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infinitee00

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The discount rate depends upon the business you are talking about, whether it is levered & other company specific risk associated with cash flows (like key man risk).  Also if it is a private business there may be a discount for lack of marketability if you are purchasing a minority interest in the business.  You can PM with the details & I can provide you some further guidance if you do not want to disclose the details here.

 

Packer

 

Send you a PM.

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Hi Packer,

 

I was wondering if you already had a look at ABS-CBN. It's right up your ally: dominant television broadcaster in the Philippines.

 

Looks cheap and they are currently at multi-year lows with a 3% dividend yield. Majority owned and run by founding family with decent track record.

 

Country (and currency) risk might be a bit high though.

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I have looked at it & I like the sector but I like GMA Networks better as they have better programming in terms or ratings that ABS-CBN & is cheaper.  They do not have the cable assets of ABS-CBN so one may expect them to be cheaper.

 

Packer

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I still like the radio stocks.  The Entercom deal is good as long as the acquisition does not dilute the sports/news talk culture of their existing stations.  This will gain scale but in these firms you need to careful that you don’t create syndicated vs. customized networks which hurt the model in the long term.  I still like TSQ & SALM for their tight communities.

 

Packer

 

Packer, do you like ETM better now 2~3x projected 2020 FCF and the Founding family just bought something like $16m shares in the last few months?  ;)

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I still like ETM.  The question in my mind is whether the integration of the CBS stations will prevent the decline of revenues or better yet increase revenues.  Both sports radio & news radio are genres that work well for radio & are harder for the internet to displace vs. other genres.

 

The reason for the low FCF is the large amount of restructuring cost, almost $10m in 1Q & other WC items.  IMO that is why you need to look at EBITDA as the cap-ex is minimal and the amortization is non-cash. 

 

Packer

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Rough number last quarter:

 

Revenue :$300.5M

Station operating expenses:$255M

corporate :$19M

Interest :$23.5M

 

total expense:$297.5M

 

FCF before tax:$3M

 

 

This excludes all restructuring expenses, which is very generous. Unless they can reduce their station expense and/or overhead or increases their revenues, this is going to be a donut.

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You are missing the seasonality in the cash flows.  The Q1 numbers are less than 1/3rd of the Q2-Q4 numbers in 2017.  Also 2018 will include election bump in revenues.  The debt is also trading at par so the debt market is not concerned.  If this was a zero the debt would not be traded at par.  See debt footnote disclosure for some insight on the debt pricing.

 

Packer

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You are missing the seasonality in the cash flows.  The Q1 numbers are less than 1/3rd of the Q2-Q4 numbers in 2017.  Also 2018 will include election bump in revenues.  The debt is also trading at par so the debt market is not concerned.  If this was a zero the debt would not be traded at par.  See debt footnote disclosure for some insight on the debt pricing.

 

Packer

My bad, I looked at last years numbers for seasonality and it seem that we can expect a ~22% revenue bump, half of which should drop to the bottom line. This would roughly mean $30-35M in FCF during Q2-Q3, but even with that, it seem FCF yield is a whole lot closer to 10% for thr equity rather than 20%.

 

The big concern of course is that there are now so many alternatives to radio entertainment when you are in a car. Sirius of course, streaming music (Amazon music free for prime members, which is what I use, Pandora etc). If this is a melting ice cube, even if slowly, the stock won’t do well.

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The only difference for ETM is they are not in the music genre but the sports radio & news genre, which should be more immune to competition you have mentioned.  I think this should prevent the melting and if you add in political & the pay down of debt you can get an interesting investment.  IMO the melting ice cube is the consensus here so the variant perspective is going long.  IMO the debt markets are typically smarter money than the equity markets.  We will see.

 

Packer

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The only difference for ETM is they are not in the music genre but the sports radio & news genre, which should be more immune to competition you have mentioned.  I think this should prevent the melting and if you add in political & the pay down of debt you can get an interesting investment.  IMO the melting ice cube is the consensus here so the variant perspective is going long.  IMO the debt markets are typically smarter money than the equity markets.  We will see.

 

Packer

 

I like to listen to local sports talk shows while commuting to work. I find it entertaining listening to talk shows focusing on my local sports teams, especially during playoff or big free agency signing, etc. It's hard to replace this with podcast or others since it's only interesting within a short period time. Nobody is interested to hearing last year's game analysis or drafts. Isn't Sirius a radio business, that just caters to different customer basis?

 

I don't know much about advertising business. But management has been saying that radio provides highest ROI for your advertising money.

 

 

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Hi Packer. Are you still holding Intralot? I sold out a few months back but am considering buying back in some again as it is much cheaper now (sold most around 1.35 around break even) and management is finally really buying back and cancelling shares at a decent rate and not just window dressing/signalling as they did before. Seems like they can buy back 2% per month. IGT sold off quite a bit last few weeks as well and doesn't seem expensive either. Is new EU regulation weighing on the sector?

 

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RD - As to corporate governance, I know of any book that has case studies.  The only area I look for is clues to changes in corporate governance over time from actions.  KT Corp is an example where the previous 2 CEOs had governance issues & the new guy has cleaned house, done good capital allocation & stayed clean in a situation where others did not - the corruption during the recent Park presidency.

 

tom - I am still holding & feeling the pain.  It appears there are rumors out there & the bonds have declined (not a good sign but I do not know the volume so I cannot tell if this is real price or not).  The backdrop of legalization of sports betting in the US should help them tremendously & they do still sell at significant discount to the comps & the recent capital allocation decision to buyback stock & retire is good.  We will see but the market is still skeptical these guys can create anything worth close to the comps.

 

Packer

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Thank you, Packer. If you look at Japanese companies (big ones at least), there are many of them declaring the improvement in governance with the new CEO. Too bad, most of the cases they are promoted internally in the companies with bad culture in the first place. I have been looking at TIA as related to this but, considering the similarity b/w Europe and Japan, I think bringing outsiders (Genish, not to mention Elliot) would be encouraging.

 

Thanks again,

RD

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I still like them.  They have diversified so the FPSO loss will have a smaller impact.  They have added more tankers, container & dry bulk ships diversifying the ship base with more ship types & customers.  I have not invested primarily due to Norwegian withholding tax & having only IRA funds to invest.   

 

Packer

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