CorpRaider

Haha. They are just citing the MRQ total debt to ebitda. They both have ~55% TL/TA. Lazy balance sheets. SLG is weird because it has like a mini merchant bank on the BS (should be levered like 5/1 LFG). They seem to be harping on the VNO retail exposure. The most troubling thing to me is that they are actually a fan company (did we already exhaust that joke <groan>)?.

Yeah I'ma fade this. Youngs trying to get dates through the local church group so they can go get some papa johns? Nah man.

Sold a little $SLG yesterday.

thanks for sharing. these numbers are shockingly high. I am amazed that half of people are back in some places. the NYC REITs have been saying 10%-20% of people are back and I would've guessed 15-25% elsewhere (in the US). this article is very different than what my impression is from following the REITs. weird. trying to think if there a reason that locks/unlocks would overstate occupancy? data seems suspiciously good to me. Maybe the nuance is that higher rent type of tenants (tech/finance/law etc) that are in the blue chip buildings are functioning better remotely whereas some others are more eager to get back to the office? Vornado speaking yesterday at BofA to follow up here, ther'e a bloomberg article today saying Manhattan office is about 10% full and other major cities are more like 25%. If you pro forma'd for the real estate industry's 50%+* occupancy in Manhattan, you'd probably be in the single digits. *for the record, I think this is kind of dumb for them to be "leading by example". Can you imagine the headline if Related/VNO/SLG's/BPY's leasing/acquisition team gets covid? tenants will return because they want to/feel good about doing so, not because their landlord is in the office. Yeah that is stupid and cringey. Not as bad as the plea that the Related guy penned for the WSJ, but cringe. W/R/T some of the other comments above, I agree we could see things shaking out with the BSD guys and gunners fighting for space in the trophy/downtown space and the more drone workers being in a hoteling situation at the nice digs downtown with the BSD views (and the network effect of proximity to the decision makers at clients/potential clients and popping over and meeting bob the billionaire for lunch if he's available to take a meeting, etc...) and wow I just talked myself into thinking this is all galaxy brain bs and not much will change.

Interesting. Thanks for sharing. Bilerman @ citi pretty much reflects my impression of the deal, like wtf are they doing...they have all these cross-company options and other inter-party relationships they are setting up to "simplify" things and they are sticking holders with a phantom tax bill (!) because they think they can predict the future (wow that would probably be a malpractice suit for me) to close a discount to mgmt's estimate of NAV? Looks like L&B owns ~1.4% percent of the outstanding as of last q.

If I had to try and code from one of those shared desks I would never want to come in.

My biggest fear is they sit there sucking their thumb and paying the SG&A. I saw some commentary that the paying of the dividend means people infer they don't intend to close a deal this tax year. I dunno about that but I do know Zell has been cautious for years in his like "market commentary." Though to be honest from what I've read about him I kind of think he just gives his opinion on macro stuff but it doesn't really impact what he actually does, which seems to be buy quality property below replacement value that has been under-managed/presents obvious value-add opportunities. But if he said that every time he was asked a question on a TV program, he probably wouldn't get many invites. I almost did some more EQR (and some PGRE) today too but I have to save some room for "disrupted" financials and "disrupted" media companies in with my "disrupted" real estate. haha

EQC

Diworsified from WFC into BAC. Ok Li Lu and WEB?

I would be less inclined to go into my office in midtown where I normally ride the path/subway or take an uber versus driving my Tahoe to my suburbia nightmare office park with a view of a retention pond in Atlanta or Houston where there is really no viable public transportation anyway and the traffic is now slightly less hellish. So I would buy that NYC is lower than RUS.

Whelp.

BAC

Haha! I was just looking at that. Terry Considine is CEO/founder (old guy). Internally managed... AIR will hold stabilized/developed apartments and AIV will take development ops. Lots of cross rights of refusal (to develop properties; right of first refusal to buy developed properties, etc). Watched a couple of youtube talks he gave...comes off as a good guy, but is that a toupe'? Edit: wow they are doing a reverse (taxable) spin; citing potential changes in tax law...no vote and they are sending people a tax bill. I don't get why they are doing the spin. Their combined estimated NAVs in the presentation are $7.8 billion for AIR (with a woooo 5% increase in distribution) and $1.2 billion for AIV; current EV (admittedly after a ~7% move on announcement) is ~10B. CEO/Founder is going with AIR (apartment holdco). Also going to be on board of AIV.

Anyone know how Kraven is doing? I was just thinking about him earlier today. I was re-reading some quant stuff which led me to some antitrust legal canon concerning how Porter's Five Forces is basically bunk. I had a similar personal realization with M. Gladwell's stuff. I think my journey toward quant-esque investing has been probably kind of similar to his. I dont think I was here while he was an active poster, but we exchanged messages a little bit ago. He can chime in if he's still following but the gist was similar to what a lot of us have acknowledged the past few years. There is not a ton of unique investment related discussion here, and the investment related discussion that does take place, is often in the same trite names and largely an echo chamber...BRK, FFH, etc. Yeah, he was more evidence-based quant-esque in style (in the tradition of like Graham and Schloss) unless memory escapes me so it's not like there was ever a ton of discrete exchanges of narrative on particular names (that I recall). Probably going to take a real bloodbath for the galaxy names and some mean reversion to bring back a lot of interesting nuance/opportunity.

Anyone know how Kraven is doing? I was just thinking about him earlier today. I was re-reading some quant stuff which led me to some antitrust legal canon concerning how Porter's Five Forces is basically bunk. I had a similar personal realization with M. Gladwell's stuff. I think my journey toward quant-esque investing has been probably kind of similar to his.

JBGS, VNO, SLG, EQC, PGRE

That WSJ op ed from the Related Cos exec was very Randy Duke, "Turn those machines back on!" Scariest thing I've seen. haha. Some activist should take a run at SLG or VNO with a nice spread deck on converting to industrial (ghost kitchens and fulfillment), data storage, and trailer parks in the sky.

Thanks for head's up on this JGBS. I am thinking about their focus on walkability. In my ideal personal scenario, I have enough personal capital to justify an office space (maybe with a BBG) a couple of blocks away from my home, where I can walk or bike when I want (and store my junk, some books, and other stuff there). As a compromise, working for someone else, I still like having that space, preferably with a view and some people standing by that I can get to help do stuff when I want/need. If they are going to take that away, I'ma need a raise dawg (or I'm likely to look to hop to somewhere that does offer it that....all else being equal).

Don't ask me. I wrote a post about Buffett's AAPL investment in almost real time that was really kind of gushing with enthusiasm. Then I went off and probably bought like freaking Viacom or Wells Fargo or some such.

A lot of that seems very macro brained and requiring clairvoyance for him to make a big bet (I acknowledge he does mess around with that stuff to keep out of the bars, as Munger put it). Almost no chance the GOLD is his position, in my opinion. Does he even get out of bed for half a billion?

Yeah Towers is discussing the Gulf Canada and abitibi stuff right now. The book is kind of dragging for me, but in fairness, I keep jumping around to other books.

Yeah, given the sort of odd percentages and the selling PNC, BK, MTB, and USB, (but like not blowing completely out of any of them...as he does) etc... seems like he might be farting around with tax loss harvesting and keeping exposure to the sector via BAC. -$6B in sales and then +$2 billion just in reported BAC purchases.

I'm reading Towers of Debt, which is also about them, right now.

Imagine the opportunity created by everyone saying the cash drag is insurmountable and then he retires or leaves the stage and the stock trades below book or something and Greg goes half General Dynamics on the thing.

Alright, I'ma buy a little EQR.