Ballinvarosig Investors
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Posts posted by Ballinvarosig Investors
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You've done it now.In fact, our largest holding is a small-cap company that is relatively well-known, yet not a single person on this board, or its predecessor, has ever talked about it from my recollection. It trades at about 8.5 times earnings and less than 0.85 of book...and book is undervalued! Cash flows are consistent, little debt and it's been around a long time. Yet not a single person has ever talked about this company. Schloss would be buying stocks today...but that's because he would be doing more legwork and research than everyone on here. Cheers!
My first guess was Core-Mark, I think it fills your criteria. It's small cap, been around since for ever, is steadily growing sales and cash flows, has no debt, is below book, cheap relative to earnings and has been around since 1888. It's got nice, long-term growth as well.
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Tim McElvaine is Chairman and 31.5% shareholder of Rainkmaker Entertainment.
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Fremont Michigan InsuraCorp announced quarterly results, and they weren't pretty - http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1271245/000119312510188834/0001193125-10-188834-index.htm
Harry correctly expressed a worry about the growth of their personal lines business, and now it looks like the chickens are coming home to roost. What scares me most, is that they're still growing these lines at breakneck pace.
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What a weasel!
The vote doesn't look like going his way, so he pulls the damn thing, probably an an effort to concoct something equally unpalatable for shareholders to digest.
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Market hasn't reacted too well to the results. I'm guessing that the increased debt is an issue?
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I see that Sonic used debt to buy back $560 million worth of stock in 2006 when the share price was in the $20 region. Four years later, the stock is under $9 and the CEO is still in place and Sonic are loaded with debt. The free cash flow generated by the business is sweet though!
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http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/93859/000092189510001206/sc13g07428007_07282010.htm
I must say, I'm a little surprised that Biglari is concentrating so highly in the restaurant sector.
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http://money.cnn.com/2010/07/29/news/companies/buffets_mr_fixit_full.fortune/
Excellent article on David Sokol. I didn't know he had a book out, I'll have to buy it!
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In fairness to him, when he's getting interviewed by half-wits from CNBC, they're more interested in the speculative topics, rather than silly boring things like profits and annual reports. It's much better to guess which company will have the next blockbuster drug, or which company is going to make us billions from cloud computing.For example, when asked why he liked health insurance cos, Berkowitz would reply that all he knows is that he's getting older and he wants more care and to live quality life as he ages. That doesn't say much, does it? But there was clearly much more than that behind his decision to invest in those companies.
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In Lu's case, does anyone know if his returns are also due to a high batting average, or are there a few extraordinary homeruns in there?
The article doesn't give specifics but says that without BYD, Lu's performance as a hedge fund manager is "unremarkable." I'd like to know the author's definition of "unremarkable." ;)
I guess they mean that once BYD is stripped out, performance wasn't great?
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Yet you're still happy to hold CCME?I own some CCME. I also own some shares and warrants of CCLWF and CHOP. There are lots of problems with those small cap chinese stocks, either loose internal control, accounting problem, cheating, etc. Someone guestimated that 1/3 of those small cap chinese stocks are fraud, I think it might be higher than that. ONP's story can not be true, must be faked numbers. CMFO's acquisition smells problem too. FUQI had some accounting problem, can not release 2009 earnings yet. TXIC missed the deadline to file 20-F. The extreme case I find so far was SBAY. They own 2/3 of the subaye.com. To get 100% of the website, somehow the original 1/3 owner of subaye.com in the end now owns 60% of SBAY and the management claims this is good deal! Yeah, this might be good deal for them, definitely not for shareholders.
There is no concept of shareholder oriented culture in China today. People think stock market as casino. In a sense, the A Shares listed in Shanghai and ShenZhen are real casinos. The cost for management to fake numbers is very low and the gain for them could be very high. In public TV, they boasted how they worked hard to get IPOed in wall street and received $$$ from wall street. Then they will spend those money fast, some into their own pocket.
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There have been quite a few people investigating Chinese companies that are listed here on American stock exchanges, and a lot of red flags have been raised!
Motley Fool have done an interesting peice on a company called China Sky One Medical (CSKI) - http://caps.fool.com/Blogs/a-lack-of-logic-around-china/416849
Much of their research came from a man named John Bird, who goes into quite a lot of details listing inaccuracies between the companies American, and Chinese financial information. For more information, look here - http://www.waldomushman.com/Intro.html
Since then, I've noticed that another person has emerged doing similar things. He alledges that Orient Paper (ONP) and China Marine Food are also fraudulently reporting their numbers - http://www.chinesecompanyanalyst.com
I have a tiny interest in China MediaExpress (CCME) and am considering dumping it. I can't find any hard evidence of fraud, but the numbers just seem too good to be true. Thoughts?
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http://www.gurufocus.com/stock-market-valuations.php
United States stock market as a percentage of GDP link I forgot.
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I often think about Peter Lynch's statement in One up on wall street where he said:
from an investors perspective spending 15 minutes a year focused on macro economic issues is a wast of 10 minutes time.
Most of the macro analysis is akin to reading tea leaves.
However, I think there are a few measures that can be used as a guide to measuring the affordability of the market.
The first is the historic P/E ratio. Markets tend to be dear when the ratio is close to 20, and cheap when it's closer to 10. This ratio isn't foolproof - see the Great Depression.
The second is size of the stock market compared to an economies GDP. Gurufocus actively maintain this metric for the United States. Buffett has never stated it, but I believe this is the metric he uses when evaluating a market.
Finally, you simply cannot ignore credit conditions in an economy. Private sector/public sector debt, M3, etc. This kind of data is usually more fuzzy, but the trends are useful. Other than those things, I wouldn't usually apply macro factors to investment decisions.
I would be interested to read what other metrics value investors use. Parsad?
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Management is as greedy and selfish as Biglari? Did you look at Fremont's compensation table for 2009? Did you compare it to other similarly sized insurance companies? I picked three at random, (AAME, ASAM, GAN) and in two cases, executive compensation was a multiple of what Fremont's management is earning, and in the other case it was marginally higher. If anything, these guys earn less than the industry average.
To be honest, now that Biglari's true colours have been revealed, I'm glad that Fremont took action to block the Steak n' Shake takeover. There's no reason why management can't continue to plough ahead on their own, growing the business by 20-25% every year.
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What do you think?
Book value is $47.6m (much of which is in safe fixed income securities), market cap $33.9. The only thing that bothers me is that a not insignificant part of the equity portfolio is in mutual funds. All investments are of investment grade and fall within the top two tiers set by the ratings agencies. A.M Best have an A- rating for what it's worth. Combined ratio has stayed consistantly below 100 over the last 5-6 years. Reserving has remained conservative in the meantime.
My only concern is that as they've grown their lines of business, the loss ratios have started to creep up.
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I wonder who was responsible for getting that article published.
A certain Mario G. perhaps? ;D
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Since when have Microsoft and Google been beaten? Anyway, I don't know what the smartphone market is like in the States, but I do know that here in Europe the techies that formerly embraced the Iphone are now deserting in droves to the HTC/Android platform. The same techies a few months back were telling me that HTC were a company to watch, and that the likes of Nokia were old hat were to be avoided. The Peter Lynch school of stock-picking isn't a strategy I embrace, but maybe in this instance the techies have an insight that we mere mortals may have missed ;D
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http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/93859/000092189510001065/pre14a07428_07062010.htm
If this is the case, why is he being compensated on simple book value growth?Thus, the Committee resolved that per-share book value growth is the most valid measure of the progress of the business because book value includes operating earnings/losses as well as unrealized gains/losses on investments. -
I'm sorry to say, but if Tim McElvaine honestly thinks that this is value investing, then he has lost his mind.Apparently according to Tim's March update he picked up a Greek bank. An interesting pick for a deep value guy. The biggest one, NBG, has operation through the region including Turkey and the Balkans. If Greece does not drop out of the Euro, then this may be a good time to pick a bank that has regional exposure to emerging markets like Turkey.
Packer
I wrote a post about banking and Greece on these very forums awhile back.
Greece's sovereign credit rating has been cut to junk status, even by the credit rating agencies. If sovereign debt is junk, then they're going to have to invent an all-new, sub-junk rating status for Greek banks. Also, knowing that the Greek government lied to their European partners about the extent of their debt crisis, I shudder to think what skeletons could by lying in the closets of the Greek banks.Unless you're Greek, or well versed in Greek property and lending standards then I would stay the hell away from any Greek banks. Remember that Warren Buffett lost $240 million on Irish banks in 2008. From his annual report.I made some other already-recognizable errors as well. They were smaller, but unfortunately not that small. During 2008, I spent $244 million for shares of two Irish banks that appeared cheap to me. At yearend we wrote these holdings down to market: $27 million, for an 89% loss. Since then, the two stocks have declined even further. The tennis crowd would call my mistakes "unforced errors".Basically, Irish banks lied through their teeth about the quality of their loan books. The Irish Financial Regulator and the Irish Stock Exchange were complicit in condoning, and even covering up in this deception. Buffett obviously only read financial statements and wasn't aware of the political and regulatory shenanigans that were going on behind the scenes until it was too late.
Maybe NBG is fine, I'm just saying you would really want to know your stuff before you went anywhere near it.
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True, but I'm only going by past behaviour. With Fremont Michigan and Steak n' Shake, he filed a 13D from the outset.While he hasn't filed a 13D, there is no reason why he cannot make a tender offer for the company at some point, or file an amendment to his 13G converting to a 13D. Cheers!
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As ragnar states, Biglari has filed a 13G , therefore he will not be allowed to sit on or influence the board.I don't understand this statement in the context of what has been going on. Are you saying that you want Biglari on board at Red Robin?
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Wouldn't have anything to do with the fact that GE is the parent company of CNBC, would it? 8)The reporters on CNBC are mostly Wall-street type morons, whereas the reporters on Bloomberg are actually quite a bit more knowledgable. Cheers!
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http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_27/b4185064551500.htm?chan=rss_topStories_ssi_5
The Olympics are over, and the Village is for sale. The complex in Vancouver, British Columbia, that housed the athletes during the 2010 Winter Olympics has been converted into 1,100 luxury condos. About 450 have been pre-sold, and the sales of the remainder may well render a verdict on a mystery that looms over this city like Grouse Mountain: Did Canada prudently steer its way clear of the worst of the financial crisis only to be rewarded with a massive housing bubble of its own?On a bright, warm Saturday in late June, couples and families wandered through the empty village, which has been renamed Millenium Water. It opened for public tours last month and draws about 100 people a day. Millenium Water is a city of the future, built with enviro-touches like green roofs and automatic shades that moderate the temperature inside the apartments. An 815-square-foot, one-bedroom apartment is on sale for C$879,000, which works out to C$1,078 per square foot, or $12 higher than the average price in Manhattan, according to The Corcoran Report. (A Canadian dollar is currently worth about U.S. 96 cents.)
Millenium Water isn't in downtown Manhattan, of course. It's not even in downtown Vancouver, which is across an inlet known as False Creek. It isn't really even in a neighborhood; the nearest establishment is the sales office for another condo development. If all this is starting to sound a little irrationally exuberant, especially given the shaky international outlook, well, that's Vancouver for you.
This time, it's different 8)
Insanity reigns
in General Discussion
Posted
I own some VMWare.
I started buying in April when EMC started purhasing stock (they still are buying by the way). To me at least, it was pretty clear that once they started buying, they were hardly just going to buy a few thousand shares and stop. The cloud computing nonsense is obviously pushing the stock up too, but the emc effect can't be ignored.
Insider buying - http://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/own-disp?action=getissuer&CIK=0001124610
It would not surprise me if they tendered for the remaining stock.