Stuart D

Thanks @John Hjorth, The investing in value creators book doesn’t seem to be available on Amazon here in Australia, but I’ve found a YouTube interview with the author to give me some insight into the concepts: I like his point [paraphrasing]: “people offered $100 today or $110 in a year will take $100 today. However when the same people were offered $100 in 10yrs or $110 in 11yrs would choose to wait the extra year.” The message being people are [more] rational when making long term decisions compared to immediate decisions. He then applies this to discounted cash flows where the calculations focus more on near term flows, while his hyperbolic DCF models focus on the longer term cash flows. Very interesting indeed. Some other gems: ”it’s deeply relaxing to buy something you never plan to sell” ”the longer you extend your time horizon, the less competitive investing becomes”

Thanks for posting!

In the past Buffet has said many times (with certainty), that at some point, be it in 5yrs or 50yrs, oil production won’t keep up with demand. At that point the price will go way up. I wonder if he still thinks that’s the likely outcome.

So greatness is extraordinary hard to achieve and even harder to maintain?

Yep! Value after hours is where I heard it - great podcast

Heard a pitch on Subaru. Trading below cash. Mid single digit PE. Shareholder returns 30-50% of income, split between dividends and buybacks.

Hahaha yeah, there’s that as well.

Yeah, nice. Growing net income, clean balance sheet, tightening market, rates moving higher. All looking positive for the warrants.

Great call out @Xerxes. They are so aggressive on the buy-backs at the moment. It would be nice if there was a little more term to their debt ($1.5-$2b maturing in 25,26,27), but then again, they do have an almost $3b cash balance against a ~$6b debt load, so liquidity shouldn't be an issue. Interesting line on the debt due within 1-yr being classified as long term: "MGM China's senior notes due within one year of the December 31, 2023 balance sheet were classified as long-term as MGM China has both the intent and ability to refinance the current maturities on a long-term basis."

The end game is rolling 5% treasuries, issuing stock when at a premium and repurchasing when trading at a discount. Close all stores. Layoff all employees. Hire roaring kitty to head up a pump and dump business unit. It’s already a meme stock, might as well make the company a 100% trolling operation.

I don’t know if it’s legal or not, but it seems kind of slimy like the pump & dump crypto adds you see on twitter. I don’t really understand why he’s doing it though. You’ve got $100m, why shine a spotlight on yourself. Upside: $100m becomes $200m. Change to your day-to-day life = zero. Downside: you spend the next few years defending yourself in court (if something goes wrong). Is it really worth it? Even if the chances of being sued are low, I just don’t get the risk reward.

Thanks for posting.

I keep forgetting how long the timelines are in this business. 10+ years, wow.

Surprised there is no chat here on the supposed 500 billion barrel Russian discovery in Antarctica. It seems too big to be real, right?

Agree Valaris is looking good here. Fcf starting to roll in.

Between this shale call and their note on Saudi’s reserves, the supply side isn’t looking great. To balance the market it’ll need some more Venezuelan production (or maybe Argentinian shale?).

Nice. Increased BB. Seems like a good setup.

Woah, sounds interesting. Was the recency drop from $65 to $41/share due to some dividend payments or capital returns? edit: ok I’ve found the thread for this name. Looks like it was a big special dividend.

Yeah, great book. I listened to the audiobook after hearing the author being interviewed on the Grant’s podcast. Well worth a listen/read.

It’ll be interesting to see how Buffett responds to the “what do you think of the OXY acquisition” questions he’ll get next May at the AGM.

I listened to a yet another value podcast that reminded me of this post. Host Andrew was discussing the difference between a good investment idea vs a good podcast idea. The good investment idea can be a 40 seconds pitch, eg. this 50c dollar bill is being liquidated and immediately distributed. While a good podcast idea is often something complicated like Cable, with lots of discussion points, risks, strategies etc. A good reminder to myself to keep things simple.

Re: the previous Pabrai thread deletion Is there a way to keep the previous thread, whilst removing the posts of concern? I say that because the Pabrai thread was essential reading for anyone thinking of sending him money or even those of us who spent some time watching his videos. With the rest of the investment industry, (right up to Charlie Munger himself), swooning to MP, it was nice to have an alternate view here on CoBF.

8 x staff members seems like a lot: - 1 x CEO - 2 x vice presidents - 1 x office manager - 3 x Office assistants - 1 x office assistant Team leader I suppose maybe some of them are part time.

Well the central bank has interest rates at 12.25%, so I’m assuming that’s keeping a lid on equity valuations. And on the ROE side Peteobras is something like 12% of the index & they’ve been doing well recently. There’s probably a bunch of other commodity names in there (Vale perhaps?) that would likely have done well over the past couple of years too.

I found the Berkshire AGM’s on YouTube as a great place to start.