no_thanks Posted December 22, 2014 Share Posted December 22, 2014 Yea I am struggling to see the appeal here on Winland. Seems like there SaaS initiative crashed and burned, and they have already sold there real estate. Curious what the value is? I think I read that they only have 4 employees, so that is nice. It will be one imagine I will learn a lot from following, but I just don't see it. Also, I really don't understand why it looks like Karen M. Hirschmann and Brian Hirschmann bought almost 20% of it and flipped it in less than a year. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sportgamma Posted December 22, 2014 Share Posted December 22, 2014 Seems like there SaaS initiative crashed and burned Did it? Also, I really don't understand why it looks like Karen M. Hirschmann and Brian Hirschmann bought almost 20% of it and flipped it in less than a year. Both of them filed their initial 13Ds in 2011… http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/749935/000153741011000002/eps4472.htm http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/749935/000153783011000002/eps4473.htm I am struggling with the following: - Although Winland does not file reports anymore on Edgar, still somehow Yahoo Finance is updating Winland´s quarterly financial statements. Where are they getting these from? If these are accurate, then Winland generated $200K in free cash flow last quarter… (EV is about $2.7m http://finance.yahoo.com/q/cf?s=WELX - If they turn to profit then obviously there is a lot of value in the NOLs, but I would recon that FRMO building a +5% stake would compromise that. Any NOL expert here who could enlighten me? - I would love to see some comments from Nate, Jeff or Chris. You guys seem suspiciously quiet… Edit: I think I misunderstood the NOL thing: "The purpose of the Agreement is to protect the long term value of the Company’s accumulated net operating losses and other tax attributes (collectively, “NOLs”) for federal and state income tax purposes. The Company’s ability to use the NOLs in the future may be significantly limited if it experiences an “ownership change” for U.S. federal income tax purposes. In general, an ownership change will occur when the percentage of the Company’s ownership (by value) of one or more “5 percent shareholders” (as defined in the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended) has increased by more than 50 percent over the lowest percentage owned by such shareholders at any time during the prior three years (calculated on a rolling basis)." So, FRMO building a stake should not have effect, but if the Hirschmans would have added they might have triggered it. Correct? However, FRMO should trigger the shareholders right plan I presume: "Under the Agreement, the Rights are triggered when a person acquires shares resulting in ownership of 4.99% or more of the outstanding Common Stock. Ten days following the public announcement that such acquisition has occurred, all Rights (except those held by the acquiring person) will become exercisable and all holders of Rights may purchase shares of Common Stock with a market value of twice the exercise price. Under the Agreement, existing shareholders currently having an ownership interest above 4.99% can maintain their current ownership percentage, but may only increase their ownership interest by less than one-one thousandth of one percent (0.001%)." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
no_thanks Posted December 22, 2014 Share Posted December 22, 2014 Thanks. I must be missing some newer info on the SaaS rollout. I only saw financials through 2013, but it sounds like there is newer info out there. Also, not sure how I missed those original 13Ds. Also, I think I read that the shareholder rights plan can not be enforced at the board's discretion, so I would assume they would make an exception for FRMO. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ajc Posted December 24, 2014 Share Posted December 24, 2014 These old reports have been added to the Horizon Kinetics research library: Fixed Income Contrarian Compendium May 2014 Discusses the impact of decoupling on the utilities industry, developments in solar energy and the potential results for electric utilities, as well as factor investing in the context of the utilities and solar industries. Featured companies: Nuance Communications, Inc., Toll Brothers Inc., SEACOR Holdings Inc., and Ryland Group Inc., as well as an update on Molina Healthcare, Inc. http://horizonkinetics.com/docs/Fixed_Income_Contrarian_Compendium_May_2014.pdf Contrarian Research Report Compendium June 2014 Considers the recent performance and relative valuations of the S&P 500 Index and the Russell 2000 Index and the cash flows into and out of the investment products that track them and discusses land companies as a hedge against inflation. Featured companies: World Fuel Services Corp. (INT), Tredegar Corp. (TG), American Homes 4 Rent (AMH), and Lexington Realty Trust (LXP), as well as an update on Cal-Maine Foods, Inc. (CALM). http://horizonkinetics.com/docs/Contrarian_Compendium_June_2014.pdf Spin-Off Research Report Compendium July 2014 Reviews a recent article by Nobel laureate Robert C. Merton about the importance of focusing on income needs rather than volatility or asset levels in retirement planning, compares the valuation characteristics of exchange-traded funds tracking emerging markets indexes to those tracking major domestic indexes, and discusses historical profit margins at utilities and brand name companies. Featured companies: Alliant Techsystems Inc. (ATK), Automatic Data Processing, Inc. (ADP), Energizer Holdings Inc. (ENR), and Harbinger Group Inc. (HRG). http://horizonkinetics.com/docs/Spin-Off_Compendium_July_2014.pdf Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liberty Posted January 16, 2015 Share Posted January 16, 2015 Latest commentary by Stahl. Some very interesting stuff about indexes and ETFs: http://www.horizonkinetics.com/docs/Q4%202014%20Commentary_FINAL.pdf Also, FRMO Q2: http://frmocorp.com/_content/10q/FRMO_Corp_Q2_2015.pdf Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pretium Posted January 16, 2015 Share Posted January 16, 2015 Horizon's latest analysis on great funds/managers underperforming the market is troubling to me. I analyze mutual funds as part of my job and most institutions will use 3 and 5 year time periods to evaluate funds in their investment policy statements. It's amazing how many great funds are being replaced or simply swapped out for index funds. At a minimum one needs to look at a performance over a "full market cycle" to make a judgement on a fund's viability. Right now that's 7 years. What I've observed only confirms the longevity that value investing will have. While most people believe they can overcome behavior biases, most can't. Institutions don't actually care about being patient. Nobody will question an institution (or the decision makers at that institution) if they replace an underperforming fund and put in one that's done well recently. Holding on to a fund that has underperformed by 5% or more, however, is too much too handle. Patience is paramount and will keep value investing working. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
saltybit Posted January 16, 2015 Share Posted January 16, 2015 Latest commentary by Stahl. Some very interesting stuff about indexes and ETFs: http://www.horizonkinetics.com/docs/Q4%202014%20Commentary_FINAL.pdf Also, FRMO Q2: http://frmocorp.com/_content/10q/FRMO_Corp_Q2_2015.pdf Thanks for the links. It's interesting to see the correlation of some of the bigcaps in the commentary with the S&P500. I think Chanos said he is long oil and short the oil majors, bec. oil is down so much but the majors are not, and between the 2 of them, one of them is mispriced bec. they should be correlated. The rise in indexing and the oil majors being overrepresented in those indices is one of the explanations why the price has diverged, and if the indices keep going up and oil keeps going down, this could be a bad position. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jurgis Posted January 16, 2015 Share Posted January 16, 2015 Latest commentary by Stahl. Some very interesting stuff about indexes and ETFs: http://www.horizonkinetics.com/docs/Q4%202014%20Commentary_FINAL.pdf Interesting commentary. Although I find some parts questionable, it is definitely food for thought. Thanks for posting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcliu Posted January 16, 2015 Share Posted January 16, 2015 Which parts did you find to be questionable? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hielko Posted January 16, 2015 Share Posted January 16, 2015 Which parts did you find to be questionable? Can't speak for Jurgis, but to me it sounded like a long and weak excuse for underperformance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jurgis Posted January 16, 2015 Share Posted January 16, 2015 Which parts did you find to be questionable? Can't speak for Jurgis, but to me it sounded like a long and weak excuse for underperformance. That too. :) There are numerous issues if you look at what he wrote from statistical/math viewpoint (I know just enough of statistics to be dangerous, so I'd be glad if real expert corrected me :)). - Increasing correlation with index: in 1994 Apple was much smaller part of market weighted index. Now it is a much bigger part. Of course, its correlation with index increased. You would have to account for the size of the company in index to decide whether the correlation increase is only due to its participation increase in index or not. - He shows value indexes and small cap indexes doing the same return as SP500 in 2014. Then he claims that there is a wide valuation disparity between liquid index stocks and non-index stocks. But if SP500 and small cap indexes perform the same, the valuation disparity cannot be explained by the fact that SP500 runs up leaving behind non-index stocks. - Which is worse Coca Cola then or now? Sure KO is a gigantic slow growing company and therefore might be overvalued at 20PE vs 36PE when it was much smaller. But how does this relate to "one index to rule us all"? IBM, for example, is gigantic slow growing company that is possibly undervalued - is is as much a part of SP500. Why is it not overvalued if index rules everything? - Same questions about his examples of SPG/HHC/DRUNF, CL/JAH, DIS/STRZA/DISCA. I know the last three best, so I'll talk about them. DIS is clearly in the league of its own. Like Buffett said some time ago, parent will pick DIS movie anytime. Does anybody even know STRZA movies offhand? (Yeah, I am sure some people do, but how many?) So saying that DIS is more highly valued because it is in SP500 vs the other two which are not "index fillers" is disingenuous. There are other reasons. :) - He looks at revenue change of the 30 biggest SP500. He excludes FB and GOOG because it's convenient to his thesis. This is blatant data picking. :) Then he does not even look at standard deviation. The lesson from his table is not just that 30 largest companies grew 4.1%, but that some of them grew over 10% and some had revenue declines. Isn't that the normal expected thing? - Three decades data table is also biased. Corporate taxes have dropped to 35% in 1986 I believe, so there would not be a down arrow if he started from 1987. ;) Although definitely there has been support from tax loopholes, so I guess it's fine. 9.3x PE ratio - if he started from late 80s, the PE ratio would have been mostly over 15, so the support would not have been as pronounced. Anyway, these are somewhat minor quibbles - I agree that something (market index in this case) at 19.2 PE is not cheap. ---------------------------- Aside - or one thing to think about: so index (market) is expensive. Which means that there will be a crash at some point. OK, so an investor who does not invest in index should gear up for outperforming market (hugely) in a crash/recovery so that their underperformance to the market in current years would not matter. If the investor will underperform in crash/recovery as well as now, then there is a problem. ;) Another aside: if the small cap / value indexes track SP500 performance, why not buy them? They are not as much highly valued... ;) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
writser Posted January 17, 2015 Share Posted January 17, 2015 Thanks for sharing your detailed thoughts. I got the same feeling too. I wasn't really impressed by the mutual fund comparisons. Felt like they were saying "look these guys are the best and they underperform too so it's no big deal!". It's a weak excuse. Also the SPG / HHC comparison on p/b was quite cheeky. Book value of SPG appears grossly understated while all HHC properties were reappraised after the bankruptcy proceedings if I'm not mistaken. That said, they do raise some interesting points. I just liked their previous letters a lot better. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pretium Posted January 17, 2015 Share Posted January 17, 2015 Jurgis - I was shaking my head at some of the slides as well. Also, a lot of typos and graphical errors in their charts. The rising correlations among the top weighted companies in the S&P 500 tells us next to nothing. All these companies are much bigger parts of the economy now then they were back in 1994, and thus are more correlated. Also, are these 1-year correlations? When has 1-year data points ever indicated some secular trend (ie rising correlations due to indexing). What might be a better analysis would be to calculate rolling 5-year average correlations of the top 25 companies in the S&P 500 in any given year. But regardless, the rising correlations needs to be taken into context. Quantitative easing in the US, and elsewhere around the globe have benefited all risk assets for the past 5 years. It just so happens that indexing has taken off at the same time as QE. Not to mention the entire economy is recovering from one of the deepest troughs in history. A rising tide lifts all boats. I'm not an expert on ETFs. Does anyone here know if they actually influence prices as much as Horizon suggests they do? For instance, ff I go buy billions of shares of every ETF in existence, how much will the underlying securities be effected? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcliu Posted January 17, 2015 Share Posted January 17, 2015 Which parts did you find to be questionable? Can't speak for Jurgis, but to me it sounded like a long and weak excuse for underperformance. That too. :) There are numerous issues if you look at what he wrote from statistical/math viewpoint (I know just enough of statistics to be dangerous, so I'd be glad if real expert corrected me :)). - Increasing correlation with index: in 1994 Apple was much smaller part of market weighted index. Now it is a much bigger part. Of course, its correlation with index increased. You would have to account for the size of the company in index to decide whether the correlation increase is only due to its participation increase in index or not. - He shows value indexes and small cap indexes doing the same return as SP500 in 2014. Then he claims that there is a wide valuation disparity between liquid index stocks and non-index stocks. But if SP500 and small cap indexes perform the same, the valuation disparity cannot be explained by the fact that SP500 runs up leaving behind non-index stocks. - Which is worse Coca Cola then or now? Sure KO is a gigantic slow growing company and therefore might be overvalued at 20PE vs 36PE when it was much smaller. But how does this relate to "one index to rule us all"? IBM, for example, is gigantic slow growing company that is possibly undervalued - is is as much a part of SP500. Why is it not overvalued if index rules everything? - Same questions about his examples of SPG/HHC/DRUNF, CL/JAH, DIS/STRZA/DISCA. I know the last three best, so I'll talk about them. DIS is clearly in the league of its own. Like Buffett said some time ago, parent will pick DIS movie anytime. Does anybody even know STRZA movies offhand? (Yeah, I am sure some people do, but how many?) So saying that DIS is more highly valued because it is in SP500 vs the other two which are not "index fillers" is disingenuous. There are other reasons. :) - He looks at revenue change of the 30 biggest SP500. He excludes FB and GOOG because it's convenient to his thesis. This is blatant data picking. :) Then he does not even look at standard deviation. The lesson from his table is not just that 30 largest companies grew 4.1%, but that some of them grew over 10% and some had revenue declines. Isn't that the normal expected thing? - Three decades data table is also biased. Corporate taxes have dropped to 35% in 1986 I believe, so there would not be a down arrow if he started from 1987. ;) Although definitely there has been support from tax loopholes, so I guess it's fine. 9.3x PE ratio - if he started from late 80s, the PE ratio would have been mostly over 15, so the support would not have been as pronounced. Anyway, these are somewhat minor quibbles - I agree that something (market index in this case) at 19.2 PE is not cheap. ---------------------------- Aside - or one thing to think about: so index (market) is expensive. Which means that there will be a crash at some point. OK, so an investor who does not invest in index should gear up for outperforming market (hugely) in a crash/recovery so that their underperformance to the market in current years would not matter. If the investor will underperform in crash/recovery as well as now, then there is a problem. ;) Another aside: if the small cap / value indexes track SP500 performance, why not buy them? They are not as much highly valued... ;) Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I agree with your observations and had the same feelings while reading this letter. Seems a lot of data points and sample sizes have been deliberately chosen/ignored to fit the narrative. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peter1234 Posted January 17, 2015 Share Posted January 17, 2015 Very confusing letter. Why did Fairholme, Longleaf, Wintergreen, Gabelli Value under-perform? Because ETFs took in a lot of money and only Google and Facebook grew revenues? ??? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liberty Posted January 21, 2015 Share Posted January 21, 2015 Here's a recording of yesterday's Q2 call (they have a weird fiscal year): https://www.dropbox.com/s/wh0quaqgx7ff0r4/2015-jan-FRMO-CC.m4a?dl=0 Enjoy. The official transcript probably won't be out for many days. Be warned, Murray has a big, uncontrollable cough... Lots of interesting stuff. Including clearly stating that the Winland investment is just the first of many and they intend to buy things outside of financial services, go wherever they see opportunities and "optionality". They've been selling the bond funds that they bought in 2008-2009 so cash is going up quite a bit. Will be interesting to see how they deploy it. Buying stakes in small operating businesses definitely makes the model quite interesting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
merkhet Posted January 21, 2015 Share Posted January 21, 2015 Very confusing letter. Why did Fairholme, Longleaf, Wintergreen, Gabelli Value under-perform? Because ETFs took in a lot of money and only Google and Facebook grew revenues? ??? I think the point was that the S&P 500 performance is" off" because ETF flows are exacerbating a market-weighted bias towards well performing stocks thereby pushing up the P/E. In a mutual fund world, at least the mutual fund managers would exert some modicum of value weighting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sportgamma Posted January 21, 2015 Share Posted January 21, 2015 Here's a recording of yesterday's Q2 call (they have a weird fiscal year): https://www.dropbox.com/s/wh0quaqgx7ff0r4/2015-jan-FRMO-CC.m4a?dl=0 Enjoy. The official transcript probably won't be out for many days. Be warned, Murray has a big, uncontrollable cough... Lots of interesting stuff. Including clearly stating that the Winland investment is just the first of many and they intend to buy things outside of financial services, go wherever they see opportunities and "optionality". They've been selling the bond funds that they bought in 2008-2009 so cash is going up quite a bit. Will be interesting to see how they deploy it. Buying stakes in small operating businesses definitely makes the model quite interesting. Thank you Liberty Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peter1234 Posted January 21, 2015 Share Posted January 21, 2015 Very confusing letter. Why did Fairholme, Longleaf, Wintergreen, Gabelli Value under-perform? Because ETFs took in a lot of money and only Google and Facebook grew revenues? ??? I think the point was that the S&P 500 performance is" off" because ETF flows are exacerbating a market-weighted bias towards well performing stocks thereby pushing up the P/E. In a mutual fund world, at least the mutual fund managers would exert some modicum of value weighting. Thanks, that makes sense. Still, to try to explain 1 year of under performance does not seem to make sense, especially when attributing it to a larger trend like ETF. There were ETFs in 2011, 2012, 2013 as well... Also, I thought one of his main points was that the more is passively managed, the better the remaining acive managers would do since there is less competition? ;) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
giofranchi Posted January 22, 2015 Share Posted January 22, 2015 Q2 Conference Call Transcript: http://seekingalpha.com/article/2838846-frmo-corps-frmo-ceo-murray-stahl-on-q2-2015-results-earnings-call-transcript?source=email_rt_article_readmore&auth_param=7i5hb:1ac0h8b:6f8a0f191e30f8f0ad405d60c275fd9e&uprof=25 Gio Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
giofranchi Posted January 23, 2015 Share Posted January 23, 2015 Latest commentary by Stahl. Some very interesting stuff about indexes and ETFs: http://www.horizonkinetics.com/docs/Q4%202014%20Commentary_FINAL.pdf Imo this is one of their best quarterly commentary in a while. Lucid and logical, well written and very clear. :) Gio Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
giofranchi Posted March 4, 2015 Share Posted March 4, 2015 March 2015 Market Commentary GioBuy_and_Hold_Mar_2015_FINAL.pdf Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fowci Posted March 13, 2015 Share Posted March 13, 2015 FRMO stock price has slid approx 20% from all time high (on very small volumes). Anyone buying (more) at this level? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liberty Posted March 13, 2015 Share Posted March 13, 2015 FRMO stock price has slid approx 20% from all time high (on very small volumes). Anyone buying (more) at this level? Yes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Eriksen Posted March 13, 2015 Share Posted March 13, 2015 FRMO stock price has slid approx 20% from all time high (on very small volumes). Anyone buying (more) at this level? Yes. Am I the only one that finds it absurdly priced at 50x revenue and 90x earnings? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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