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Posted

Lumen (LUMN)

 

Can you share any compelling writeups that you've come across?

 

Hey, here's a podcast episode going into the details of the company and the investment case. Basically its just a really cheap telecom company with 100-200% upside and a heavily incentivized CEO to unlock that value.

 

 

Posted

Lumen (LUMN)

 

Can you share any compelling writeups that you've come across?

 

Hey, here's a podcast episode going into the details of the company and the investment case. Basically its just a really cheap telecom company with 100-200% upside and a heavily incentivized CEO to unlock that value.

 

 

Thanks for the podcast link. This is a very informative discussion about Lumen (LUMN) that starts with the merger of Century Link and Level 3 in 2017.

 

Good listen!

Posted

Wildbrain

 

As a connoisseur of children's programming, I was shocked to learn how many brands and titles these guys own. 

Posted

Covered a Tesla short.  I do not have diamond hands.

 

It's fascinating to watch my own psychology, fighting the urge to cover my (miniscule) TSLA short. I had no problem with the paper loss when the stock hit $890. Now that I have a small gain (a smaller total amount than the previous paper loss), I am tempted to cover, even though my thesis was that the stock would pull back at least to the $500-550 range at some point.

 

What's wrong with taking a profit now? With this small trade it doesn't matter, but getting into the habit of tolerating large downside (in terms of P/L), but not allowing the upside to play out, seems like a bad strategy overall.

 

 

 

Posted

I opened the short position at the close when they joined the S&P at 695 / share.  I added to the short from time to time to end up with an average basis of about 836.  I don't want to hold large short positions in individual stocks and much prefer to be short an index or ETF.  Obviously I still think Tesla is valued far too richly but I am happy to close out the risk for now.  I would not be surprised at all if Tesla continued down much lower.

Posted

Wildbrain

 

As a connoisseur of children's programming, I was shocked to learn how many brands and titles these guys own.

 

I'm in WLDBF too, was gonna see if there was a thread and if not start one when I get time.

They own 80% of Peanuts among others and have a really interesting vertical integration from content development through consumer products sales. 

Posted

Wildbrain

 

As a connoisseur of children's programming, I was shocked to learn how many brands and titles these guys own.

 

I'm in WLDBF too, was gonna see if there was a thread and if not start one when I get time.

They own 80% of Peanuts among others and have a really interesting vertical integration from content development through consumer products sales.

 

Yep .. a really compelling monetisation story backed by strong execution (former Marvel executive), solid cash flows, really attractive multiple and lots of great kids content that is in demand by Netflix, DreamWorks and AppleTV+ besides one of the largest presence on YT. And a tight float to boot.

Posted

Wildbrain

 

As a connoisseur of children's programming, I was shocked to learn how many brands and titles these guys own.

 

I'm in WLDBF too, was gonna see if there was a thread and if not start one when I get time.

They own 80% of Peanuts among others and have a really interesting vertical integration from content development through consumer products sales.

 

Yep .. a really compelling monetisation story backed by strong execution (former Marvel executive), solid cash flows, really attractive multiple and lots of great kids content that is in demand by Netflix, DreamWorks and AppleTV+ besides one of the largest presence on YT. And a tight float to boot.

 

I like the runway here for sure. Kids content much better for product sales. Their YouTube channels do insane numbers. I like the CEO's focus on quality over quantity for new content creation. 

Posted

I like Wildbrain too, Old West's Q4 letter had a helpful write-up.

 

Wildbrain posted a strong Q2, but my main concern is the leverage ratio.  While it's improving (they plan to bring it down to the mid-4x level by end of their Fiscal 2022), it's still quite high.  Do you see this as a concern?

 

(And agree we should start a separate thread on this!)

Posted

I opened the short position at the close when they joined the S&P at 695 / share.  I added to the short from time to time to end up with an average basis of about 836.  I don't want to hold large short positions in individual stocks and much prefer to be short an index or ETF.  Obviously I still think Tesla is valued far too richly but I am happy to close out the risk for now.  I would not be surprised at all if Tesla continued down much lower.

 

Thanks for sharing your thought process. Congrats on some (quick) nice gains.

Posted

I like Wildbrain too, Old West's Q4 letter had a helpful write-up.

 

Wildbrain posted a strong Q2, but my main concern is the leverage ratio.  While it's improving (they plan to bring it down to the mid-4x level by end of their Fiscal 2022), it's still quite high.  Do you see this as a concern?

 

(And agree we should start a separate thread on this!)

 

Their operating cash flow run-rate is ~$100m while interest paid on LT debt is a third of that.  Not too bad. The leverage covenant is at 6.75 so they are within that for now and with the leverage expected to fall to 4s it should be fine. Their term facility doesn't mature until end 2023. They also have a pretty large shareholder who might be a saviour potentially if things require it. They can always pare down some less interesting parts of the library to manage liquidity issues if any.

Posted

I like Wildbrain too, Old West's Q4 letter had a helpful write-up.

 

Wildbrain posted a strong Q2, but my main concern is the leverage ratio.  While it's improving (they plan to bring it down to the mid-4x level by end of their Fiscal 2022), it's still quite high.  Do you see this as a concern?

 

(And agree we should start a separate thread on this!)

 

I think management will execute. With the cheap money abound, I'm not overly concerned about the debt. 

Posted

Added a touch more ATTO.

 

A full position for me but I trade around the edges.

 

I can't see a specific reason for the sell off but it is up a lot this year and some fund might be looking to take profits.

 

They report next Wednesday night with the conference call on Thursday morning (Mar 4) at 10 am.

 

At the very least we should have analyst estimates increased post report as all of the analysts have been restricted because of a debt refinancing since they pre-reported better than expected revenues and EBITDA.

 

Consensus 2021 EBITDA is $186.5m and they reported an EBITDA range of $50-55m for Q4. That should lift consensus above $200m. At 5% cc revenue growth and 14% margins, 2021E EBITDA would be $217m. They pre-reported margins of 14-14.5% for Q420 so it doesn't seem like a big stretch to assume that for the full year. Each point of margin adds ~$15m to EBITDA.

 

At $22.50, the company is trading at 4.6x EV/EBITDA on current consensus 2021E EBITDA. If consensus jumps to $217, at 4.6x, the stock would trade at $30.50.

 

The beauty of leverage and only 16.3m shares outstanding on a fully diluted basis.

 

I am a valueHODLer here until the strategic sale of the company in 2022 or 2023. Peers trade 8-15x EBITDA. If a sale could be based on 2023E estimates, assuming the same sales growth and a lift of EBITDA margins to 14.5% or the half way point of guidance. We could have a selling price of $90+ based on the low end of the comp range at 8x.

 

Still a long way to go from here of course but I think it's important to understand the roadmap.

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