[Baupost Q4 2017 letter]

Thanks for sharing

[Baupost Q4 2017 letter]

Anybody get to see the the Q2 letter?

[Buffett/Berkshire - general news]

I suspect real estate returns are lower than equity, AAPL or even BRK repurchase at today's prices likely yield higher returns. Guessing they won't be using their capital on this.

[Berkshire Weekend - Kunal Kapoor & Bruce Flatt Dinners]

I was at the Bruce Flatt dinner and agree with the others it was a good discussion.

 

A man from Winnipeg won the auction to have dinner with Bruce. Does anyone know who that is? I'd love to get in contact with him

[Lazard report on energy]

Great stuff, thanks for sharing. I'm not the biggest fan of comparing LCOE values for dispatchable and non-dispatchable technologies but I certainly don't know a better way. Regardless, great to see the cost of alternative non-emitting technologies dropping so quickly. Humans are too smart to continue digging hydrocarbons out of the ground and burning them at 30-60% thermal efficiency.

[High quality retail real estate]

I agree with you both. Cap rate for GGP at current levels is mid 6. Thanks for running me through the numbers.

 

Looks like great real estate selling at a discount to private market cap rates.

[High quality retail real estate]

The implied cap rate of GGP is about 7.2%, which Inthink is fairly cheap for high quality RE.

 

Do you mind running me through how you came up with a 7.2% cap rate.

[High quality retail real estate]

Not SRG?

 

SRG has 42 pages dedicated to it and is a situation with more moving parts. To me it seems that General Growth, Taubman, Simon and Macerich represent most of the highest quality retail real estate in the US with opportunities to reinvest capital at attractive rates and are undervalued when compared to private market prices. ~ 5% dividend while you wait. It seems too simple.

 

Is anyone else looking at this? GGP, MAC, TCO, SPG are all trading at cap rates far above what these properties would fetch on the private market and paying 5% dividends at the same time.

 

I'm guessing this is tied to the death of retail.

 

Interested in others thoughts on this.

 

Yes, I own all of the above except TCO yet. The internet and Amazon are a tremendous boon for class A properties. B and C malls closing down mean that the strong will get stronger.  Class A rents per sqft, leasing spreads continue to grow year after year.  I'm trying to do an in-depth study of the industry, posted a thread few weeks ago as I'd like to find a good source of data that is free, but nobody replied. Lmk if you have good recommendations,

 

I've found the best information in the investor material from GGP, BPY and TCO.

 

GGP looks interesting, but the debt load at 8x EBITDA is just too high, SRG is an interesting example in what Whitman calls resource conversion. With a 11-12% cash yield on invested capital for renovations and finding new tenants, they make about 22-24% on equity (assuming 50% equity) or 4x they invested equity, if you assume that Cap rates for their properties are in the 6% range fully  stabilized after thr conversion is complete..

 

What is an appropriate Debt/EBITDA for this space?

[High quality retail real estate]

Is anyone else looking at this? GGP, MAC, TCO, SPG are all trading at cap rates far above what these properties would fetch on the private market and paying 5% dividends at the same time.

 

I'm guessing this is tied to the death of retail.

 

Interested in others thoughts on this.

[Berkshire AGM Hotel]

Thanks, yeah you're right there are hotels out there just thought someone might have a reservation somewhere nice that they don't need anymore.

[Berkshire AGM Hotel]

Does anyone have a hotel for the BRK AGM that they thought they'd need but now don't?

 

Let me know what you've got, not much left on Travelocity

[Complete list of superinvestor positions]

Does anyone know if Gurufocus does anything that Dataroma doesn't?

[Does anyone have a hotel room reserved for BRK meeting they don't need?]

Just curious if anyone has a room reserved for the BRK meeting that they will be canceling. If so I'm looking.

 

Thanks in advance

[Buffett on cnbc Friday March 14]

Thanks guys for the links and transcript.

[Buffett on cnbc Friday March 14]

Does anybody have a link to the full interview from yesterday?

[Watsa vs. Buffett]

$2B in cash coming in every month.

 

When did buffett say this? Last time I remember him commenting was 2 years ago and he said he had $1B a month coming to Omaha. Hard to believe it doubled in 2 years.

[Mohnish and Fiat]

Any idea on when he started to accumulate a position? 

[Mohnish and Fiat]

I've read on this board that Mohnish has a stake in Fiat.  I remember reading that he played a bunch of commercials at his annual meeting.

 

Why does Fiat not show up in his 13F?

[Todd and Ted]

Thanks everybody for the great information.  This board is an incredible resource.

[Todd and Ted]

Todd and Ted were on CNBC yesterday with Buffett.  The two were asked which investors they admire other than Charlie or Warren.

 

Todd mentioned Tom Bancroft, has anyone heard of him?

 

Ted said he admired David Tepper, that surprised me!

[Advice on starting a fund in Manitoba]

Hi Everyone,

 

I'd like to start a fund in Manitoba, initially just managing money for family.  I'd like to start small and build an audited record.  I'm curious if anyone has been through this process in Canada and if they can point me to some documents or websites that describe this process.

 

Thanks