
Xerxes
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Xerxes last won the day on April 17 2024
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I figured i drop in a few words about my recent vacation to India. In short, I loved it. Everything. The people, the locations, its absolutely diverse geography and its history. I structured my trip around three different historical regions: mogul history, Rajputs and Punjab. And stayed in the north. Saw eight cities, so must have packed and unpacked 8-9 times, changing cities every 48-36 hours. The yellow dots and stars shows the geographical breadth of my travel. The first four location are part of the Golden Triangle: Delhi, Agra, Fattehpur Sikri, Jaipur. I was with a group as it is more fun with others. The last four cities, it was me, myself and I. I went to see Jodhpur, Udaipur, Amritsar and Mumbai. I did almost all of my booking through Booking, even getting taxi to drive me from Jaipur to Jodhpur and then from Jodhpur to Udaipur. I booked Indigo Airline for flight to and from Punjab. Delhi, Agra and Fattehpur Sikri are of course the heartland of India' Moghul history. From the Red Fort, to the Agra Fort, and Taj Mahal. Generally speaking, i found more than a few Persian words in the Hindi language. No doubt the remnants of the official court language at the imperial court, before Persian was replaced by English. For those listening to the Empire podcast; the last few months, they had one episode per Moghul emperors. It was pretty good listen while I was travelling. The host of the podcast is William Dalrymple, who actually lives in Delhi and author of many books on India. His podcast covers all of history, but his own personal passion (and books) is and are India. Amazon.ca: William Dalrymple: books, biography, latest update The last of powerful Moghul emperors was Aurangzeb, who sat on the throne for 50 years and was intolerant compared to his predecessors and waged wars. When he was gone, Moghul rule would continue for decades, but its intrinsic value would decline sharply. While that of the East India Company would be raising as it stepped into the power vacuum. The rest is history as the Indian subcontinent traded one imperial master for another. In Rajasthan, there five historical cities that one can see. I opted for three of them: Jaipur, Jodhpur and Udaipur. Each city has its own ceremonial king, but of course the political power is subordinated to Delhi as the seat of the Federal Government. Between these cities, Jaipur was the most renowned and wealth, given that its rulers had allied themselves with Ackbar the Great and had entered imperial service. Same with Jodpur to a lesser degree. Udaipur in contrast had resisted the Moghul rule. PS: I had masala tea, in the same shop that President Macron and Prime Minister Modi had had tea, when they visited the Pink City. In Pujab, I went to Amritsar to visit Sikh's holiest site, the Golden Temple. Loved it. Also went to the Pakistan-India border to watch lower the flag ceremony. It was pretty awesome and unique experience that I wont forget. The flight though was pretty long. The flight back was 20 hours ordeal, taking off from Mumbai going north, before turning West with a sharp 90 degree turn and making its way back to Canada, dodging both Russia and Iran for good reason. For what is worth, I hope these few words will inspire some of you to visit India. It is an amazing place. The food is great. The people are wonderful. Sure, at some point jumping city to city for like 8 times over 3 weeks, will exhaust you and you just want to go home, to shovel some snow and go to Costco. It happened to me, by the time I reached Mumbai, i was ready to go home. Lastly, if you go to India, go see India, and not some airport in the south, because Fairfax owns it.
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First bought in 2016 as a tracker position at $653 CAD. Leaned-in in the past 5 years. Three-quarters of shares were bought post-2020. Nothing has been sold. Based on my archives, my average cost bottomed at $494 CAD in January 2021, then average cost has been going up. Today's average cost is at $660 CAD.
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Thanks. My experience with Royal Circle is that when I call them, someone very polite picks up right away and execute my Do-DRIP and Don't-Do-DRIP executive orders. I have not taken advantage of its research report. Once I looked at the App for it and could not find it.
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General Dynamics had G800 certification were in focus this quarter; not a reason for it being down but a factor. The submarine shipyards, if anything is constrained in the next years between commitment made to AUKUS and delivery profile for its main customer. Not sure what DOGE is going to do there. Metal bashing needs metal bashing. Comments on conference call: Phebe Novakovic So taking the inverse order, some of -- we have worked out with our suppliers some consideration and -- but not anything that I think is too material. But let's talk about the 800. So we expect the 800 certification sometime in the first half. And -- and we think we have worked our way through the most significant problems on the 7 -- that we experienced on the 700. Remember the commonality of part almost identical between the 800 and the 700. So we think the learning that we achieved on the 700 will be very advantageous on the 800. And our objective here is to deliver a fewer -- have expectations to deliver fewer 800s. So think of -- than we did 700. So think about it this way. For 2025, we're thinking about a combination of G650s and 800s. It's about equal to give or take, a few airplanes, the number of G650s we delivered. So we think a lot of the challenges are behind us. Lockheed Martin had a (unplanned)charges on two of its black program (i.e. classified); not the first time there is an accounting charge. There was another couple of years ago. Don't expect this to be a recurring charges like KC46 tanker program at Boeing. I believe (w/ no evidence) that at some point Lockheed would need to get back to the commercial market. They took a step in diversifying their portfolio when they bought Sikorsky from UTC for $9B, but there is a lot of defense exposure there as well. Perhaps they could make a bid for the family-owned Canadian Bombardier Aerospace, and go toe to toe with General Dynamics. It was widely reported in late 2024 that ULA is also on the block. Not sure who will buy that, or if Lockheed will double down (surely a mistake) and buy Boeing's 50% stake. All speculation. Comments on conference call: Jay and Maria will cover the financials in more detail. but I'd like to briefly comment on the earnings impact in the fourth quarter of 2 classified programs at MFC and Aeronautics, respectively. Recording charges in Q4 on these two programs enabled us to derisk the financial profile of both these critical national security programs going forward as we move into their next phases. While these particular contracts were struck a number of years ago, there are no longer any must-win competitions. Under today's Lockheed Martin wide bid process, every proposal adheres to a stringent, risk-adjusted ROI regime. This process is designed to compete aggressively for key opportunities, while also being very committed to achieving positive results, both in the short and long term for our shareholders. ---- For purposes of understanding the total impact on our full year results, I'll direct your attention to the middle section of the chart. We recorded net charges of $1.8 billion as follows. $1.4 billion related to the remaining expected future losses on the MFC classified program, and $555 million associated with the Aeronautics classified program. With these amounts partially offset by $155 million benefit associated with our C5 claim resolution. Relative to our prior outlook, we recorded $1.4 billion of unplanned net charges, consisting of $410 million for the Aeronautics classified program, $1.1 billion from the MFC classified program, with these amounts partially offset by $70 million of unplanned benefit from the C5 claim resolution. As far as juvenile jokes from Elon Musk about displacing F35 with a fleet of drones; you need to tell me how deterrent a fleet of cheap drones are going to be in the pacific theatre. Here is a comment about the recent performance of Israeli F-35 in an actual combat. And then the last thing I'll say is that there's -- based on, again, open source reporting. The experience of the Israeli Air Force against the Iranian air defense system, which they took out in one night with what they characterize as fifth-generation aircraft, and you can match up what's in their inventory, with no losses. That would clear the way for fourth-gen aircraft, drones to come in and devastate that country if the Israelis decided to do so. That's the kind of impact that the high-end platforms have, especially if you can network satellite imagery, autonomous vehicle, drone imagery and a companion to control speed that no one else can muster. You can have that kind of lopsided victory. And that's another reason I think that the F-35 is going to demonstrate its value here, through the Israeli experience. So between the juvenile jokes from Elon Musk and surprise charges against its earnings, the stock had to go down. We know one thing for sure the CEO follows free cash flow per share as his key KPI. The same KPI he was using when leading American Towers. Our financial focus remains on free cash flow and free cash flow per share. Our company continued to deploy significant free cash flow in 2024 and we've returned greater than 100% of that free cash flow to you, the shareholders. In addition to our consistent and healthy dividend, we maintained a robust share repurchase program, with $3.7 billion of shares repurchased in 2024. Transdigm had share repurchase activities in the last quarter. About $316 million were deployed. Not a big number but given that Transdigm very rarely does share repurchase it may have helped it a bit. Last repurchase was $912 million in 2022, before the stock took off. The company does have a third of its revenue from the defense sector, and i think compared to the major primes it is mostly in lower value item. Does that (1) help or (2) hinder it hiding from the Eye of DOGE. (1) DOGE wanting to focus on major primes (2) DOGE going after easy lower hanging fruits for show Additionally, we had strong operating cash flow generation in Q1 of over $750 million and ended the quarter with almost $2.5 billion of cash. We expect to steadily generate significant additional cash throughout the remainder of 2025. Next, an update on our capital allocation activities and priorities. During Q1, we opportunistically deployed just over $300 million of capital via open market repurchases of our common stock. This equates to approximately 250,000 of our shares at an average price of $1,249 per share. We view these repurchases like any other capital investment and expect this will meet or exceed our long-term return objectives. -- Most international markets saw stable growth with Asia Pacific, the major driver of the increase. Shifting to our defense market, which is traditionally is at or below 35% of our total revenue. The defense market revenue, which includes both OEM and aftermarket revenues, grew by approximately 11% compared with the prior year period. Q1 defense revenue growth was well distributed across our businesses and customer base. We saw similar growth in both the OEM and aftermarket components of our total defense market. with the aftermarket running slightly ahead of OEM. RTX too me is the best in class in terms of broad exposure. One of the most overlooked side of RTX, is the Collins Aerospace business. Most people either focus on Raytheon or Pratt & Whitney when talking about the company. Collins Aerospace is the RTX subsidiary brand that started with Hamilton-Sundtrand, but has since rolled-up Goodrich, Rockwell Collins (which itself had bought B/E Aerospace). They do avionics, interiors, landing gears, nacelles, you name it. Folks often talk about how RTX's P&W is limited only to narrow-body and A.320 family, but they forget that RTX's other business (Collins Aerospace) has a lot of exposure to wide-body and the Boeing side of narrow body market: B.737. All be it small. This is from Sept last year. But I thought it was good listen. RTX - 1685813 Note, this summer the Air Show will be in Paris. It switches between France and UK every other year. RTX does a Investor Meeting every two years when it is in Paris. Last one was in summer of 2023 that was soon followed by the engine issues. Since then they have been handling the issue and used the opportunity to repurchase a big chunk of its own shares. I believe that opportunistic accelerated share repurchase program in 2022 has captured all the share buyback they wanted to do as per their commitment in Paris in 2023. So we will see what they have to say in 2025 in summer in terms what's coming next.
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RBC Direct Investing. No brainer. you get the international markets. only Canadian broker that offers that.
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Thanks. One more from master of coin.
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I am actually really curious as to the men and women advising Trump on SWF and seeding it with TikTok. Right or wrong, there must be some high level thinking (not being sarcastic here) behind all the chaos and high-VIX press releases. Like to know the architects.
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Well, that would explain why a nation armed with what the French called privilège exorbitant of having a reserve currency + a structural trade deficit needs a SWF: Illiquid assets like TikTok, certain Riviera in the near east filled with condominiums and beachfront properties plus Bitcoin need to long term runway to get the compounding machine going. It would not makes sense to liquidate in the short term to offset part of the national debt.
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Right … Tik Tok and a certain Riviera in the near east could be great foundational long term investment bedrock for the SWF PIF has the Neom, so….
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The video is not about SWF but about the original tariff man. And how at some point they “had” to get rid of surplus. That is history. If there is a more to the tariff than it being simply a negotiating tool, if there is real conviction in the White House that it is a permanent tool to increase revenues, (not just to arm wrestle other trading partner), than those future cash pile have to go somewhere, if not earmarked for debt reduction. why would they not go for debt reduction ? No clue. Not everything has to make sense right away. Couple that with bitcoin reserve aspirations (as unlikely as it seems). Wouldn’t those be place in this so called SWF as well. I don’t know the history of SPR well but I imagine when it was first envisioned during the Arab oil embargo, the idea that US had to “save” up expensive barrels during the time when demand was really high seem absurd. like I said not everything has to make sense right away.
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Hongkong Land at 125 - Hongkong Land Holdings Limited
Xerxes replied to John Hjorth's topic in Books
Thank you John. I got a few more books to post. Couple of them I finished during my trip. Will do so in a little while. -
haha. you got to work on your French. https://www.cdpq.com/fr/a-propos/histoire Established the 1960s. Currently $C450 billion in assets. I should clarify that pension fund and sovereign fund serve different purpose. So my initial statement that stated that QC has a large fund despite not being a net energy exporter is erroneous.
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We had some great chats there. Hahaha but no not for faint of heart