Jaygo

Sorry for the thread derail but I think that all or most industrials have elevated margins right now that will shrink. By how much i'm not sure but i could see 20% lower. I can also envision a business environment where a lot of contractors are simply giving back the keys or getting liquidated. That said I think Wajax can continue in the range of $2.-4 eps. Hitachi is gaining ground and they are the distributor. A lot of niche parts run through them so I dont think they are likely to fade away. I learned about them from buying some parts and took a small position in the low 20's and have done a bit of research lately. Some parts are priced to insanity because of the rarity of them and I'm not sure if pissing off your customer is good business. Tennant has done this for years and customers hate them for it. I would say Wajax is definitely in that game and it may be a problem long term depending on management. I look at it like a infrastructure, mining and energy play at a reasonable valuation vs peers.

I have a much easier time finding value here though. Wajax, FFH, DOO, Doman, Equitable all under 10P/E The US equivalents are generally valued higher.

SWK, Douglas Dynamics and Newmont

And they complain about taxes lol. Most people receive far more than they will ever pay ( thank you Alberta!!) but bitch and complain about how high are taxes are. I doubt anyone has ever read their tax forms to see how little is actually paid unless you are making millions as an employee. One heart surgery is close to 100k apparently and most men end up getting one or something similar.

The country needs hardworking people who are not ashamed to get their hands dirty. Skills come fast when you not a lazy hungover pos or too "good" to do certain jobs. I was personally shoveling out commercial sump pits last night at 11pm in the rain while my net worth is probably a few million. F..k skills man, we need men and women who get shit done no matter what!! Not to toot my own horn but I got down in the pit, not my guys. I want to show them what it takes so next time they talk about get rich quick schemes and ask for a day off I can reference that hard work and a bit of luck is what's needed if they want to get out of Moms basement.

I think the latinos are the secret sauce of America. Its one of the reasons American is generally cleaner than Canada. ( landscapes, public bathrooms, rest stops, restaurants ect. Canada needs more of them badly. I grew up in a big employer household so had the opportunity to see all sorts of characters. I started work around 10 since I was desperate for cash and have been surrounded by "labour" for the past 30 years. Central Americans and Mexicans outwork, out think, live cleaner and do a better job in most tasks than their Canadian White, Italian, Indian, Southern South American and most European counterparts by far. Ill never forget on big crew jobs the Whities would all go out for fast food at lunch and then be lazy as hell for the next two hours. The Costa Ricans, Mexicans and Columbians would all bring their eggs, beans and rice in a thermos eat for 15 minutes and be right back at work. They got twice the work completed with better quality and wouldn't gripe about how bad their lives are like the others. And yes I am stereotyping but man after 30 years of the same bullshit and now dealing with Natural born Canadian youth I would love some more latinos in my life. Others are talking about crime and food line ect and I would probably say that is more of a structural issue as opposed to cultural. If you advertise free food, and welfare you will attract the people who want that. Just ask Canada with our insane social programs that kill motivation and productivity.

I'm not in the screamer camp but I certainly wouldn't say the economy is raging. Carloads are down, hiring is down, some retail is shit, some is strong but mostly we are in a middling stage where folks dont know if they should tighten up or let loose. A small drop in rates is all it will take to nudge people to relax a little and make them feel their futures are secure. So yeah if I was in charge Id drop rates and let inflation run a bit hot. 2% over trend. It gets people and money moving and makes depts easier to pay. It also allows for more production that would temper inflation!!! housing especially. Supply chain inflation is a lot different than monetary supply inflation. In 2021-2022 we had both. Now if we settle into just monetary inflation everyone is going to feel a lot better.

6 month update. This has been a pretty lucrative trade so far. Had to put one dog down (MO) Dis went to a better home and the rest have kicked the fleas and are perking up. (sorry) AAP up 53% Dis up 47% DG is up 51% C is up 56% plus a couple divs HD is roughly 26% MMM is up like %27 but with the spin i'm not sure BTI and MO have just sucked down 2% and up 4% with some decent divs in there The comp is VOO and SCHD that are up 19% and 14% since I sold a portion to fund this group of misery. The timing was lucky and even a fool would see that the best play still remains to just hold VOO and SCHD and go to work but fun is fun. I sold out of MO and have moved that 7500 into Chevron. Disney since it doesn't pay a DIV is gone and pushed into Starbucks I am also planning on selling the rest down to the original 7500 allocations and putting the proceeds into SWK (Stanley Black and decker) for 7500 and Newmont for 7500 with the last 2800 into PLOW Something about getting dividends really gets my heart fluttering and these pooches pay so all is well in the old RRSP

Capital allocation skills have a moving goal post from era to era. For instance buybacks are very popular and a like a big pair of tits to the "above average" investor, Its all we can focus on. Shrinking equity will have a time and a place and but doing it constantly is not going to land you in the time or the place every time you purchase shares with the shareholders money. The guys today who are the best capital allocators are the ones who are building. If Jeff Bezos doesn't go down as the best of all time I am simply perplexed. Using money to make more money should be the constant goalpost and nobody has spent more than JB at amazon to create more. I'm going to shout out Mike Pyle of Exchange income corporation for some pretty interesting acquisitions lately. He bagged a couple big fish at the start of covid but he may have swallowed the lure himself with BV glazing at a cycle high in curtain walls ( unlikely due to shit tons of housing and retrofits needed but the current gulch must be traversed). Lower rates need apply. Brad Jacobs is another who deserves honorable mention and while certainly not unknown nor camera shy he is still in the building stage of his CA Career. Buffett mapped it out to all of us. He may not have been the first but he was the most generous with his knowledge and now we can all think and hopefully act more efficiently with our money.

If a meltdown and radioactive leak made Canada's largest city uninhabitable the Canadian economy would simply deteriorate to the point of the country likely being broken up. Also scientifically I really hope you are right!

Thanks for posting. I always wondered what would happen in a major human cat event. Say if the Pickering nuclear plant went radioactive or something. In that instance the damage would be in the trillions and most likely end Canada as an entity. Who pays for that? And how.

Mako has made an offer on Goldsource mines in Guyana. I guess they are going to grow as Akiba mentioned. Gold is also at an all time high in USD. Amazing that Oil has not been able to keep up. I guess Oil is more affected by technology and improved production advancements.

Yes to this. Political lines seem to be drawn through education and career choice. I live in a very wealthy old money area. Nobody talks politics!!! We talk about children and grand children and business and hiking and coral reefs. To my west is a working class town that is conservative. This is your plumbers, dentists, farmers, manufacturing folks, mechanics and generally successful middle class people. We talk about the leafs. to my east you have a larger town that screams liberal. they basically hit you over the head with inclusion. How much are we spending on these gay pride electric buses anyway? We have over educated and underworked people who ride a desk all day and just want to get into your business. This is your professors, principals, social workers, unemployed and generally less useful people. In that statement I am not trying to be rude or hurtful. I’m trying to make a point that when shit hits the fan I want a good mechanic or farmer and not a middle manager for a school district. I think these people feel their use in the world is dwindling and take up causes just to feel something. Unfortunately that cause is interfering with my life either financially or in my children’s upbringing so we are left with a rift between us.

I have become pretty disturbed with how militant people are getting about this shit. granted the choices given are terrible and the US could use more candidates and parties but in the end we should all be pulling the the same direction. As a Canadian I have no dog in the fight but from my side of the fence things look pretty wacky down there. Canadians have a delusional party in power to cater to the delusional voter base and the leader is about as bad as it gets. That said we’re pretty chill on the us vs them thing. We’re all Canadians and we’re going to bitch and complain no matter what!!

I'm hoping the expected poor winter results combined with a general softness allow for better entry prices for myself as well as the corporate buybacks. The one caveat is that as interest rates drop (if they doo) then sales may pick up again and the opportunity could disappear quickly. Their main competitor Polaris has been dead money for quite a long time and that could easily happen here too. Polaris simply does not have the buybacks running near as hot so it has stagnated.

I think the fiduciary duty is for the stewardship of the business long term and that includes keeping relationships healthy by sometimes letting out a little line in fishing parlance. In my own business ive had many opportunities to take advantage of desperate situations to maximise my dollars but generally do not as i dont think it is moral or long term business friendly. I would say trying to maximise every penny is short term thinking and not responsible to the shareholders who can take no action on their own short of selling and moving on.

This has defiantly been on my radar as a possibility. It is a 7 billion dollar company so not a small privatization by Canadian standards and surely there would be a premium. One could argue what is the point of being public anyway if you dont use your shares as currency and dont go to the markets issuing new equity.

Lol no i'm from Ontario. Just playing. I love Quebec (Old Quebec city and the Laurentians are awesome) and my portfolio is deep with Quebec companies like BRP, Couche -tard, CN and TFII

Sorry but my understanding of accounting is pretty basic so your question leaves me baffled. If i can dumb it down I would say a cycle average net income would be $ 500-600 million on around $6-7 billion in sales. The margins have historically been around 8% and that is where they are now. I would imagine that with softer sales that margin will compress. 2023 had revenues of 10 billion CAD but that is an outlier year. I would say that we are just on the other side of an huge boost in demand from 2020 to current. 2023 was a big year for deliveries that were holdovers from 2022 supply chain issues and now they are experiencing a situation similar to other outdoor gear makers as demand has softened for most products. I understand competitive advantage more than anything and DOO is the market leader by far in both technology and reputation. They enter a segment and dominate it and end up with the superior economics vs competitors. What is tough to forecast is the end demand and revenue over the next few years. Their innovation is really amazing so if they have a blockbuster like the SXS or the switch pontoon boats then maybe the $ 10 billion in sales is something that will continue.

In about 10 Days DOO.to or BRP will report earnings and id suspect another huge reduction in shares outstanding. The results are sure to be terrible as the covid bump is dead and dusted and they are experiencing slower than normal sales since dept financing is critical for these toys to be sold. Who has 20 k for a damn ATV laying around They are on a pace of 3.5 million shares per year for a 76 million share outstanding company. They were a major benefactor of covid then a major loser of supply chains troubles as they had a boom in sales and bust in supply of critical chips for their instrument panels. The last 4 years have been a real difficult time for them and guess what. They bought back over 25% of shares outstanding, entered the motorcycle market with the tesla of 2 wheels (see reviews) and released the most incredible offroad racing machine ever in the Can AM Maverick R SXS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_zY_QYKIYE You wont find better capital allocation of a high tech R&D powerhouse than this. Id put them up with General Dynamics of the era that Buffett was a buyer. But and a big but is they are cyclical, they are Canadian and even worse they are Quebecois and nobody seems to give a shit so they trade at 6-10 times earnings. I think we are going to run into a cyclical low now and for the next 18 months ( PE could rise to 30 from TTM 7 PE ) and these guys are going gobble up millions of shares at a cyclical low and come out on the other side stronger and more profitable than ever. I wont be shocked to see the share count in the 50 million range in a few years.

I do feel the same actually. I'm in the position of a double over the IPO price in a taxable account so I dont want to pay the taxes to switch over to WM or WCN again. The red flags are rampant for GFL and the owner ( giant yacht, 75 million Aspen ski chalet being a couple )but I must say they have done what they projected a few years out. Do they talk about the share price too much? yeah but at the same time they have backed it up with the performance so who am I to say. I think with GFL you are either going to look back and say that the writing was on the wall and who couldn't see a bankruptcy or you'll say the writing was on the wall and who couldn't see them growing to become #1. From my vantage point in southern Ontario they have become absolutely dominate in the home market. I had a hydraulic spill recently and they are the call to make for environmental cleanup through Accuworx, everyone uses their bins, the trucks are literally everywhere and anyone who is in industry knows them well. I know for a fact their soil remediation facilities are absolutely printing money as they are the only game in town. In Ontario GFL is a mixture of Waste Management, Clean Harbours and Badger and now through the Aecon and coco paving acquisitions they are huge in road infrastructure. They are unlikely to replicate this dominance throughout North America but who knows. There is a playbook that worked here.

I own GFL. I bought the ipo and have been moderately impressed with the industry. There is an incredible economy of scale because of landfill locations. Somewhat similar to concrete and asphalt plants. You basically have an oligopoly in every market. You rarely see all the big players in a single market. It is 2 big boys and some independent feeder fish in major markets so the pricing seems rational. I owned wcn before and moved my shares into gfl looking for more upside. I originally bought wcn because of Michael Larson who manages bill gates money. That guy seems to identify industry economic improvements early and has owned republic for a long time. A new avenue for GFL has been collecting biogas from the landfills and it may well prove to be an excellent bump to revenues from what was a waste byproduct previously. I don’t expect any grand slams out of it but could definitely see the industry doing better than the market average.

I just finished the letter. I won’t add much to the more sophisticated diagnosis above but man what a way to encourage the people who work under you. Prem is pumping his people up and at the same time he is putting their names out there to ensure accountability. I felt the letter was directed more for his people than for the shareholders as it just exudes his pride in the people and their individual organizations. If I worked there and read the letter I would see a bright future and clear path to moving to bigger roles just by how he talks about people and their independent org structure. It gives me the impression that Prem recognizes that he is not the goat and a great team can replicate a great individuals performance. Top notch letter Prem!

What about just borrowing from a line of credit?. Possibly not worth it at the current rates or the expected performance of brk.

I am starting to see the benefit of bitcoin more and more being a way of temporarily storing wealth to transfer to a different location or sidestep a legal issue like forced receivership or an ugly divorce. gold still has the long term storage power but lacks in the easy transferability. I guess I don’t see them competing as much as complimenting each other. Bitcoin if you live under authoritarian rule and plan to escape and gold for long term storage once you get to your new home. I have about 10 oz of gold and even with such a small nominal value it would be really difficult to smuggle. And I wouldn’t burry a bitcoin key in my backyard that’s for sure.