BG2008

Interesting! NYC is great. I was just there over the weekend (midtown). I am working on getting up there one day. I hope you make your way to NYC...just don't breath my fresh air

Just curious - what was the expiry date on that put? Jan 2020 - Not much premium at this point on that put because it is so far in the money

Berry Sold some of my $47.50 puts for $9.25 today (paid $1.90 for them). In short, I am going long the stock by exiting the puts. Looking to use the put proceeds to either buy more stock and/or calls.

I want to create a thread for interesting and thought provoking articles I'll start with this article that old school dealers for pot still account for a good chunk of pot sales. In Canada, apparently only 27% of the pot sales are via legitimate channels. I guess if you can save 77% on your pot purchase, there is incentive to skirt paying the excise taxes. This really isn't that different than people bootlegging cigarettes from Virginia and bringing them to NYC. The delta can be $7-8 a pack. Load up a van with $5,000 worth of cigarettes at $5 a pack, and your profit margin is likely 100% for a trip up I-95. https://www.wsj.com/articles/pot-industry-underestimates-old-school-dealers-11566214441?mod=article_inline

Manhattan, NYC - Anything over $2mm on the residential side is not moving, anything over $5mm is tough to sell Queens, NYC - 1-4 families, overall price declines from last year, we've notice there is more choices and opportunity to pick a potential bargain Overall, quite a bit of new supplies coming onto the market on the higher end. NYC over $2,000 a sqft. Queens quite a bit of supply in the $700-1,000 a sqft range. Flushing is full of new construction. New projects within 5-10 min walks to subway stations will likely still fare well. For developers, if they can't move the condo units, they can refi with the bank and lease it out and hold it for the long run. Long Island - Anything over $1mm is hard to move. Taxes, affordability, etc. With regard to what thepupil just said, I think anything that is under $1mm under 10 min walk to subway stations within a 30 min ride into Midtown will likely move well. I remember the 2008/2009 recession. Things got pretty bad. I was laid from Citigroup and there was a young lawyer who lost his job. We were all going to Renzo Gracies to learn Brazilian JuJitSu. I winded up getting a job in PE. The young lawyer winded up setting up his own law firm/consulting gig. NYC attracts a lot of talent and when rent becomes "affordable," it seems like people just flood into the city. The people who have been here for 5-10 years find ways to stay and start stuff. The look-through industries are not necessarily recession resistant, but the people are very entrepreneurial.

I would be buying more GRIF if it wasn't for the large position size already. Yea while I don't think its got much of a catalyst I still kind of ask myself Who TF is selling at these prices? Its one thing to look at a stock and pass. Its another when you already own it because you have to at least peripherally be aware of what's going on. I mean, even on a super short term, trading based thesis, $35 is still where'd you'd be buying, not selling... got another 1250 today. Gabelli has sold some recently. I think he manages SMAs and when clients redeem, they tell him to sell out of the stock which he is always very reluctant to do. That's why you see 40,000 shares sold from Gabelli. I think Gabelli and the family reducing their stake is better for the long term because it will improve the liquidity and the bid/ask spread of the company. Yes, there is no catalyst. But when you have a NAV that's 90-100% higher than the current price, good things happen. The same thing happened to HHC.

Does anyone use health insurance through WeWork? Can you share pricing etc? I got insurance through my wife but they are charging me over $800 a month which my wife did not tell me before I had the chance to switch to Obamacare. I was on WeWork's website, it didn't provide any quotes and mostly just talked about filing out some form and they will contact you.

I would be buying more GRIF if it wasn't for the large position size already.

How many shares did you snag? Just curious about your view on GRIF.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-08-13/if-the-tuition-doesn-t-get-you-the-cost-of-student-housing-will College kids don't need luxury apartments

I volunteered as an alumni for my college fraternity. The school quoted us $400k to redo our bathroom. Granted, it is designed to have 6-8 showers and multiple stalls etc. But $400k for a communal bathroom in upstate New York. The amount of administrative burden on such a task is ridiculous. But all jobs must be approved by the school.

I did the same thing a while ago. I actually asks my appraiser for a low appraisal and used that to get my taxes lowered. However, I didn’t have loan to value issues either. Damn you people who want lower appraisals!!!!

In my case, the appraiser uses mostly 3 family buildings as comparisons for 4 family building that I own. And then he's making an adjustment saying that the additional unit is only worth about $20,000 when incremental annual market rent is potentially that much. Any appraisers that I can call just to pick their brain on how to contest this? They claim they are giving me 70% LTV. But if the appraisal is at 75% of fair market value. Then the actual LTV of market price is only 50%. Too much equity locked up in the RE.

My appraisal for a cash out refi just came back and the value is about 75% of of the fair market value. Has anyone dealt with this in past? I know that I can do an appraisal appeal. Can I pay and get a second opinion and submit it to the bank?

GRIF

DuPont over LYB all day. DuPont is actually a decent target IMO

Berry Global

Imagine this, you convince a bunch of Wall Street people to give you $100mm to $1 billion. Then you have a gun to your head to make an acquisition in 24 months. The guys who are selling to you can either go public via a properly road showed IPO or through this back door way and have to deal with warrant overhang. If you are a legit company, what path would you take? This is the problem that I have Social Capital. Chamath Palihapitiya talked about how the IPO process is dead and the pricing mechanism is antiquated. I was look forward to a "crypto or new age way of doing business." So what's the solution? SPAC!!!! This space is just full of crap. Crumbs cupcake - Bankrupt Jamba Juice - Hill International Just google some of these names and you'll see lots of dead or badly injured bodies in the way

Added to GRIF last couple of days

Greg, I think you live in the burbs. 4 hours without AC in NYC in 90 degree weather can kill people. There is no grass and you can just chill in the backyard. You lose power and everyone's apartment becomes an oven.

Please expand on this land of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and PEI. I love seafood and places close to the water in general.

This maybe a reason for me to short the company when it comes public. Will keep an eye on it. I’ve never bothered researching this, but the USA Today story above refers to the “Bank of America’s fund manager survey” and “American Association of Individual Investors’ weekly survey.” Those might be worth looking into.

There are a lot of roll ups in the packaging sector (containerboard, plastic packaging ) that seem to work out well. It seems that economy of scale and a relatively predictable business with a good cash generation are a winning strategy. I read a packaging primer once that essentially said that packaging companies are bonds masquerading as equity. Their cashflows are so stable that they can continuously lever up to do acquisitions and then use FCF to de-lever. Berry has done this multiple times in their private/public life.

Look into Berry Global, it's a plastic packaging. They buy 5bn pounds of resin and their targets typically buy 5-10% of them. If you buy 5bn of resin, the resin manufacturers want your volume to absorb the bulk of their overhead. So you get a 2-5% of revenue savings in resin. Thus you buy a target that has a 10-12% EBITDA margin and right off the bat you're shaving a lot of that cost off just through being a larger operator in the space. Thus, it makes sense to pay 8-9x EBITDA which is really 5-6x EBITDA after synergy. Cable operates the same way where there used to be lots of little guys around. They can use scale in buying content cost to lower the cost.

Haha BPCAP, Can you outline exactly why you don't see value in HHC? The haha isn't meant to be a taunt. I feel like there are three groups of investors of HHC. First, the ones that don't get the value. On the surface, it is hard to see the value. We struggled with it for a long time as well. Second, there are the group that sees the value but believes that the catalyst is many years away and don't want to own it now. Third, there's the group that owns the stock and are willing to ride through the up and downs and believes that it is crazy undervalued.