if you do it, you damn well better make your brand new product compatible and upgradeable to it. Otherwise it just feels like you are shafting your customers by making something brand new obsolete. And if it is compatible, why the haste in clearing inventory so cheaply? IMO what is happening is they realized their product wasn't competitive and wasn't selling, and that it was taking a lot of attention away internally from their core business in phones, so they're trying to exit that segment. I'm not sure of it, but the signs so far do point in that direction.

If they keep the playbook, if I was them I'd worry that I've damaged my pricing power and it will be very hard to get it back. Once you discount your product by $300 (or allow retailers to do it with your permission), bringing the price back up will be very difficult (who will want to pay $500-600 for something that sold for $200-300 brand new?). That's one thing that Apple understands very well; you'll almost never find big discounts, and over time they keep their prices very stable, because it's WAY harder to rise prices than to lower them. That's one factor that makes me think that they are thinking of dumping the playbook. They must know how pricing works...

Thank you!

I'm not sure what this means. I'm in this thread, as well as the MSFT, GOOG, and AAPL threads because I am interested in this space (not that I have to justify my interest to you). I used to be more active in all of those when I was a GOOG shareholder, but after making 30% in one month and selling to move into something that was more promising, I haven't been as involved here, but I like to keep an eye on what's going on in that area of tech. I am definitely not here to "cause shit", maybe you are just projecting. Is this a kind of appeal to authority? How long you've been around has nothing to do with what I've been saying. You really go all out ad hominem, don't you? I guess your attack only works if you don't care about facts. I've already addressed this, and I'm sure you've seen it since it's in the thread you monitor most closely:

I'm out of it too (it was a case of selling something close to fair value to buy something quite undervalued), and while I'm quite satisfied with what I now own, RLI stays on my short-list for future potential investments.

I get the impression that maybe a bias in favor of RIM blinds you to the fact that functionally, Smazz and Peter are the same person, just saying opposite things. "Blackberry is awesome/sucks!" Personally, I'm equally tired of the two. Saying that one brings down the quality of the board but not the other seems unfair. I'd like to see both of them only post when they have something 'material' to say about the company and tone down the rhetoric and hyperbole (ie. saying that only the dumb, deaf and blind would buy iPads vs cheaper Playbooks is totally inflammatory, IMHO).

Sounds like a false dichotomy to me. There are lots of things that I believe strongly but I wouldn't make bets about them with strangers on the internet. I'm not the betting kind. I think both Smazz's and Peter's comments can be low-info and trollish at times, but that doesn't change that not wanting to bet doesn't make what is said more or less valid. Otherwise, you could just use that strategy in any thread where someone disagrees with you; offer a bet, and if you are not taken up on it, claim victory. Personally, I wouldn't bet on RIM's future because I've said from the start that while I believe it's a pretty mismanaged company with mediocre products at this point, the stock could still turn out to be a money-maker at these levels. I just don't know, and that's why I'm not going either long or short on it. There are better opportunities out there.

The iPad might be twice the price, but for many people it obviously provides more than twice the value of the Playbook. Otherwise, Apple wouldn't be selling all the iPad they can make...

Good point. I hadn't checked canadianinsider.com in a while, but I see that they've been buying between 3k-8k shares/day lately. Very nice. Now if only they could release the annual report, I'd have zero complaints.

This is very important. WEll said.

Good to hear. I'm expecting more volatility for a while, but good to see that it can go back up that quickly.

What I like is that it obviously seems to be part of a larger plan, and I imagine that the cross-selling opportunities will be big.