Phaceliacapital Posted March 17, 2015 Share Posted March 17, 2015 Presented with no comment: http://www.wsj.com/articles/mattel-brings-back-departed-ceo-stockton-as-consultant-1426544117 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CorpRaider Posted March 17, 2015 Share Posted March 17, 2015 What a mess... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LowIQinvestor Posted March 17, 2015 Share Posted March 17, 2015 MAT has been on my radar for a while but it still doesn't appear cheap enough. 15 PE for a turnaround? I'm passing... I think MAT goes lower ( high teens) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
silverhawk Posted March 17, 2015 Share Posted March 17, 2015 Do any of the longs think Mattel needs an activist to come in and shake things up? Apparently Dan Loeb's great-Aunt co-founded Mattel. How can he resist taking back control of it? He has even said that as a kid he "associated success in business with Hot Wheels and Barbie dolls." http://www.businessinsider.com.au/who-is-dan-loeb-2013-1#speaking-of-his-family-loebs-great-aunt-is-the-creator-of-the-barbie-doll-5 Even if he bought 10% of the company it would be only his 4th largest position. I'm not sure what an activist could do to fix Mattel. Company already has a fair bit of debt and is already being run lean like a private equity portfolio company. You could try to sell to private equity which is doable at a $10bn enterprise value especially if you turn dividend payouts into debt service but would suck for long-time investors who bought this thing at $50. You can cut the dividend to reinvest in growth and buyback depressed shares but that would cause chaos as you fire your dividend shareholder base and hope value investors are attracted to the turnaround story. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CorpRaider Posted March 17, 2015 Share Posted March 17, 2015 Yeah, I'm with you LowIQ. Took a brief look after the last quarter and made a note to give it a more serious look ~$20. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CorpRaider Posted April 3, 2015 Share Posted April 3, 2015 http://www.wsj.com/articles/mattel-to-make-christopher-sinclair-permanent-ceo-1428000588 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boilermaker75 Posted April 3, 2015 Share Posted April 3, 2015 http://www.wsj.com/articles/mattel-to-make-christopher-sinclair-permanent-ceo-1428000588 "Mattel’s creative department has been slowed by layers of bureaucracy, meetings and time spent on lengthy PowerPoint presentations." If I was CEO of a company, I would outlaw PowerPoint presentations. Edit: If I was president of a university I would remove the projectors from all class rooms so that faculty would have to pick up a piece of chalk and talk to their classes, chalk and talk. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jurgis Posted April 3, 2015 Share Posted April 3, 2015 OT Edit: If I was president of a university I would remove the projectors from all class rooms so that faculty would have to pick up a piece of chalk and talk to their classes, chalk and talk. LOL. You sir have not seen good talks. The waste of time trying to write stuff using chalk is just mind boggling. A well prepared slides are at least two times more efficient than trying to write with chalk. If presenter uses pictures or graphs, it can be even 10 times better. Watch someone like Hans Rosling and learn. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bookie71 Posted April 4, 2015 Share Posted April 4, 2015 I'll take chalk any day. My pet peeve are instructors who read their power point slides. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
merkhet Posted April 4, 2015 Share Posted April 4, 2015 We are getting off topic, but the time it takes to write the same idea in chalk is also time that students get to understand and absorb the topic -- in a powerpoint slide, that time gets compressed which may not accrue to the benefit of the student. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LC Posted April 4, 2015 Share Posted April 4, 2015 Not to mention chalk and a blackboard is a sensory experience. The sound, sight, scent...proper stimulation of the senses has been shown to aid understanding and memory. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jurgis Posted April 4, 2015 Share Posted April 4, 2015 Sorry, but you guys don't know what you are talking about. :) I have not seen a single board and chalk presentation that is worth 1/10 of the best multimedia presentations. And, yes, I have seen the best board and chalkers including Richard Feynman, Patrick Winston ( ), etc. Show me a single person who does board and chalk better than Hans Rosling does multimedia and then I might change my mind. Don't talk about crappy Powerpoint lectures in your universities. I've seen enough crappy chalk lectures in universities to fill a lifetime. I've given them too - both powerpoint and chalk variety. :) the time it takes to write the same idea in chalk is also time that students get to understand and absorb the topic -- in a powerpoint slide, that time gets compressed which may not accrue to the benefit of the student. Whatever. I took MOOCs on Coursera and I ran board and chalkers at 1.5 to 2x speed.. That's pretty much how much they lose in presentation. I wonder if you guys are all coming from economics and social sciences? There's definitely a tendency of talking heads in non science courses. They are usually fluffier overall: I run 2x most of them, while CS/Stat classes are tough to absorb at over 1.5x. I can't say it's true for everyone, there was a great accounting class on Coursera from Brian Bushee out of Wharton. And then you get someone like Bob Shiller - board and chalker and boring even at 2x speed... Even more off topic, I wonder the same thing about investor presentations. It's usually all talk and hand waving. I can't figure out if this comes from TV talking head style or earnings calls over phone where they can't present visual material or what. For some reason, everyone's a Buffett and well prepared slide decks mean that the CEO is a sleazy marketer out to fleece investors... And yeah, definitely CNBC/Bloomberg TV/etc. don't help: just show talking heads and maybe a stock price graph... great visual info... not. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boilermaker75 Posted April 4, 2015 Share Posted April 4, 2015 OT Edit: If I was president of a university I would remove the projectors from all class rooms so that faculty would have to pick up a piece of chalk and talk to their classes, chalk and talk. LOL. You sir have not seen good talks. The waste of time trying to write stuff using chalk is just mind boggling. A well prepared slides are at least two times more efficient than trying to write with chalk. If presenter uses pictures or graphs, it can be even 10 times better. Watch someone like Hans Rosling and learn. I have been a faculty member at a research university for 31 years. So I have seen, and made, all manner of presentations—lectures, seminars, conference presentations, departmental updates, promotion presentations, etc. Sure there are good PowerPoint presentations, but 99 out of every 100 are not. Typically way too much information per slide, slides are read, material comes at the audience as if it is coming from a fire hose, etc. You want to teach students how to think; they need to see you thinking. You don't think when looking at and talking to a PowerPoint slide. You think when you are writing at the board without notes. There are over 90 faculty in my department. For each of the last 8 years I have gotten the most votes from the students for best teacher, and it is never close. I do not use PowerPoint. I have had students thank me for not using PowerPoint. Here is a good teacher When Louis Gerstner took over IBM it was pre-PowerPoint. But that didn’t stop the initial briefers at IBM with their elaborate slides. Gerstner told them to turn off the acetate overhead projector and to just talk to him. I will end with links to some articales https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/am-i-right/201403/powerpoint-makes-you-stupid http://www.computerworld.com/article/2468895/desktop-apps/u-s--army-discovers-powerpoint-makes-you-stupid.html http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/world/27powerpoint.html?hp&_r=0 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jurgis Posted April 4, 2015 Share Posted April 4, 2015 I have been a faculty member at a research university for 31 years. So I have seen, and made, all manner of presentations—lectures, seminars, conference presentations, departmental updates, promotion presentations, etc. Oh well, so you should know better, but you seem to be stuck in your thinking; you don't see that there is progress; you refuse to participate in it and do things better. So be it. There's probably no point to continue this discussion. You want to teach students how to think; they need to see you thinking. I think you are mixing up lectures with practice sessions where you show students how to solve problems. These are very different. I completely agree that there is a value to brainstorm write-and-solve when you are trying to demonstrate how to solve problems. But that's not lecture, that's not presentation. There is a huge difference between the two. Here is a good teacher OK. Look at the first 5 minutes of his talk. What if he had a slide or two instead of drawing an atom on the board? Would that be better? Worse? You say worse. But I say better. He would not have made an error that he had to correct. He could have really shown the difference between the size of the atom and the size of the nucleus by having the animation or relative comparison of something that has 10^4 size difference. And these are just couple of ideas of how this could be improved via multimedia. And BTW he is not showing students how to think in these 5 minutes. He is just presenting information. He is doing it well. But he could do it much better with a slide that shows the same concepts. (I haven't finished watching the lecture yet. I probably would have other examples from it, but not sure if it's worth giving more) I would have never rated any professor who writes on board as the best. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CanadianMunger Posted April 4, 2015 Share Posted April 4, 2015 Jurgis - a lot of your posts come across as rude and condescending, especially when someone disagrees with you. Maybe tone it down or do us a favor and go hang out at the Yahoo message boards. -CM Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Green King Posted April 4, 2015 Share Posted April 4, 2015 I thought all this new discussion is about Mattel. Please move this or start a new thread. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
merkhet Posted April 4, 2015 Share Posted April 4, 2015 Jurgis - a lot of your posts come across as rude and condescending, especially when someone disagrees with you. Maybe tone it down or do us a favor and go hang out at the Yahoo message boards. -CM I would have to agree with this, Jurgis. Surprisingly, you were not this way in person at the DJCO meeting, so I'm not sure if this is just the keyboard jockey coming out. For the record, my background is in neurobiology and mathematics, so no, we are not all social science types. Perhaps it is you who does not know what he is talking about. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jurgis Posted April 4, 2015 Share Posted April 4, 2015 Whatever, I am done with this discussion. If you prefer to learn using chalk and board, that's your choice. I did not say that this was prohibited. On the other hand the person you are championing said: If I was CEO of a company, I would outlaw PowerPoint presentations. Edit: If I was president of a university I would remove the projectors from all class rooms so that faculty would have to pick up a piece of chalk and talk to their classes, chalk and talk. If you want to support this, that's your choice too. For me this is irresponsible dictatorship. Have fun. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
merkhet Posted April 4, 2015 Share Posted April 4, 2015 Whatever, I am done with this discussion. If you prefer to learn using chalk and board, that's your choice. I did not say that this was prohibited. On the other hand the person you are championing said: If I was CEO of a company, I would outlaw PowerPoint presentations. Edit: If I was president of a university I would remove the projectors from all class rooms so that faculty would have to pick up a piece of chalk and talk to their classes, chalk and talk. If you want to support this, that's your choice too. For me this is irresponsible dictatorship. Have fun. And, of course, your very next post is to prove CanadianMunger's point. You're like a small petulant child. Perhaps Green King is right, though, and we should return this thread to Mattel. I think many of the others on this thread are correct that the price is not quite right for what challenges lie ahead. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boilermaker75 Posted April 4, 2015 Share Posted April 4, 2015 Whatever, I am done with this discussion. If you prefer to learn using chalk and board, that's your choice. I did not say that this was prohibited. On the other hand the person you are championing said: If I was CEO of a company, I would outlaw PowerPoint presentations. Edit: If I was president of a university I would remove the projectors from all class rooms so that faculty would have to pick up a piece of chalk and talk to their classes, chalk and talk. If you want to support this, that's your choice too. For me this is irresponsible dictatorship. Have fun. Green King, My apologies for making one more OT post and for making a comment that triggered the OT posts. I was pointing out something in the link that CorpRaider posted about Sinclair being made permanent CEO of MAT, which I felt was telling about MAT’s issues. Jurgis, I teach electromagnetic fields, solid-state physics, and a little quantum mechanics. I don’t target the top of the class but the middle and lower population of my class. The top students don’t need me. You must be in that category and just want things coming at you as fast as possible. You had mentioned I was stuck in my thinking and not embracing new technology like PowerPoint for presentations. PowerPoint is a new way to put together presentations, but the actually presentation is nothing new. Thirty years ago people were making similar presentations using foils (transparencies) and acetate overhead projectors. I had the same opinion back then. I have come up with many innovations in my lectures. I do use an iPad for many things, just not a whole lecture presentation of prepared slides. I do demonstrations, animations, reorientation of the class with mini-history lessons and humor, etc. My comment of teaching them to think is on a whole different level than your interpretation of my comment to running practice sessions to solve problems. I am talking about how to develop mental models. For instance, Faraday had no formal education and knew no mathematics yet he developed much of electromagnetics including the concept of fields, which took 30 years for Clerk Maxwell to come along and embrace. The way Faraday thought is what I am talking about. Working problems is lower level thinking. Most of communication is non-verbal and I forget that with my posts. I meant my comments as tongue-in-cheek for emphasis. I don’t mean if I was CEO I would actually dictate how people could make presentations, but I would strongly critique their presentations. I am often asked to council new faculty who are having difficulty teaching as evidenced by very poor instructor evaluations. For instance scoring a 3 or lower on their evaluations when the department average is around 4.1 out of 5. There are cases where I have advised them to abandon PowerPoint, which resulted in a jump in their evaluations the next semester. Typically this jump is between 0.5 and 1.0 points out of 5. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jurgis Posted April 5, 2015 Share Posted April 5, 2015 boilermaker75, I think your last answer was very fair. Thanks a lot for discussion. I'd love to continue it, but clearly not here and perhaps not over the electronic medium. Best regards and good luck with your teaching. :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tede02 Posted April 5, 2015 Share Posted April 5, 2015 The narrative I get is the company is suffering from some of the common problems that mature companies run into (bureaucracy, loss of direction, etc.). Electronics certainly have put some pressure on toy makers but it doesn't seem to me that the companies actual operations are impaired. Kids always have and always will play with toys. I own a little MAT. Will consider buying more if the price declines materially. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DanielGMask Posted April 5, 2015 Author Share Posted April 5, 2015 Whatever, I am done with this discussion. If you prefer to learn using chalk and board, that's your choice. I did not say that this was prohibited. On the other hand the person you are championing said: If I was CEO of a company, I would outlaw PowerPoint presentations. Edit: If I was president of a university I would remove the projectors from all class rooms so that faculty would have to pick up a piece of chalk and talk to their classes, chalk and talk. If you want to support this, that's your choice too. For me this is irresponsible dictatorship. Have fun. And, of course, your very next post is to prove CanadianMunger's point. You're like a small petulant child. Perhaps Green King is right, though, and we should return this thread to Mattel. I think many of the others on this thread are correct that the price is not quite right for what challenges lie ahead. I think the price is more than right. Benjamin Graham stated that a conservative approach was to take the avg yearly earnings of the last 10 yrs and capitalize them at double the equivalent bond rating for that kind of Co. Mattel's current rating is BBB which yields 3.43% on avg (6.86% for Graham's method); that's equivalent to a factor of about 14.5. MAT's yearly earnings per share (average past 10 years without adjusting for inflation) is $1.7, which equates to a per share value of $24.6. My IV calculation is a little higher than Graham's simple formula, but still in a range of $25 - $33 per share. This is a great franchise (group of franchises) offered at a discount at a moment most companies are being offered at a premium. I'm a shareholder and I'll keep buying. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boilermaker75 Posted April 5, 2015 Share Posted April 5, 2015 boilermaker75, I think your last answer was very fair. Thanks a lot for discussion. I'd love to continue it, but clearly not here and perhaps not over the electronic medium. Best regards and good luck with your teaching. :) Jurgis, Thanks and I will try to be more careful to make it clear when I am exaggerating for emphasis. In case you, or anyone else, is interested. Here is a YouTube channel I have to augment an undergraduate course I teach on electromagnetic fields. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5ZsENSXOVzI0zHt4i2bZFw I will also refrain from stating my position about strategic plans as I am sure it would cause a lot of controversy! Boiler Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phaceliacapital Posted April 10, 2015 Share Posted April 10, 2015 https://fortune.com/2015/04/09/mattel-ceo-fired/ Mattel MAT 1.38% said in a regulatory filing that former Chief Executive Bryan Stockton had been fired, contradicting its January 26 press release in which the toymaker said the executive had resigned. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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