wondering

To me it would depend on whether the deferred revenues are repeating or not. If they are constantly repeating year over year, I see no reason to treat cash as any differently as any other company. If it is a one-time revenue event, then cash obvious should be treated differently. An analysis of the net cashflows (without the deferred revenue) would have to be done. Perhaps I have stated the extremely obvious and my comments are of no help. ;D ;D

Note: This is from a Globe & Mail article from May 26/15 called "Searching for the wealth creators" - sorry, I assumed someone would have posted about this already. And sorry, I don't have a link to the article. Basically, the author did a search for the 20 best companies in Canada as measured by the Economic Value Added per share in the past year, while filtering for only those who have increased their EVA over the past 12 and 24 month periods. FFH ranked numbered 1 at 34.7 EVA/share, Constellation Software 23.2, George Weston 10.6, and the rest range from 7.8 to 2.5. The article defines EVA is the difference between their profit and the cost of the investments made to produce that profit. It's good to see FFH on top of the list, although I thought I read somewhere that Charlie Munger thought the measurement was crap

Three cheers for Sanjeev. As usual, I had a great time. Excellent speakers at the dinner, although I wish Francis Chou and Sam Mitchell spoke more (...I know, I know - I am like a spoiled child - I have so much, and still I want more).

I work in public accounting in Canada. As for the first question, that is a toughy. We have difficulty with the tax treatment of shorts as well. Generally speaking, they are counted as income, and not capital gains, but there may be circumstances in which it would be treated as a capital gain. As for the second question, purchases and disposals of foreign securities are translated at the specific at which they are bought and sold. I have had many clients that have made a loss on US stocks, but once it is converted into Cdn, they have made a gain.

This book is probably my favourite business biography. Excellent read.

Hi Everyone. This is my first post. I am a real beginner and my questions may seem simplistic, but I got start somewhere. Anyways my question... Family members are asking about relatively safe investments (they are willing to take a bit of capital risk) with more income than your average GIC etc... I thought of the FFH preferred shares as a possibility. They have yields ranging from 5.1% to 6.2%, and they are trading near their 52 week low. My question has two parts a) These preferred shares are redeemable at the company's option. If they are not redeemed the shareholder has the right, at their, option of converting the pref shares to another class of pref shares which essentially will reset at a lower payout than current, all things being equal (i.e. for most classes of pref shares, the stated payout is 5%, after the redeemption date it is 3mos TBill rate plus rates ranging from 2.16% to 3.51%). See note 16, page 73 of the 2012 AR. Question. If FFH does not redeem, the holders of the prefs can only A) sell their shares or B) convert to the new prefs. Is my understanding of how redeemable and convertible pref shares work? b) Under what circumstances would FFH not redeem the pref shares? Here are my thoughts about my own question - I know with common shares, the general rule a company will buyback the shares when shares are cheap. Currently, the FFH pref shares are trading below their stated value. Somehow, I don't think this rule applies to pref shares. - I think the more likely answer is that it depends on the capital needs of FFH at the time of the redeemption. As stated above, the un-redeemed pref reset at a lower payout (assuming TBill rates don't change from present). If I were to take a guess, I would say FFH would not redeem the shares. Please correct me if I got any of my facts wrong. Wondering.