Liberty

I'm reading Security Analysis (1940 edition) for the first time (I'm a young investor, what can I say ;D), and there are so many gems, but here's one that I liked and want to share:

If what is being transmitted over the bluetooth connection is a digital file, it should sound just the same as if it came from another source. But if the file is being decoded on the device and it's the analogue signal that is being transmitted, then yes, sound quality is probably being degraded.

I read it last weekend and thought it was extremely well made. Very high quality, and for a relatively new shareholder like me, it was great to learn about details that don't show up in 99% of articles on FFH that you could find online... Kudos to everybody who put this together! :)

Nothing surprising, but here it is: http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2011/06/09/lubrizol-investors-approval-sale-to-warren-buffett/

Whoa, talk about a reversal in the secondary market in the past couple days. It might turn out to only be temporary, but it does show the power of publicly announcing that you're ready to use more than a whole year worth of cash to buy back shares...

Not sure if this already has been posted or not, but check out Apple's new HQ: Pretty amazing.

You're that guy who when asked what he would do for a million dollars would answer "as little as I had to" =) Wow, a million bucks seems so trivial since the days of Breakfast Club. Ha! There's definitely a lot I would do, but none of them is "making macro predictions" ;)

I wish I could play, but I have no idea where the economy will be 12 months from now. That's why I try to buy businesses that should do well over time regardless..

Ah, well, Robin says it better than I did: http://www.ebix.com/investors/text_11_Q1.pdf

Indeed, I'll also be watching for that over the next year. In my opinion, Robin has shown to be a great capital allocator over the past decade. He doesn't overpay for anything, and he must think EBIX stock is really cheap to do these relatively big buybacks and spend half a million of his money on the stock (he has 4 million shares with a cost around $0.78 and almost hasn't sold any). My understanding is that in this industry, back-end systems aren't upgraded very often, and when they are, they stick around for a long time. It's been especially tough since the recession because insurers aren't spending on IT. EBIX does acquisitions in good part to get access to clients, because while the clients of, say, a CRM vendor are worth X to that company, they can be worth much more than X to EBIX because once it has a foot in the door to then cross-sell a lot of stuff to them (plug-in its exchanges in the CRM, etc). And if you take a company that was already profitable, then get more out of its customers and cut costs significantly by using the existing Indian facilities for development (and over time rewrite all IP over there, which is advantageous from a taxation perspective), you start to get pretty good economics (with highly recurring revenues and sustainably high-margins). Organic growth is probably good, but not spectacular. That could change in a hard insurance market, and the company has said that they're now at a size and visibility that allows them to be in the race for deals that they wouldn't have been considered for previously, so there could be a "rich gets richer" effect that helps in that regard. They've clearly said that their strategy is to target the 100 biggest carriers and distributors in the US (and the same in other markets I'm sure), and once they've got enough of these big fish on their exchanges, the rest will almost take care of itself because there'll be a whole ecosystem that will then benefit greatly by joining the exchanges (and they've opened the standards of their exchanges, so that if they win that war and become infrastructure, third party vendors can connect their software on their exchange and insurers not even dealing with EBIX directly will end up paying them pay-per-transaction fees). They're also positioning themselves to move into the health sector, so that's also something to watch. Will definitely be interesting to see how this develops...

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20110608-706806.html

Thanks Dazel, you always find interesting stuff. I'm curious to know if you're still buying. Seems like you've been buying forever, still have dry powder?

Think this might have been mentioned in the previous thread that was lost, so I'm reposting it here for archival purposes: April 1st investor conference, audio + slides: http://www.ebix.com/2011_Investor_CEO_CFO.zip Audio's terrible and Robin's definitely not a polished public speaker, but there's lots of interesting stuff. He talks about why they make acquisitions, auditors, taxes, etc. No irrefutable proof of anything in there, but it provides some color. Update: And a transcript of Q1 call while I'm at it: http://www.ebix.com/investors/text_11_Q1.pdf

Interesting. But in practice, cotton prices shouldn't have a big impact on the DP plant they already have, as more than 70% of the production is locked in long term contracts (5 and 10 years, iirc) at prices between 1200 and $1800/ton. Could affect new DP acquisitions if the trend continues, though.

What source do you use for that? I found a couple sites with cotton spot prices, and one of them shows a small decline, but nothing dramatic. Maybe I'm missing something.

Indeed, welcome to our little club!

Picked up some FTP today. It appears undervalued by almost any measure.

I read that a while ago, bargainman, thanks for reminding me of it. Quoting part of it here for convenience:

Same here! I'd be curious to get the IV estimates of other shareholders. I find RLI a bit harder to nail down, because while they are expensive if you look at BV, they have such good UW and reserving that they are cheaper than they might look.. but how much is the question, and is now still a good time to buy?

GOOG. I'd be curious to hear more about that one..

Hester, can you elaborate on why you think the tax issues are real? AFAIK, EBIX creates or rewrites all of its IP in India and Singapore where they have legitimate low tax rates. That's perfectly legal afaik.

I wonder how often this happens. What you just described is similar to how I would describe what happened to EBIX a few months ago (with a few difference)...

I can't speak for HarryLong, but I'll point you to this: http://seekingalpha.com/article/199567-high-conviction-stellar-free-cash-flow-growth-from-this-it-provider

http://members.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewUserPage&userid=glidefoundation Who here has really deep pockets? Maybe you could bring me along? ;D

I received my copy in the mail today! Yay!