KJP

He now has a mostly subscriber-only Substack: https://stockpicking.substack.com/ He's also on Twitter.

Here's BSM's management's take: Monroe Helm Okay. One another maybe when you were setting your most recent distribution increase, did you take -- how seriously did you consider an environment where we might have $2 to $2.50 gas for some extended period of time? Tom Carter Well, I think we believe and took into account that '23 and '24 and maybe some into '25 that will be challenging for natural gas markets. Everyone I mean as we've all looked out over the last 5 years, I think it's a general consensus in the industry that until some of these newer LNG export facilities come online, there's going to be a lull in growth of natural gas because it's the production has gone up and the prices that were in existence last year really saw some increases in activity. We think it's going to be a period of time where we don't see that much growth but we're well hedged and we have agreements that we don't think our operators are going to be highly volatile in their well count.

You would probably like the formatting of this site: https://roic.ai/classic/AAPL Perhaps someone more clever than me could explain how you could extract pages like that in bulk and print them out so you could page through them.

Some things don't change much. That data series appears to go back almost 50 years to January 1976. Here are the bottom 10 states in labor force participation then and now: Jan 1976 [For context, national was 61.3%] West Virginia - 51.7% Florida - 54.6% [Dec. 2022: 59.6% -- surprising to me given the number of retirees] Louisiana - 55.7% Alabama - 55.9% Arkansas - 56.3% Mississippi - 57.5% New York - 57.6% [60.1%] Pennsylvania - 57.6% [61.6%] Tennessee - 58% Arizona - 58.5% [61.4%] Dec 2022 [National was 62.3%] Mississippi - 54.1% West Virginia - 54.2% New Mexico - 55.8% [Jan 1976: 59.3%] South Carolina - 55.9% [64.3% -- huge decline. Loss of textile manufacturing with insufficient new industry or increase in retirees?] Arkansas - 56.2% Alabama - 56.8% Kentucky - 57.2% [59.5%] Maine - 57.5% [60.6%] Tennessee - 58.5% Louisiana - 58.5% West Virginia, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee make both lists, and New Mexico and Kentucky nearly did. So whatever the underlying causes are for relatively low labor force participation in those states, they appear to go back a long time.

They have admitted that switching all of the Meredith publications to their digital platform didn't go as smoothly as they hoped, and they're obviously getting hit on advertising revenue. But even if you put a fairly low multiple on Dotdash-Meredith, IAC still looks quite cheap to me and if anyone is ever interested in this type of company, I think now is the time to buy it when it's selling for significantly less than the sum of its parts, rather than at a premium to them. [Says the current bagholder.]

This seems to be already happening. For example, YTD on a few names familiar to CoBF: Charter +14% IAC +16% SNC Lavalin: +19% All beat up last year with an additional selloff near year end, now bouncing back.

pre-tax, USD: 2022: -15% Significant losers: Altice, Charter, American Outdoor Brands, IDT, IES Holdings, Leatt, SNC-Lavalin, Turning Point Brands, Comcast, IAC, LICT Corp. Based on that list, I'm surprised the results weren't even worse. My winners were mostly buyouts/take privates: Swedish Match, Hill International, Advant-e I still hold most of my 2022 losers -- we'll see how they perform in 2023. Historical 2021: 11% 2020: 14% 2019: 31% 2018: 11% 2017: 10% 2016: 22%

MSG Entertainment

How is there going to be enough liquidity in BTC to do that? What portion of BTC is effectively locked away with long-term holders? Is the available "float" sufficient to support the very high transaction volumes that you envision? If there's anything to Gresham's Law, it seems to weigh against the future you envision. I believe US deficits currently address this issue by providing dollars to the world that can then be used globally for transactions. It would be interesting to see this system try to function if the transactional base was deflating (as may be the case in a future with Bitcoin as the transactional medium) versus inflating (as is the case today with USD when the US is in deficit).

You can see historical numbers for Germany here: https://de.usmortality.com/deaths/excess-yearly-cumulative and https://de.usmortality.com/deaths/weekly The chart at the first link shows deaths around normal until late 2020 (big deviation appears to begin in November), then fairly close to normal again until fall 2021 (deviation appears to begin in October) and at or above the top end of normal throughout 2022, with a significant move above normal beginning in September and on pace to exceed 2021 (and any other recent year). You can also see this in the shape of the line curves for 2020 - 2022 in the second link. You filter the data by age. There are no excess deaths in the 0-29 group in 2022.

IAC

Altria

I sold very close to PM's offer price. So, it seems to me that either PM gets enough to squeeze out at very close to the price I received or it doesn't, in which case I expect an opportunity to buy back in at a better price than today. I'm doing this in a non-taxable account; if it was in a taxable account, I would have held. I must acknowledge that I have sometimes been wrong about the immediate share price movement in response to a failed takeover/squeeze out, so I can't contend that my reasoning is foolproof.

Swedish Match

That's probably fair, but you will find that in most of the areas you mentioned, e.g., Wayne. In any event, LMSD, particularly the parts closer to the city like Merion and Penn Wynne, is quite overcrowded. One area you might add to your list is Lower Gwynedd. It's in Wissahickon SD, which isn't as lauded as Tredyffrin, Radnor, or LMSD but I know parents that have moved there from LMSD and prefer it. Newtown/Bucks County also has a much different feel than the Main Line. Much more open space, orchards, etc. And Doylestown and New Hope/Lambertville are nice options as far as those size towns go. If you wanted a similar feel but west of the city, there are areas (i) between Newtown Square and West Chester, and (ii) northwest of Rt. 202 around Methacton and Worcester that have a similar feel. They are probably a 1.25 hour (at least) commute into the city if that matters.

The folks in Lower Merion SD are aghast they didn't make the list.

IAC

It's been said here, but the price of this particular bond is not set by buying and selling in a liquid marketplace. In theory, if the price is off of what it otherwise would be, you could engage in some type of arbitrage with a publicly traded security and continue to do it until the system broke (or the government sold nothing but I-bonds) or re-sell the security at a higher price. But the quantity restrictions by buyer type and amount prevent and that, and non-transferability prevents black markets from arising to adjust the price. That's what creates the possibility of having a security that, to use efficient markets jargon, is perpetually and openly beyond the risk/reward frontier. (Also an example of why price caps typically require forced rationing or create shortages.)

Are there potentially viable alternative chemistries that use substantially less nickel? Or do nearly all reasonable scenarios require substantially more nickel (and I assume cobalt) production?

MSG Entertainment and Clipper Realty

My understanding is that is what FedNow is intended to become: https://www.frbservices.org/financial-services/fednow/about.html Note that FedNow's architecture appears to entrench current US financial institutions rather than displace them.

Will those surpluses continue, or will Treasury return to deficits now that peak tax season is over?

Swedish Match accepts PM buyout offer at 106 SEK/share: https://www.wsj.com/articles/swedish-match-agrees-to-16-billion-takeover-by-philip-morris-11652252817 Is there a strategic buyer who could come in with a topping bid? BAT: No. I believe a transaction would impossible for BAT, because SWMA and BAT are an oral nicotine duopoly in Scandinavia. Altria: Given on! and Zyn's positions in the US nicotine pouch market, would this make sense and could it get by US antitrust regulators? Japan Tobacco: Don't know enough about them Imperial Brands: Don't know enough about them, but a quick look at the balance sheet suggests they likely the capacity to do it. As for non-strategics, is a heavily regulated industry like tobacco an area they want to get into? The businesses have great cash flow characteristics, so they can handle debt. And there are many who argue that nicotine pouches, in particular, ought to score very highly on ESG measures because they believed to be much, much healthier than cigarettes, so switching people over to them could save/improve many lives.

If I understand the question, I believe it's to make the numerator and denominator apples-to-apples. Typically, NOPAT includes depreciation. So a capital expenditure expense (albeit, a backward-looking historical one, rather than a cash one) is already embedded within NOPAT. Since the expense is embedded in and reduces NOPAT, it's also removed from the numerator via looking at net rather than gross CapEx. Put another way, "Net CapEx + change in working capital" is the amount of capital added to the business beyond the amount that NOPAT assumes (via its use of depreciation) the business consumes in steady state.

Yes, there is a dispute. I suspect PM wants to get out of the IQOS license, and if they can then they could piggyback off Swedish Match's distribution system in the US. Overall increased risk and negative for Altria, unless they can develop their own competing product. But I don't think PM wants Altria to distribute Zyn, because Zyn's biggest competitor is Altria's on!.