UK
-
Posts
1,830 -
Joined
-
Days Won
14
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Events
Posts posted by UK
-
-
2 hours ago, dartmonkey said:
So folks are bashing/discussing FFH for buying more BB, yet nobody cares if it is actually true:)?
So it seems. There's been no announcement of a purchase, and dataroma indicates the same ownership as before (46,724,700 shares.) Blackberry's Nov 13 filing states that Watsa has shared voting power on 46,853,700 shares, 46,724,700 of these through Fairfax. Here is the nonsense that Yahoo Finance attributes to GuruFocus:
"On November 13, 2023, Prem Watsa (Trades, Portfolio), through Fairfax Financial Holdings, made a notable addition to its investment in BlackBerry Ltd (NYSE:BB). The transaction involved the acquisition of 129,000 shares at a price of $3.52 per share, increasing the total holdings to 46,853,700 shares. This move had a 0.03% impact on the portfolio, adjusting the position to 10.77% and marking a significant vote of confidence in the company's prospects."
So I would speculate that there has been no additional purchase, but perhaps Watsa owns a few shares outside of Fairfax and that has caused GuruFocus to be confused. That $0.5m "significant vote of confidence" looks like it never happened.
Back to complaining about the $4m privatization of Farmer's Edge...
Thank you very much!
So it seems there is more than enough skepticism and pent up anxiousness regarding FFH if we jump to the conclusion of 'same old...nothing has changed' just because of some fake headline and some tiny housekeeping deal done:). After share price up almost 50 per cent YTD, maybe some of this is understandable, but also to expect that nothing wrong will ever happen with FFH or some of its investments...would be just crazy:)? And just to remind, even after 50 per cent up this year it still trades at just 1 BV:). Far from priced to be perfect I guess? Given all positive fundamental developments and especially changes in bond portfolio, i would argue that FFH at current price is almost as exciting as a year ago.
-
“The ‘laws of the jungle’ of international competition have not changed,” Xi told Chinese military officials in 2014. All that matters, he added a year later, “is whether you have strength and whether you can use that strength. Relying on a silver tongue won’t work.”
To paraphrase Musk, Xi has said the actual truht:)
-
Not a bad movie about the beginning of McDonald's, kinda investing related:). Scene about land:
-
23 hours ago, UK said:
Maybe a dumb question, but where could I see direct info on FFH adding BB? Isn't it supposed to be reported somewhere under insider transactions?
https://dataroma.com/m/ins/ins.php?t=y&&sym=BB&o=fd&d=d
So folks are bashing/discussing FFH for buying more BB, yet nobody cares if it is actually true:)? Or am I missing something?
-
2 hours ago, glider3834 said:
yes but look its been a terrible investment for Fairfax so its really its just extracting something of value - turning a lemon into lemonade in a sense - they will need to call time on the turnaround at some point if there is no traction there & I hope thats sooner rather than later
Thanks, yes, maybe I should have said 'this decision' instead of 'this deal'. I understand lemon situation here, however, looking from today's perspective, how this does not make a lot of sense just because of taxes?
-
9 hours ago, glider3834 said:
viking I am no tax expert but Farmers Edge had circa C$500M in non-capital tax losses at end of 2022 & that number would be higher now & if FFH can acquire all the shares (they currently have 61%) for around C$4M by my rough math, then if turnaround fails & they then choose to wind up this sub, then Fairfax the parent corp I think could use those tax losses applying whatever appropriate tax rate. Farmers Edge hasn't recognised any tax asset due to its ongoing cash burn.
I think as well as a private co. they would have lower running costs than a public co. Its end of tax year as well so given minority investors are likely sitting on tax losses there is probably intuitive sense to the timing.
They have a new CEO who is trying stuff but its not showing up in any revenue numbers , its possible Fairfax will want to give him more time but the recent financing of C$6.37M feels like it has almost been calculated to the dollar- thats my impression anyway.
This is interesting, thanks! But do I understand this correctly: is it some extra 4 M for them to spend for a 500 M or say 75 M, at a rate of 15 per cent, in possible tax benefits for FFH:)? If this is true, then this deal is more than a ten bagger just on this tax benefit basis:)))
-
Maybe a dumb question, but where could I see direct info on FFH adding BB? Isn't it supposed to be reported somewhere under insider transactions?
https://dataroma.com/m/ins/ins.php?t=y&&sym=BB&o=fd&d=d
-
-
-
13 hours ago, Viking said:
Not sure if this has been posted already… looks like Prem is elephant hunting. Am i reading this right that this is not Fairfax - but Prem on his own?
The partners on this proposed deal are interesting. Pierre Lasonde is a partner with Fairfax in Foran Mining. Kestenbaum is, of course, the CEO of Stelco. If you wanted to partner with stars, it would be difficult to find two better than Lassonde and Kestenbaum.
I saw this and thought it was strange, but maybe Prem and Alan were included more like to give this bid some extra weight because of their local status or something?
-
-
The practice is widespread, with big-name short sellers Nate Anderson, Kyle Bass and Carson Block among the tipsters. If the SEC investigates and levies a fine, a short seller can collect up to 30% of the proceeds. That’s on top of any profit they might make by betting on the stock’s decline. The whistleblower program is open to all comers — including short sellers, corporate insiders and random internet investors — and the would-be informants can’t get enough of it. They’ve flooded the agency with over 18,000 formal tips in the 2023 fiscal year. For perspective, that 12-month tally is double the total of all SEC enforcement actions over the past 10 years.
-
26 minutes ago, Xerxes said:
Certainly this must be a blow to Markel fanboys. Position cut by 66%.
At the end of the day, while Berkshire might be a cornerstone foundational investment for Markel, the latter is just a security/tracking stock for Berkshire. They come and go.
Ping me, when there is a +$15 billion position.
Obviously, they switched to FFH, we just can not see this:)
-
I recently stumbled on some youtube interviews with Christoph Waltz. Seems very nice and interesting person. And than realised that I almost do not remember Django Unchained. I hope to rewatch it soon / sometimes it is good to have not so good memory:)
-
6 hours ago, Gregmal said:
Is there actually a legitimate way to do this? Would imagine getting a payoff quote aint getting you a discount to amount outstanding.
Only if you live in Denmark?
Borrowers may redeem their mortgage loans at any time without negotiating the price, as prepayment may always take place at the prevailing market prices. Danish mortgage borrowers may terminate their loans by buying back the mortgage bonds in the bond market and delivering them to the mortgage bank. This option is referred to as the delivery option or the buy-back option. The buy-back option applies to all mortgage bonds whether callable or non-callable.
-
https://www.ft.com/content/c587a47a-fa2e-4d86-b22d-16b0dcdfb4a9
"Reinsurance executives, also speaking at the event, warned that inflationary factors, and a push to improve profitability after years of losses, meant prices were unlikely to soften. “A market correction was needed,” said SiriusPoint’s chief executive Scott Egan. He forecast that there would be “no drop in rates” in January. “Reinsurers are prepared . . . to stand their ground.”
The other thing I would like to ask: does anybody can explain why TRV trades at a such a high multiple vs FFH or even MKL, despite being valued very similarly (all at ~1.3 BV?) 5 years ago? How does this makes any sense? Not the best chart, but to ilustrate the question:
-
https://www.ft.com/content/dd9ba2f6-f509-42f0-8e97-4271c7b84ded
Despite its consumer success, OpenAI seeks to make progress towards building artificial general intelligence, Altman said. Large language models (LLMs), which underpin ChatGPT, are “one of the core pieces . . . for how to build AGI, but there’ll be a lot of other pieces on top of it”. While OpenAI has focused primarily on LLMs, its competitors have been pursuing alternative research strategies to advance AI. Altman said his team believed that language was a “great way to compress information” and therefore developing intelligence, a factor he thought that the likes of Google DeepMind had missed. “[Other companies] have a lot of smart people. But they did not do it. They did not do it even after I thought we kind of had proved it with GPT-3,” he said. Ultimately, Altman said “the biggest missing piece” in the race to develop AGI is what is required for such systems to make fundamental leaps of understanding. “There was a long period of time where the right thing for [Isaac] Newton to do was to read more math textbooks, and talk to professors and practice problems . . . that’s what our current models do,” said Altman, using an example a colleague had previously used. But he added that Newton was never going to invent calculus by simply reading about geometry or algebra. “And neither are our models,” Altman said. “And so the question is, what is the missing idea to go generate net new . . . knowledge for humanity? I think that’s the biggest thing to go work on.”
-
On 11/10/2023 at 11:45 PM, Spekulatius said:
Complexity is an issue that reduces valuations in general. A simple business will be valued higher than a complex business, all else being equal.
What @SafetyinNumbers call social numbers is what Aswath Damadoran call’s the story. I think the story is getting better with FFH but as an insurance holding stock, it is unlikely to even become a stock that has much of a story value.
I am really not expecting this or counting on this...but stranger things have happened and it a lot of cases complexity, especially if that was a story of some geniuses being involved, was enabler and even necessary to justify nonsensical valuations or earnings projections:)
Isn't the most important things driving story value are story telling itself, but even more importantly, price action of the stock?
As with FFH (or insurance more broadly at the time?) this "story" story also happened once. Of course, lets stay conservative: maybe 1.5-1.7 BV would be all right / enough for the next (this?) time:)
-
-
-
6 hours ago, Xerxes said:
Reading a book that covers the last chapter of the Romanov dynasty. I am half way through the book about when the first war starts. There are some eerily similarities to 2022 and the way it was conducted.
. Not holding my breath...but, I wish the end this time would be also similar:)
-
On 11/8/2023 at 1:16 AM, Castanza said:
You’re betting on the US system..BTC owners are betting on the global system.
2-3% who comes up with those numbers?
If I was forced to choose between only gold or Bitcoin and USD or any paper currency to keep my net worth forever in the future, it would be tough decision and very sad situation. Perhaps I would just spend most or at least half of it:)))
But I thought the idea was to compare it or bet not on US or USD, but on productive assets, which could be priced in USD, EUR, CNY, some new USD/EUR/etc, gold, Bitcoin or whatever currency in the future?
Isn't it the main problem with betting on gold, Bitcoin, art or other non productive assets? Meaning that 170 K tons of gold or 21 M Bitcoins or some painting will just stay the same, while productive assets will grow?
Kinda:
A century from now the 400 million acres of farmland will have produced staggering amounts of corn, wheat, cotton, and other crops – and will continue to produce that valuable bounty, whatever the currency may be. Exxon Mobil will probably have delivered trillions of dollars in dividends to its owners and will also hold assets worth many more trillions (and, remember, you get 16 Exxons). The 170,000 tons of gold will be unchanged in size and still incapable of producing anything. You can fondle the cube, but it will not respond.
Or:
Whether the currency a century from now is based on gold, seashells, shark teeth, or a piece of paper (as today), people will be willing to exchange a couple of minutes of their daily labor for a Coca-Cola or some See’s peanut brittle. In the future the U.S. population will move more goods, consume more food, and require more living space than it does now. People will forever exchange what they produce for what others produce. Our country’s businesses will continue to efficiently deliver goods and services wanted by our citizens. Metaphorically, these commercial “cows” will live for centuries and give ever greater quantities of “milk” to boot. Their value will be determined not by the medium of exchange but rather by their capacity to deliver milk. Proceeds from the sale of the milk will compound for the owners of the cows, just as they did during the 20th century when the Dow increased from 66 to 11,497 (and paid loads of dividends as well).
-
-
Why Not Big Tech?
in Berkshire Hathaway
Posted
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/06/warren-buffett-it-doesnt-take-any-money-to-run-largest-companies.html
I do wonder sometimes. Especially since there were at least a few very good periods to do this (last year or at the start of pandemic) and also these companies are large enough for BRK. But perhaps the simplest answer is that they already own like half of their portfolio in Apple and WB just likes and understands it the best. So no need to diworsify?