gary17

I am intrigued to see BKNG EXPdia - the online travel agency is a very competitive business -!

ffh on fire today !

glad i did not dive into local / community news when buffett mentioned the idea a few years back. a lot of value investors did and lost money... this further enforces my view that value is about future earning power.

thanks i think BRK has a lot of cash , probably stand to benefit. FFH is cheap but of lesser quality and questionable culture. hard for me to pull the trigger.

is a hard market good for P and C insurers?

got a few friends took delivery of model 3 recently. they said tesla is doing about 100 cars a day in vancouver, bc! My neighbor got a model 3 a couple of months ago.--really nice car. I offered to trade him my 335i for it but he declined. i hate to do this but driving a model 3 now fees like owning an iphone a few years ago when people were still on blackberry and motorola

got a few friends took delivery of model 3 recently. they said tesla is doing about 100 cars a day in vancouver, bc!

Then Charlie said we will be more liberal about repurchase lol

I think in a prolonged period of low interest rates, many investors failed to recognize early on that the "multiple" used for valuation can be a bit more generous than during normal times... that's just my observation.

Historically, on average, real estate appreciation has pretty much followed inflation with a little extra, no? And there are all kinds of maintenance costs that people often forget to factor in when they cite how much they've made. Most of the return seems to come from leverage, which is fine, but we shouldn't forget that carrying a lot of debt can be a problem (price can fall, hells angels can move next door, houses can have expensive problems, etc). Tax free is nice, but a lot of people invest in tax-advantaged accounts too, and the friction to buying and selling tends to be relatively high, if you're not someone who knows real estate well and can bypass a lot of the fee-takers. To me, buying a house has a lot of non-financial considerations too, so looking at IRRs vs renting is only part of the story. Some people want to be real estate investors and don't mind flipping houses and moving every few years. Personally, I have no interest in that. So if inflation is roughly 2.5%. leveraged at 5x = 12.5%. and since it is tax free it means if you have investment income you need to be roughly returning 25%, unleveraged befote taxes... i think for most average canadians owning a home , one home that is your principal residence is a fairly safe way to generate wealthy over the long term—

pretty hard to beat tax free leveraged return if you buy a home

I believe I did about 10% - 15% will hve to look at the math when I have time as I moved money out to pay for a few private investment ideas, moved money into wife’s rrsp and kids resp, and then had some other funds come in so it’s quite confusing even to myself lol the big winner is Xpel and Soda stream earlier in the year. SODA is complete luck- I had been thinking about it after learning about it , and just started to build a position when they announced the buyout . I still lost quite a bit of money from the peak because of my leveraged position in BAC. As I noted to my family... it’s nice to have first world problems to worry about (% return). happy new year everyone.

private businesses are about 2 - 3 x pre-tax earnings (earnings after paying management *& staff reasonable salary). agree with the shot-gun clause

Petec What’s your thought about all the share based compensations?

This quarter’s FCF yield is 10%. That’s not annualised. Bit less when you consider Fairfax warrant dilution but even so... a lot of cash flow wow but also a lot of debt.

I see. thanks maybe I ask differently — which one is a better business to own long term? my initial thought is high ROiC means the business has a stronger competitive advantage ; so if given the choice , i’d own the one with higher ROIC.

RB i see you learned a lot about valuation in grad school question for you assuming ROIC > WACC , and all else being equal, would you say a company with low ROIC and high growth is more valuable or a company with high ROIC but low growth? Thanks Gary

I noticed some companies that have slow growth seem to be quite capable of creating value, and therefore shareholders do well as the share price appreciates. Example, AAPL since 2015 revenue has been around $ 240B a year Boeing, HD, etc. I was wondering if the value has been created because of improved margins... Thanks Gary

Cardboard where do you get this comparison and on what basis company has equity value of about $200M mostly in equipment - not gas reserves ? i was quite excited about gas a few years ago but maybe this is outside my area of competency. but never hurts to learn. would appreciate a few more pointers on how you value this type of business. thanks

Thanks for sharing this -- very informative... Quick questions: 1) do you think share-based compensation should be accounted for in determining owner's earning / free cash flow? I know some companies like to use Adjusted EBITDA that adjusts EBITDA by adding the share based compensation back to make the cash earning look stronger since it's not a cash item. I personally think it's a real cost and ought to be considered in valuing a business. 2) I wonder why it's reasonable to use NOPAT and ROIC / ROIIC to assess a business when NOPAT does not back out the interest expense... (NOPAT = EBIT - tax). Isn't interest a real expense and especially true for businesses that have a lot of debt ? Thanks! Gary

i don't get why their insurance volume has gone up , but operating income hasn't really increased. seems like lower op margin.

I did see their results. Thought it was not as impressive as I had hoped

i get the 'old' google finance if i sign-out from google if i sign in , i get the new version. without signing in google tracks about a dozen stocks as 'recently' viewed... that's enough for me.. i only look at 10 at the most

I am of the opinion that there are a few really great companies — like what Alibaba was 5 or 10 years ago. The challenge is how do we find those and have the balls to buy in. Alibaba’s vice chairman Tsai had a nice high paying wall st job before deciding to quit and join — that kinda ability to see and identify that it’s an awesome opportunity is something i wish i can learn. by no means i need to invest in china to do well; lots of opportunities here in Canada and US. But just thinking if i can come how learn the ability to spot great businesses , then it’d likely be an easier game in China as most investors are shying away from china because of the fraud fear

I was quite intrigued to see this comment from Munger that best companies in China are cheaper than the US-- I am ignorant on this subject , but when i think of the large Chinese companies... Tencent, Netease, Yumbrands in China comes to mind... These aren't necessarily cheaper than the US companies such as Google / FB these days... but probably cheaper than Netflix, amazon ... Anyone else have thoughts on this ? What are some of these top Chinese companies that are trading at fair valuation? And is a real story, not fake accounting... https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/07/charlie-munger-chinas-best-companies-cheaper-than-us.html