Sportgamma
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Posts posted by Sportgamma
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Anyone like EXOR?
Hell yeah, my second largest position...behind FIAT
No were talking! What price did you get in i just bought 6 weeks ago but see much more upside. Care to share your thesis?
I got in at roughly €16.
http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/investment-ideas/exo-mi-exor/
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Ichan doing stand-up...
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Anyone like EXOR?
Hell yeah, my second largest position...behind FIAT
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I am unfamiliar with this valuation methodology that my interviewing firm uses, can anyone point me to any resources...?
Is it basically just deriving an EBITDA multiple based on comparables?
Perhaps of some usefulness:
A renowned practitioner of April 15th warfare is John Malone, who is well represented in our portfolios. Expanding his original investment vehicle, Telecommunications Inc., through an aggressive acquisition strategy, he orchestrated over 480 transactions with smaller cable television system operators between 1973 and 1990; that is an average of more than 2 permonth for almost two decades. Ultimately, he built the nation’s largest cable system. Because that business produces very stable cash flows, like a utility in its collection of millions of monthly customer service charges, he willingly assumed larger amounts of debt than the typical company could tolerate. This did not merely finance the expansion; the interest expense also
greatly reduced Telecommunication Inc.’s taxable income.
As well, in order to encourage the national buildout of expensive cable infrastructure, government regulations permitted cable companies to deduct from taxable income the non-cash goodwill amortization charges that arise from acquisitions; ordinarily, companies are not permitted to use goodwill amortization to reduce income taxes. Mr. Malone used this mechanism as well, modulating both types of expenses — interest and goodwill amortization — in order to produce no reportable or taxable income, even as he built an exceedingly valuable enterprise. In fact, it was due to this particular tax reduction strategy that a new method of valuing companies was developed by a young, theretofore unreknowned media analyst named Mario Gabelli. It eventually became, and remains, a de-rigeur valuation tool. Frustrated in trying to value Telecommunications Inc. using the standard P/E ratio — the “E” standing for earnings — since the company had no “E”, Mr. Gabelli employed an alternative formula. This was the enterprise value/EBITDA ratio, which recast the “E” as operating earnings before deducting interest expense, non-cash depreciation and amortization charges, and taxes. He was able to posit, on that basis, that telecommunications Inc. was dramatically undervalued, whereas it had previously been shunned by investors who had assessed the company as, simply, a highly indebted and unprofitable enterprise.
from Horizon Kinetics 1Q2013 commentary
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I think that OPAP will continue to be profitable almost no matter what. People want to be able to gamble a few euros with the chance of winning more.
The beuty of OPAP is not that people´s gambling habits are that resilent, but the business model. Most of the costs are variable and directly linked to sales, so even if revenues would drop 50%, OPAP would still make a profit.
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How would you look for a local analyst? Some freelance site or what?
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I´m wandering why there isn´t any news or activity here on the annual meeting?
Only thing I could find is this:
Also if I go to the Fairfax website I only find this:
The annual meeting of shareholders of Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited will be held on April 11, 2013 at 9:30 a.m., Toronto time at Roy Thomson Hall, 60 Simcoe Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Click here to view the 2012 Annual Meeting Slide Presentation.So guys, any news?
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Principles for the Application of Fair Value Accounting
http://www4.gsb.columbia.edu/null?&exclusive=filemgr.download&file_id=3822
Timely & True from an Owner’s View: Shareholder Value Accounting for Employee Stock Options
http://www8.gsb.columbia.edu/sites/ceasa/themes/ceasa/css/files/PolicyBrief_1.pdf
Timely & True from an Owner’s View: Shareholder Value Accounting for Employee Stock Options
http://www.bus.iastate.edu/aclem/592/SS03/Penman.pdf
Do Firms Understate Stock Option-Based Compensation Expense Disclosed under SFAS 123?
http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/david.aboody/ABK_RAST_Forthcoming.pdf
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The U.S. money supply has expanded substantially since 2007 regardless of how you measure it (M1, M2 or M3). But the full impact of the expanded money supply has not yet been felt because confidence remains subdued. In fact, the velocity of money has plummeted below its previous mid-1969 level. Losses in confidence are short-term in nature and when confidence does return and the velocity of money returns to more normalized levels, watch out for inflation. I would not buy into any long dated fixed-income instruments that are dependent on interest rates particularly those issued by countries that are aggressively expanding their money supply.
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Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited ("Fairfax") (FFH.TO)(TSX:FFH.U) announces the signing of an agreement with GMP Securities L.P. ("GMP"), for GMP's purchase from Fairfax of 9,897,509 common shares and 16,334,000 common share purchase warrants of Imvescor Restaurant Group Inc., representing 23.6% of the common shares of Imvescor on a non-diluted basis and 45.0% of the common shares of Imvescor if the warrants being sold were exercised. The Imvescor shares and warrants are being sold to GMP for $26.1 million. Closing of the sale is expected to occur on or about April 16, 2013.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/fairfax-sells-imvescor-securities-122100312.html
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As of the first of February, this store will be charging people a $5 fee per person for “just looking.”
The $5 fee will be deducted when goods are purchased.
How can it be deducted from goods purchased if they are just looking?
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Anybody know what the average duration on the hedges is?
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The long term is where it’s at!
Word up, brotha
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Interview with Jarden´s CEO Franklin:
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A little bit dated, but still interesting articles, to get a sense of Mr. Ergen's strategy.
giofranchi
A rare interview with Ergen (64min).
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Here s another formula.
Value of company is x.
When price =.5x, buy. When price = x, sell.
Taleb says it s all luck. I say he s full of sh* t . . . and formulae.
He isn´t saying its all luck...
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"Iceland president: Let banks go bankrupt"
Thank you for sharing! The only really interesting video I have seen from Davos so far.
giofranchi
“As time goes on I get more and more convinced that the right method in investment is to put fairly large sums into enterprises which one thinks one knows something about and in the management of which one thoroughly believes. It is a mistake to think that one limits one’s risk by spreading too much between enterprises about which one knows little and has no reason for special confidence.”
- John Maynard Keynes
Hot from the press
http://www.eftacourt.int/images/uploads/16_11_PR_EN.pdf
Thus, considering ESA’s self-limitation, the Court was bound to assess whether Iceland was under a specific obligation to ensure that payments were made to Icesave depositors in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. However, since the Court had already held that the Directive, even read in light of Article 4 EEA, imposes no obligation on the defendant to ensure that payments are made in accordance with the requirements of the Directive to Icesave depositors in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, it was found that such an obligation of result could only be deemed to exist if it followed directly from Article 4 EEA itself. The Court held that this is not required under the principle of non-discrimination. A specific obligation upon the defendant that would not even establish equal treatment between domestic depositors and those depositors in Landsbanki’s branches in other EEA States could not be derived from that principle. Consequently, the third plea, and the application as a whole was dismissed.
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So, given my “minuscule investment universe”, what do you suggest I should do? If you were me, not able to invest in Japan, not able to invest in Europe, not able to invest in Brazil, China, or anywhere else, and only interested to invest in a bunch of north-American stocks,
giofranchi
If you *must* invest in NA, and nowhere else, well, then obviously lots of FFH and cash.
How about LINTA, BAM, LUK as well. Registered in NA, international exposure and has the management and cash to act if opportunities come their way.
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http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/4f29655eeab8ead315000022-906-509/stephanie-ruhle-paul-volcker.jpg
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Every dollar rise in share price is $50M increase! Ka-ching, Ka-ching!!! Killing the shorts...
I personally wouldn't get too excited yet. I haven't followed the RIM story (or the RIM thread on this board) much, but does any of this price-action matter before it becomes clear whether the BB10 will sink or swim? As a distant observer, that seems to be make or break for the company. I guess it also depends on what the patents etc could reasonable be sold for (floor worst-case liquidation situation), which I have no clue.
The performance of RIM is certainly debatable, as you suggested. But to me the bigger issue is that FFH does not have a viable exit strategy. Now that Prem is a RIM board member, he will be hard pressed to dump RIM shares, even if they approach a price that is near FFH's evaluation of intrinsic value. After all, what does it say about his commitment to the company if he dumps his (our!) position?
If you can't sell, and they don't pay a dividend....
I beg to differ. I find it highly unlikely that Watsa, Bradstreet and Co would take such a big stake if they did not think that they had a reasonable exit strategy. Perhaps Prem entering the board will make it easier to implement a plan B if the need arises (e.g. slice and dice).
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Well, when your the one paying the bills...
His production company, Closest to the Hole, rose from his need to be self-sustaining: “Producing gives you a lot of control, and that’s always been the issue for me,” he says. “I would rather be the one driving the car. If we crash, at least I can blame myself.”Inherently frugal, he’s figured out how to do more with less. For example, his upcoming action comedy 2 Guns, opposite Denzel Washington, was originally budgeted at $150-million (U.S.). Wahlberg hired the rising Icelandic director Baltazar Kormakur, who knows how to make small budgets look big, and shot it in New Mexico in 50 days, for half the price.
“Before us, The Lone Ranger was there,” Wahlberg says, grinning. “It’s about two guys on horses, and it cost $280-million to make. What the fuck were these horses doing? Do they fly? It’s crazy!”
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/celebrity-news/who-is-the-real-mark-wahlberg/article7519422/
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Hey Gio,
Here´s another owner-operator who writes all the check herself:
Gert Boyle of Columbia Sportswear (also found on the Wealth Index)
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If you tried to replicate that exercise, you would look at the S&P 500, look at all the holdings since the day it began in 1957, extract all the positions in which there were owner-operators that you could identify, and then recalculate the S&P as if there never were any owner-operators. In every time period, there would be a different number of owner-operators but, for ease of illustration, let’s just make believe that there were an average of 50 companies of this type. You’d be calculating, on average, the S&P 450 instead of the S&P 500.
I absolutely promise you, if you did that calculation, you would never buy the S&P. What I’m telling you is that the bulk of the return of the indices—and not just in the United States, but in all nations, the bulk of the return was earned by these owner-operators.
Why am I even studying this? I’m studying it because I have to somehow respond to the idea of indexation in a business sense. There are currents in the marketplace that are overwhelming the efforts of active managers. I began to look at the position of the owner-operators in indices, when they are included in indices, and I learned a very interesting fact, which I’ll share with you.
The indices are computed differently than in the past when the market value of a company was compared to that of other companies in the index to determine its weight. It might surprise you to learn that they are now computed using what’s called a float-adjusted mechanism. Let’s define float as the number of shares not owned by the insiders of a company—these are the shares that you could theoretically buy. For the purposes of deciding a company’s weight in a given index— whether it is 1%, 2%, 3%, or another weight—the originators of the index determine the weight by comparing its float to that of the other companies in the index.
To illustrate the consequences, let’s take an extreme case. It doesn’t really happen this way in real life; this is merely for illustration. Let’s say that the management members of an imaginary company are buying a lot of the company’s stock with their own money. You, the shareholder, might take comfort in that but, for the purposes of calculating the company’s weight in an index, the float would be diminishing. When the float diminishes, all things being equal (ceteris paribus, as they say in Latin) the company’s weight in the index declines proportionately.
Let’s take the reverse. Let’s say the management took all their stock and sold it in the marketplace. You might take umbrage at that as a shareholder. But, from the point of view of the index, all things being equal, the company’s weight in the index goes up.
What’s happening in the index? It has developed an algorithm for doing the opposite of what everyone knows is the sensible action to take. The index will buy more of a company’s stock— i.e., it will have a higher weight—when the management sells stock. The more the management sells, the higher the company’s weight, at the margin. All these events happen at the margin. Conversely, the more aggressively the management buys the stock, all things being equal, the lower its weight in the index. It’s actually astonishing. There are many more aspects of indexation that I wish I had time to cover. I could give you a very nice lecture about indexation, but I’m covering only one feature, because it’s relevant to what we’re talking about here.
While studying the many facets of indexation, it occurred to me that one could create investment products that use the opposite strategy of the float-adjusted indexation trend. At Horizon Kinetics, we created an index that we call the Wealth Index (Ticker: RCH). It’s comprised of owner-operators; that is, members of the company’s management who have a very substantial portion of their own wealth invested in the company. They have freedom of action by dint of the fact that they own a lot of stock, and they have a great amount of their own capital at risk.
- Murray Stahl
Current Holdings
in General Discussion
Posted
Guess you´re right on both BYD and FIAT:
http://www.princehenrygroup.com/AR_2012.pdf
In the picture, Pabrai isn´t in front of just any Ferrari...he´s standing in front of John Elkann´s Ferrari, next to John Elkann.