investmd

@RetroRanger thanks for posting the Pabrai video. Interesting perspective on 100 baggers.

Seems like an option to buy shares during a Capital raise. Does that mean pre-existing shareholders can buy in at 1 lira whereas new investors have to come in at today's price of 3 lira? Company was trading at 8 Lira a few months ago.

Can't find anything online to explain the drastic fall

My takeaways from 2020 AGM: Prem admitted some mistakes (which is a change), but remains as bullish on FFH as ever. Everything is great. Companies are great, people are all awesome. Got to hand it to Prem for consistency in Optimism Bought corp bonds at 4% yield and sold half of them at 1% yield Didn't sell BB - conv. explanation of securities regulation. Not clear whether they would have sold if spike event had occurred outside of the 6 month prohibition on trading window Stock positions increased 18% in Q1 Insurance underwriting business performing v. all and flow compounding at a consistently healthy rate

I was not aware of this company and to be honest with you I am not sure what to make of the market, its potential, etc at this point. Thank you for bringing to my attention though, looks like very interesting. The founder is a doctor and they are using providers (doctors / health care institutions) as a way to get to the end customers - so using existing healthcare system. At this point I don't know of the dynamics of how all this will work within the existing system. I will do a diligence before I comment on it further. Actually I will be interested in your thoughts on this company. One thing that did catch my eye (in a positive way) while cursory browsing their website is the following - https://www.actx.com/info/services "Only actionable genetic conditions and medications are covered where there is evidence that there is something that you and your doctor can do" https://www.actx.com/info/talk_to_your_doctor "ActX is a screening service and not intended for the diagnosis of high risk patients. The Service looks only at selected variants (DNA variations) for the targeted genes and not for all possible genetic variants. The ActX Service is not intended for the diagnosis of patients at high risk of serious genetic conditions (such as a strong family history of breast cancer)." ActX is a private startup company. I have looked at it multiple times, but did not invest. Valuation was (is?) way way lower than 23andMe. They (mostly?) sell their service to medical centers at enterprise level. They have few customers. Big question is adoption/penetration speed. In a way they have the opposite issue than 23andMe: since they are selling to medical centers, the value of their service would be (way) higher if a lot of patients already had their genetic tests done, since then the doctors could check the risks without ordering a genetic test that costs money and takes time. Now, they are piggybacking on 23andMe result data - i.e. patients apparently can import 23andMe data to be used for ActX services. There is still a chicken and egg issue somewhat since a patient can only see benefit if their doctor (or their doctor's organization) has purchased ActX or if the patient buys ActX and persuades their doctor to use it. I don't know how useful the service is for doctors when patient has genetic info. ActX claims it is with some large percentage of patients having at least one or few common drug risks. I don't know if they have public info on percentages/drugs. I can only talk about the information that ActX discloses on their website. If interested in more in depth info, PM me and I could introduce you to the company management. Disclaimer: I am not a doctor. I don't have any financial interest in ActX at this time. From an investment point of view it becomes challenging when a company like ActX has to provide its own service AND also do the clinical validation required to proove out the science. ActX seems to be taking genomic data and integrating into Electronic Health Record in order to alter the types of drugs prescribed. Intuitively, this seems like a great idea. However, the science linking genomic info to how one reacts to drugs has many caveats to it. For example, if it were straightforward to look at genomic data and know whether one responded or didn't to a drug like "aspirin" that would be great - but the link is not clear....yet.

Edit: I think Spek is referring to this: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1804591/000095010321001779/dp145636_ex9902.htm ................. Yeah, the DNA testing revenues is not why you would buy this. $199 or $99 a non-repeatable pop does not multibillion business make. The value is in the genetic info library they collect. If I was them (or another DNA testing startup I have looked at), I'd do the tests for free and capitalize on the data. S In tech companies data has huge potential. One thing I've learned is that it is much easier to talk about owining the data vs. monetizing it. If there is a clarity that demonstrated the value proposition to the purchaser of future data, then it could be very interesting. Many have died on the hill of "owning the data" -and a few have become huge - eg Amazon and it's "eyeballs" metrics decades ago. 23 & me is the dominant player in a space with momentum. Without having done a deeper dive, I'm not sure of their moat.

Xerxes, would love to see this thread of where FFH is in 2030 and have it updated yearly :) Parsad, While this may seem like a great trade in the next 2-3 years. I think the narrowing the discount will only come on the back of a rising book value, so you would get a double-lift in absolute and relative terms. But then what ... Do you see it as having a real "growth" engine once the discount narrows ... past these relatively speaking low hanging fruits. Maybe we should make it a thread. Where do folks see FFH ten years from now !!!! - size of the float - outstanding shares (hopefully 40% bought back) - the size and growth of FIH - the size and growth of Atlas - book value - share price - hopefully Resolute and Stelco long gone. I like BB converts. Can Prem pull a Microsoft out of his hat

Going through the posts on this thread, my summary is that consensus is that 1) basic underlying principle of identifying a business that will return your money and more to you in future is just good investing & 2) perhaps there has been some evolution in "value investing" to not only focus on P/E, P/B, assets and debt but also place emphasis on potential to grow earnings. Does that make sense?

excellent points above by LC, Cherecza and Writser questioning why Amazon could not be a "value company". I like the comment also about value investing being "nerdy" and gravitating to "mathy" situations and missing out on the potential growth prospect. Maybe what should be dead is the topic of "value" vs. "growth". Maybe the markets have come to a new way of "investing well" which blends assessing BOTH intrinsic valuation of assets and multiple of yesterday's earnings but also giving important consideration to earnings growth.

There was a thread or two in the past. I am interested in talking about Angel investment opportunities. However, there are issues: - For a lot of Angel investment opportunities, information is not openly available. It's possible to share info between friends, but it's harder to post information on public forum. There can be multiple parties upset about it. - As you may have seen on CoBF it's difficult to talk about companies managed by people who read/post on CoBF. This is an issue talking about Angel investment opportunities. From my experience even in non-recorded public meetings people usually tip-toe around the negatives of startup companies - nobody wants to offend and nobody wants to be kicked out of future contacts, allocations, board seats, etc. This is again magnified by posting on public forum. Jeff Bezos does not care what we say about Amazon on CoBF. Joe StartupCEO might care a lot. - Unlike public companies, the opportunities to invest into a startup are only open to qualified investors and only for certain amount of time. So there might not be much interest in companies that are not raising money currently. And for companies raising money currently, see my points above. - Edit: Point above is exacerbated for foreign investors. Not sure if you're in US or Canada, but cross-border angel investing AFAIK is even harder to discuss and accomplish. Anyway, I'm willing to try somehow, feel free to start thread(s), feel free to PM me if you want to talk in private. BTW, there's an Angel investing event on Wednesday that netnet posted about: https://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/events/life-science-investor-meeting-sept-2-and-sept-9/ You can ask netnet if it's OK to talk about the companies that present afterwards. (I may have to miss part of the event :( ) Jurgis, thanks for bringing up good points around posting publicly about Angel investments as one does want to remain cordial. I've generally tried to stick with categories of "Strengths" and "Areas of Concern/to work on" when giving opinions on startups. I've signed on the link you kindly shared for a healthsciences event next week. Will take you up on offer to connect via PM. Thanks. Best,

To double click on the idea of "adjust to the world around you" and metric of value, I've been thinking of this idea that in tech with proven earnings a P/E of 30 might be the equivalent of P/E of 10 in traditional industries. Reason: In proven tech companies with earnings, the total addressable market (TAM) is unknown because they open new markets. This does not happen with traditional commodities & industries - ie a pulp producer is unlike to evolve to clothing apparel retailer. With tech, a computer company (like Aapl) can become a music company and then a services company and then may become a health company. So if Aapl, Goog, FB are ever trading at a PE of <30, could be the equivalent of traditionally buying at PE of 10. Does that make some sense??

Agree. What I'm learning is that perhaps driver for value inflection point should be clear at time of purchase. Concept of "value will out over time" is not good enough.

In my years of reading this Board, this is the first time that I've come across an Angel Investment thread. I've always thought this was a space for exchanging ideas on the public markets. I now wonder if there would be interest in starting an Angel Investment/Private investments title under General Category? I know Sanjeev is planning on some website changes. Would there be interest in discussing private investments on the new website?? If so, I'd love to contribute. Best,

Learning Machine: I'll add my 2cents as an Angel Investor and echo sentiments posted causing you to think carefully about the investment: 1) Pharmacy can compete on Speed, Price, Service, drug quality/safety - NowRx seems to be focused only on speed 2) https://www.goodrx.com competes on price 3) As an Angel investor, I presume you have a portfolio of companies ? The investment should be one company out of at least 10-20 companies in your startup portfolio 4) Investing at Series B level is usually for larger VCs that can help the company on path to IPO. Upside is not huge, but there is substantial de-risking. Individual Angel Investors likely want to buy in earlier. 5) I'm not familiar with Seed Investor, but it seems to take >7% of your investment in fees plus takes equity from the company. 6) Mike Maples from Floodgate talks about whether founders are "living in the future" or merely addressing an existing problem. As an Angel Investor you may want to seek out the former. 7) Their stated strategy of use of data to make an impact in future seems weak and purely theoretical at this time. They have not elucidated a thought through data strategy. Best,

In general, if you do poorly for 15 years then it means simply one thing, you are making mistakes in figuring out how much cash business will produce for owners. Agree. However, plethora of value investors have not done as well as expected for past 10-15 years including Prem Watsa and FFH whom this board is v. familiar with. Thus, there have been a group of v. intelligent, astute and respected deep value managers that have not performed as well as expected over a relatively long time frame of 10-15 years. Changing understanding of future cash flow generation likely required to change outcomes going forward.