brker_guy

Carl, this is really cool!!! I am always fascinated by AR...

"CNBC as financial porn". :D :D :D :D That is a VERY GOOD ONE!!!! I might have to borrow that one. Too funny!

Really? How so, Bronco? Can you give us exact details on how Level 3 would work for NFLX for free? In details, please! What metrics did you use to come to that conclusion?

Interesting story in the NYTimes today about Warren's successor by Andrew Sorkin: http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/26/a-dark-horse-in-buffetts-stable-of-successors/?ref=business

Carl, we are seeing this high frequency trading being practiced right now on a company like LVLT in front of our eyes. Ever since the convertible notes being floated, look at the volume and the price movement of LVLT. I agree with you. This is way being scary; it's criminal almost... I am pretty much in favor of open market, but this kind of practice will lead to another crash, I am afraid...

Scary story: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/10/07/60minutes/main6936075.shtml

"BUffet's shirt is awesome!" I don't get it. How is it awesome?

stahleyp and netnet, the DJCO's annual meeting was held in Feb. Yes, Charlie did speak. It started at 9AM. Charlie spoke for about an hour or so. Then, he fielded questions from us. There were about 30 people in the room, and it was quite cozy. it ended at around noon. So, we got some really good quality time with Charlie. Like WSC, Charlie was in his elements.

"Also this would mean that Munger got extremely lucky timing the bottom of WFC he must have owned a ton personally as well." If you believe he was "extremely lucky", I have nothing to add... :-)

"In the panic Munger deployed about 15.5m of DJCO cash into some stocks and made about 33m in profits it was really a very cool thing to see in the 10q's of this ordinarily boring company." It's more like "During the panic, Munger deployed about $15.5m....." Yes, your friend is correct. The stock that Munger bought was WFC. Munger said that it took him a total of 10 sec to make that buy decision on WFC. If you chart WFC prices during the panic til now, you will see that it tracks this pattern of WFC and Charlie's investment gain.

You can always buy some shares of DJCO and see Charlie up close. This year, there were only 30 people at the DJCO's annual meeting. The DJCO meeting was held in a conference room at DJCO's HQ downtown LA.

Sanjeev, as Warren and Charlie have taught us, it's just pure envy that makes a guy Herbie sounds dumber and dumber to us. This guy is pure envy! The more envy he gets; the dumber he sounds! Jim Cramer manages to have a lot of envious, idiotic friends (Herbie and The Nails Dysktra).

"According to the Business Insider, LVLT is the number 3 most hated company in America. One of their metrics to determine this is shareholder return. Obviously, LVLT is way up there in this regard. The other metric is customer satisfaction. That is not surprising to me. It amazes me why people still flock to this terrible company." This is all depend what kind of value investor you really are. AIG ranks on top of this list with all of its frauds and shennanigans, but that didn't stop Berkowitz from buying $1BIL worth of the shares. He also owns another hated stock on there: C. There is nothing worse than frauds when it comes to corporate scandals. Eddie Lampert owns Sears Holdings/K-Mart outright, and that is another hated stock on that list. So, tell us something we don't know about the mis-executions of LVLT's management....

Interesting video of iPhone of AT&T versus iPhone on CLWR:

"Again, I'm talking about the technology, not the business. That article demonstrates exactly my point; hulu *can* use Akamai's technology. The fact that they're moving away from Akamai presumably means that at the moment, the other options are cheaper. That won't necessarily always be the case." Ah, we have a technology investor who is in love with the technology, but not the business! ;D Take this advice for Robert Cringely who used to write a very good column on PBS called "The Pulpit" and a famous show called "Triumph of the Nerds" on PBS, "It's not the best technology that wins; it's the best exploiter of technology that wins".

"Akamai is most valuable for people with content that gets viewed lots of times in lots of places. hulu is an example of exactly this opposite effect, where akamai would be helpful." rmitz, if Akamai would be helpful to someone like hulu, why is it that hulu is handling traffic to LVLT and Limelight instead of AKAM? http://www.businessinsider.com/akamai-loses-some-hulu-traffic-to-level-3-and-limelight-networks-2010-3 "Well LVLT can blame the FCC or President Bush, but it's a competitive marketplace, and if they had had a product that was as compelling as they had claimed, customers would have chosen it instead of re-consolidating themselves. " tiddman, for all the time I have followed LVLT as an equity holder and noteholder, I have never heard once that LVLT management blamed the FCC. They are "Net Neutral" and behave like so. The RBOCs don't believe in Net Neutrality. They are everything to squash it. As your comments about why VZ and others build their own network, you can attribute this to Net Neutrality as well. You can also can attribute this to the differences in business models. With the RBOCs as well as the MSOs, they want to be as close to the end-consumers as possible. A company like LVLT and GLBC etc (aka CLECs), their business model is not to be as close to the end consumers. An average bill payer on LVLT's network spends $1500 per month. I don't know of any average consumer that throw away that much cash per month, do you? So, to answer your question about the need to build out their own networks like VZ, T, and the MSOs do, you have to look at their business models as well as the effect of Net Neutrality. "How do you know that the bottleneck is terrestrial bandwidth utilization (i.e. the service that LVLT provides)? It could be wireless spectrum space, their internal data systems, handset availability, customer support, or any of the myraid of things that are needed to provide the end-to-end service to users." tiddman, when you say thing like this, it gives me an impression that you don't follow this telecom space that thoroughly. "Terrestrial bandwidth utilization"? I think you mean, "bandwidth constraint", right? This is simple. In the beginning, cell phones could only provide with voice capabilities which average 9.6kbps. Then come along phones that can do data which right now can do 120k-384kbps on average in the U.S. Yet, anyone with a smartphone like an iphone is streamming over T's so-called 3G network which can do 500kbps at best. Now, you multiply this by approx 10 million iPhone users, you are looking at a lot of bandwidth constraint not only from the spectrum space standpoint(This is another story all onto itself. Wait til when 4G rolls out) but network bandwidth shortage at the cell towers as well. If half of these iPhone users get on Youtube at the same time, you are looking at a lot of network choking going on. I don't know if you know, but fiber to the tower is a double digit growth segment of the telecom these days. I can assure you that handset availability is not an issue. Look at the rate of Android phones coming into the market everyday. "internal data systems"? What internal data systems? "customer support"? Well, your local T customer service dept doesn't have a clue if they can't solve the BW problem, can they? What can they do? Free iPhones for the next upgrade? But in the end, it comes down to two things, I believe: network constraint (both wireless and wireline access) and spectrum utilization.

"It's not that the video content is longer or larger, but that the content itself is mostly on the long-tail side of things. Sure, it'd be great for those video clips that are being watched by everyone a ton, but Akamai isn't going to help much with reading your email, since it's (hopefully for you) not being read by tons of people." rmitz, I am very confused by your statements above. On one hand, you say that AKAM has a small moat. On the other hand, you say that "content itself is mostly on the long-tail side of things". Can you elaborate? At the end of the day, I think it is much more valuable to be the owner of a network than an owner of a ton of servers that depreciate a lot faster than fiber. "To put my question another way, if Level 3's top 10 customers are growing in terms of network buildout and utilization, why aren't Level 3's revenues growing?" I am one not making any excuses for LVLT's management here, but you can pin down their revenue growth problems to a host of problems. I believe longinvestor addressed part of the issues for you, and that is the FCC. The FCC itself has enabled the RBOCs to become two behemoth Ma-Bells all over again during the Bush-business friendly era. So, when LVLT became a consolidator a few years ago by buying up 7 businesses, they got caught off guard by the RBOCs merging to bring traffic back onto their own network i.e. AT&T and VZ. AT&T moved the Cingular and SBC traffic back onto their network, and VZ moved the Alltel(remember these guys?) and VZ Wireless onto the MCI network. Combining that with their missed execution on the mergers, they got troubles brewing. Compounding to that problem was the credit squeeze, and LVLT was knocked against the rope. So, 5 years go by really fast, and that's what you have missed the last 5 years. Now, regarding your statement, tiddman, on you were with me until the last statement. If you look at the link that I sent you, you will see that VZ still uses LVLT to carry its traffic even though they have their own $23BIL FiOS network. That was my point. "Verizon is clearly intending on building out their own network despite the fact that LVLT already has one." Correction to your statement. It's more like VZ bought the MCI/Worldcom network, and then build the FiOS network to push into the local markets. Even that they built their network, they are relying on LVLT to carry their long-haul traffic. Again look at the slide #10 in the link that I sent you. Just ask yourself why is it that AT&T are putting caps on their wireless users? If that wasn't caused by overwhelming demand of the smartphone users, what caused the network overloading and the cap on bandwidth usage? Yet, T thinks that this will be good for the consumers? They are sadly mistaken!

"Well over the past ~5 years, Verizon, Cox, and Comcast (not to mention other smaller cable companies) have built out their fiber networks to support delivering video over fiber. Verizon's service provides fiber right to the home. This is exactly the use case that is supposed to be addressed by Level 3's network, so why didn't this result in a bonanza for Level 3?" I think you might have missed a few of LVLT's comments on the buildout of Cox and Comcast using their lambda. LVLT management has maintained that they needed a Comcast and a Cox to push into the local market. They have ceded local push to the cable guys. Even as LVLT sells Cox and Comcast wavelength for their local push, these guys are still LVLT's top 10 customers. They haven't abandoned LVLT. As for VZ, let's talk about that, shall we? Back in 2007, VZ pledged $23 BIL for FIOS for the local market. Now, compare that to the $25BIL for LVLT's nationwide network. That's a huge amount of money to connect only 18 mil homes. As of Q1, VZ has managed to grab 3 mil FiOS TV subscribers and 3.7 FiOS data sub. While they are having growth in both areas, their growth have dropped dramatically since the roll-out. So, the question is: is $23 BIL worth the investment for those 3mil users? Even with the $23 BIL investment and counting, VZ are still relying on LVLT's network. Here is the list of LVLT's customers - Slide 10: http://lvlt.client.shareholder.com/common/download/download.cfm?companyid=LVLT&fileid=376699&filekey=66e00665-eed9-4fde-95ec-2661d561ce98&filename=Barclays 2010 TMT Conference_052710.pdf So, those dollars are finding their ways to LVLT; they just don't come fast enough

I think the Akamai effect will be a short-lived one. Akamai is good at handling small packets and short contents. Long video content is a totally different animal that requires lots of fiber. So, whether one wants to take on debt to duplicate the network scale of LVLT or lease from LVLT, fiber still has an economics advantage in the long run. In the next 5 years, 4G services will also be a drain on the telco guys. Notice all of the caps that T and VZ are putting on their data users these days. So as more people switching to smartphones(Androids, iPhones, WinCE, RIM, and Palm), there will be more demand for fiber. Can Akamai handle those wireless traffic? I think not. Not only that, later this year the cable guys like Cox, TW, and Comcast will offer their own 4G services. So, I think someone who owns the network like LVLT is a sweet spot. BTW: Speaking of Akamai, this is a few months old, but this is important for LVLT's CDN division: http://www.businessinsider.com/akamai-loses-some-hulu-traffic-to-level-3-and-limelight-networks-2010-3 Dan Rayburn is a good industry veteran worth following if you are going to learn about the CDN business.

Cramer did it again for us. :D A day after Cramer told everyone to sell all of their ATSG, ATSG is about to hit another 52-weeks high. This guy has got to be the laughing stock on CNBC. http://www.thestreet.com/_yahoo/video/10737656/cramer-answers-twitter-and-facebook.html?cm_ven=YAHOOV&cm_cat=FREE&cm_ite=NA&s=1 Sometimes, I wish the bear market lasted a little bit longer. That way, viewership would drop, and CNBC would have no choice but to replace him with a totally different show.

Interesting development.... It appears that Fairfax converted 7M out of their 11M shares to preferred stock - 8.5% Convertible Perpetual Preferred Stock http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/101618/000120919110023371/xslF345X03/c99569_4x0.xml

Prem bought more of SD yesterday: http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1349436/000120919110023201/0001209191-10-023201-index.htm

arbitragr, in this day and age of iphone/ipod, you can always get the "Snowball" unabridged edition in MP3 format and listen to it to and from work or wherever you may be.

ValueCarl, "If these men including their underlying owners at (3) are like me-I believe they are-PAYBACK is going to be a BITCH for those COUNTER PARTIES!!!!!! imo" Looks like you are about to get your wish, my friend. The squeeze about to be put on. With 74% owned by institutions and 19% owned by insiders, there aren't much shares left to be shorted. Volume and price has picked up the last few days... http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=LVLT#chart2:symbol=lvlt;range=5d;indicator=volume;charttype=line;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=on;source=undefined Payback as they say is a B*TCH!!!!!

ValueCarl, It's typical FOOLS pumping their own investments(GOOG, AKAM, and CSCO). There is a little bit of arrogance in their write up. That's the thing this FOOL does not get. Investing is a humbling activity. Needless to say, I only have with this one statement that he made, "Their infrastructure assets might be a different mix, but all of those telecom/networking stocks also pay generous dividends, while Level 3 doesn't." Last I check, neither GOOG, AKAM or CSCO pay any kind of a dividend. I just want to see him show what kind of dividends those three stocks pay. The FOOLS now have become the Jim Cramer of online. You got to use them like a contrarian indicator. Whenver they say "buy", you sell. Whenever they say "sell", you buy. I am wondering if FOOLS.BOMB recruited these writers from TheStreet.BOMB.