gfp
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Posts posted by gfp
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Thanks - I knew you would have a useful insiders take on it. Cheers!
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1 hour ago, Saluki said:
That's surprising. The stuff that they use for ships, bunker fuel, is literally the crud that is right above the asphalt in a cracker when they break petroleum into other stuff. It's literally a solid at room temperature, so it's hard to think that it could be even lower quality than that.
Yeah but because of that there are sometimes nasty contaminants mixed in that will clog a fuel filter and then you lose power to the generator. I also believe that they actually run on slightly cleaner fuel when they are in the harbors and switch to heavy fuel oil or whatever bunker fuel is when they are out at sea.
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7 minutes ago, Libs said:
Why?
Just a hunch that bad fuel caused the problems in the first place
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I would be nervous if I was the company that had just filled that ship up with fuel.
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On 3/19/2024 at 3:30 PM, Gregmal said:
Yup. Small fund being put together so a few employees can pay taxes.
Bloomberg Businessweek has a nice long article on Michael Rubin and Fanatics today -
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33 minutes ago, charlieruane said:
@gfp How is shrewdm, generally speaking? Quality material over there?
They have tried to recreate the old style of the motley fool boards. I have mostly just looked at the Berkshire Hathaway board and there are a few great posters that are not on other message boards and some old-timers I remember from back in the day. Even dealraker shows up occasionally. I usually learn something and I know a few of them. It's free, not much to lose checking it out. The individual topics besides Berkshire are mostly dead as far as I know. It is a new project so tough to get things going. It certainly isn't as active and dynamic as CoBF and most Berkshire-related topics will be covered both places pretty well.
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2 minutes ago, charlieruane said:
I enjoyed this Kingswell transcript of an interview Ajit Jain gave in 2011. Jain's closing comment re: his evolving views on philanthropy is particularly interesting, I haven't quite heard this POV before:
AM: In terms of charity.
AJ: It’s a very difficult question. It’s a very personal question. My views have also sort of changed over time. Without getting into a lot of the details — which aren’t relevant to you and your audience — we have a son that has been diagnosed with a serious illness. Before he was diagnosed with the illness, I always sort of thought much like the Buffett philosophy. I always felt, “Gee, I’ve got this fame, I’ve got this wealth, I didn’t deserve it, and it doesn’t belong to me.”
But, after my son’s illness, things did change. I felt I didn’t deserve my son’s illness, either. He didn’t deserve what he’s getting.
So, in terms of my giving… Again, without getting into too much detail, two things have changed: One is that we focus on a foundation that is trying to find a cure for his illness. And, secondly, I feel guilty in as much as in the earliest days of his life, while he was healthy, I didn’t let him spend money and have a nice time. So I’ve done a u-turn on that and I spend a lot more money a lot more freely than what I used to.
In case folks can't read the entire transcript or have interest in the original video of the interview, someone posted the link to the entire video over on shrewdm board -
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5 minutes ago, Luca said:
How large was the position?
It's getting bigger by the second Luca! But now I have FOMO because Trump's twitter thing is up more than MSTR today... There's always something...
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Well james east convinced me to buy Microstrategy stock and it is already up 40%. Why do I even mess around with oil wells, student loans and hamburgers when it's this easy?
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I happened upon this article and it seemed relevant to @Saluki 's thread. It's a few years old. The author of the post also authored a book on the early years of Berkshire Hathaway fwiw. He seems to collect vintage financial reports.
https://mcdinvestments.substack.com/p/another-industry-on-which-berkshire
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5 minutes ago, dartmonkey said:
Still, I would love to see that Blackberry line gone from the Dataroma list, especially since many investors think that these $1.5b in US and Canadian public company holdings accurately represents their $6.9b in total mark to market public equity or their $16.5b in total public equity, or their $92b in total assets. The unfortunate $128m Blackberry position stills looks like a big deal given that it is almost 10% of that $1.5b, but looking at it as context of the $92b in assets, it is only 0.14%, and is fading out of relevance.
But the easiest way for that appearance to be corrected would be to just sell the stake and be done with it. Hopefully, now that the convertibles have been sold, Chen is gone and Watsa has left the board, that is something they may do soon.
Any misconception that helps the stock trade cheaply is a help, not a hindrance. I hope for many misconceptions like "blackberry is material to fairfax" in my investments.
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16 hours ago, bt1 said:
In this annual letter Buffett had written "Japanese companies calculate outstanding shares in a manner different from the practice in the U.S". Does any one know what is different in the way Japanese companies calculate outstanding share? (Apologies if this was discussed in another thread and I missed that, would be thankful if any points that out so I can search for the same.)
I don't know for certain, but I believe he is just referring to the practice of Japanese companies reporting their shares outstanding including treasury shares instead of the US practice of reporting shares outstanding net of any treasury shares the company owns but hasn't yet officially "cancelled."
To get an accurate share count of a Japanese company by the US GAAP understanding you would want to net out any treasury shares (repurchased shares) if the company wasn't reporting share count both ways. Most of these companies, at least in the English filings, are showing the share count both ways and regularly updating their share repurchase activity by press release.
An amusing illustration in the US would be Biglari Holdings which has an official share count (including all GAAP treasury shares the company owns in itself through LP interests) and a GAAP share count that nets out the shares the company owns in itself as treasury shares. It is a big difference in Biglari Holdings' case. Since this is unusual in the US, it causes quite a bit of confusion on what the actual market cap / valuation of the firm is.
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I think no firm was willing to assist with the bond because of its size, the fact that surety bonding is not very profitable at all, and the lack of suitable collateral by the defendant. He had some brokerage collateral but pledged it to Chubb for the earlier bond. I think Greenberg was very clear that he would be willing to write the bond and ignore politics if there was suitable collateral posted. We know he wasn't just talking because he had just done it. We know Buffett would want very good collateral - T-bills to maybe a 2 year note but I would be shocked if Buffett accepted anything less secure than that for a barely profitable surety bond for a customer who has a reputation for not paying.
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20 minutes ago, Gregmal said:
$30b it is
Thanks. That reminds me, it's time for a new Demario Davis jersey $$$
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16 minutes ago, changegonnacome said:
Interesting someone else brought this to my attention and intro'd me to a rep from EquityZen who seem to be a running a liquidity process for Fanatics employees...~$60 per share.....without looking much at the business at all......it sure has all the hallmarks of some future dated IPO that will "pop" on the first day of trading.
Is that like $29-30 Billion valuation or have the number of shares changed?
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12 minutes ago, Spooky said:
Thanks for sharing. I find it interesting that Buffett is buying back stock so heavily given his pessimistic statements about Berkshire's future prospects. Maybe one of the few companies capable of moving the needle is Berkshire itself.
I wouldn't say this repurchase pace is "heavy." It will be interesting to see the split between A-shares and B-shares repurchased in the 10-Q. I think it is quite possible that Warren was offered a block of A-shares and he has shown a preference for retiring A-shares before he leaves the scene.
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7 minutes ago, dartmonkey said:
does FFH not have a fiduciary duty towards FFH shareholders to maximize what goes into FFH shareholders' pockets?
I suppose legally they have some wiggle room here, and could plausibly say that it is in the best interests of FFH to preserve FIH shareholders' trust in FFH, and to maintain FIH as a viable investment vehicle
Yes, they have a fiduciary duty to the FFH shareholders and they made what they felt was the right long term decision. The key word is long term. You lay it out in your post.
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8 minutes ago, TwoCitiesCapital said:
They can take it in cash and buy the shares at the same discount and end up with the roughly the same number of shares.
The difference being float/tradable shares decreases (as opposed to increases) which may help close the NAV gap in the future AND is does NOT adversely impact FIH shareholders (including the existing balance of FIH shares Fairfax holds) via unnecessary dilution.
That's true in theory but in practice it is not easy to buy $110 million worth of FIH.U shares without drastically moving the price. I think it just comes down to 'fair and friendly' and doing the right thing and it comes back around over and over when you always try to behave that way.
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It's important to own the landfills - anybody can win a contract to pick up the cans but nobody is granting a permit for a new landfill. The owner of our local landfill, Fred Heebe of River Birch Landfill, is ridiculously rich.
I haven't seen a comprehensive biography of Huizenga but this thirty year old article tells a lot of his life story. There is always mafia-adjacency in a business like these, at least in the early years. It's a long article. You'll have to read past the testicle twisting...
https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/wayne-huizenga-the-unauthorized-biography-17392137
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Thanks for sharing your work Viking. On Eurobank dividends, if we are already recognizing our entire pro-rata share of Eurobank's earnings, why would we benefit from their dividend? Cash in FFH's hands is different than cash retained at Eurobank, but it should not be double counted.
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11 minutes ago, Luca said:
Seriously? Why is that? 0 Problems buying this for me as a german. Just executing the order on IB easy.
Dinar is probably talking about Fairfax India being classified as a PFIC for US-based investors. I'm not sure it still is, but Americans can hold it inside an IRA type account and avoid the hassles.
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Not sure where to post this, either here or in the old Atlas thread but here is the year end 20-F from Atlas / Poseidon, which still reports to the SEC for the Fairfax shareholders who are interested:
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You see this sort of "float" with some subscription based businesses where a subscription is sold (cash comes in on day one as total billings) but profit is only recognized over the life of the subscription. I just analyze these companies based on the cash billings and not on GAAP. Some companies are required to hold most of that upfront cash on the books (maybe they offer money back guarantees or have to hold some of it as restricted cash or whatever) so it earns 5% today and more or less in other interest rate environments.
A well run, growing insurance business isn't really paying back the float - it is just a revolving fund of fungible capital that should grow over time if conditions are right. Better than the 'un-earned revenue' type of float Anterix would have.
Fairfax stock positions
in Fairfax Financial
Posted
It really isn't a dressed up share repurchase unless they ask the banks to close out the swaps by delivering the shares to them when they are ready to end the trade. A share repurchase consumes cash and doesn't effect profit / loss or produce cash flow. This trade does not consume cash (when it moves in their direction), directly effects profit / loss like any other equity position, and produces cash inflows (if it moves in their direction).