Your highest conviction idea for 2014 + why

[OracleofCarolina]

Check out their amazing website: http://www.jwmays.com/

 

From today's NYT

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/02/21/nyregion/juniors-brooklyn-site-will-be-sold-to-developer-but-restaurant-will-return.html?smid=tw-share&_r=1&referrer=

 

“Land values in that part of Brooklyn have skyrocketed, and they are sitting on a tremendous” — as in, tremendously valuable — “piece of property,” Mr. Knakal said, predicting it would sell at a record price for Brooklyn. “We view it as the best development site in Downtown Brooklyn.” He has already received substantial interest, he said.

[tengen]

Check out their amazing website: http://www.jwmays.com/

 

Outstanding! No need to throw away money on a flashy website.

 

At least their website looks better than this one for a multinational corporation:

http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/

 

I realize everyone has different tastes but for me jwmays.com is a total failure on several fronts including colours and use of white space. In the case of the Berkshire Hathaway site, the near total absence of any attempt to style the page results in a safe if dull design. The former strikes me as incompetent, the latter as parsimonious.

[yadayada]

isnt it really cheap nowadays to have a half decent website? I never really get that cheap skating on things like this. its a bit like saying, screw it im gonna wear my pyama's to work from now on! saves money!

[ItsAValueTrap]

It's like spending the money on a vanity license plate that says THRIFTY.  ;)

[BG2008]

You guys are cracking me up with your comments about the webpage.  Juniors is literally a stone throw away from J.W. May's building.  I wonder what the $/ buildable SQFT came out to be

[Myth465]

You guys are cracking me up with your comments about the webpage.  Juniors is literally a stone throw away from J.W. May's building.  I wonder what the $/ buildable SQFT came out to be

 

What's managements plan to realize value?

[prunes]

My highest conviction idea is an under followed biotech that trades OTC. Ticker is PVCT. I could talk forever about this company and have been following it for quite a long time. I believe that 2014 is going to be a huge year for the company. Quick summary about the company: they have two development-stage drugs. Both are derived from rose bengal, a compound used, among other things, for staining the eye and liver. RB has been used for many decades and is recognized as safe by the medical profession. PV-10 is a purified version of RB. Their other drug, PH-10 is a diluted version of PV-10 suspended in a cream.

 

PV-10 is being tested to treat cancer. The trial data has been promising and there is good reason to think that the drug will ultimately be able to be used on nearly any kind of cancer. The drug is an intralesional--i.e. you inject it--and doing so destroys the tumor you inject the drug into. However, what people are very excited about is that the drug appears also to elicit a immunological response whereby non-injected tumors shrink/ablate as well. Right now the main indication being sought from the FDA is for recurrent melanoma, but there is good reason to think that the drug will be able to be used on nearly any kind of cancer with good results. Additionally, there is good reason to think that PV-10 could be used safely with other immunological drugs like ipilimumab or PD-1 inhibitors due to PV-10's unrelated mechanism of action.

 

Clearly not a Graham or Buffett play. However, I believe the company is significantly undervalued. I wouldn't put all of my cash into it as it is obviously risky, but I believe it to be a very asymmetric play with a good likelihood of playing out favorably.

[beerbaron]

My highest conviction idea is an under followed biotech that trades OTC. Ticker is PVCT. I could talk forever about this company and have been following it for quite a long time. I believe that 2014 is going to be a huge year for the company. Quick summary about the company: they have two development-stage drugs. Both are derived from rose bengal, a compound used, among other things, for staining the eye and liver. RB has been used for many decades and is recognized as safe by the medical profession. PV-10 is a purified version of RB. Their other drug, PH-10 is a diluted version of PV-10 suspended in a cream.

 

PV-10 is being tested to treat cancer. The trial data has been promising and there is good reason to think that the drug will ultimately be able to be used on nearly any kind of cancer. The drug is an intralesional--i.e. you inject it--and doing so destroys the tumor you inject the drug into. However, what people are very excited about is that the drug appears also to elicit a immunological response whereby non-injected tumors shrink/ablate as well. Right now the main indication being sought from the FDA is for recurrent melanoma, but there is good reason to think that the drug will be able to be used on nearly any kind of cancer with good results. Additionally, there is good reason to think that PV-10 could be used safely with other immunological drugs like ipilimumab or PD-1 inhibitors due to PV-10's unrelated mechanism of action.

 

Clearly not a Graham or Buffett play. However, I believe the company is significantly undervalued. I wouldn't put all of my cash into it as it is obviously risky, but I believe it to be a very asymmetric play with a good likelihood of playing out favorably.

 

A drug that can reduce all cancers as well as increase the body' ability to fight other ones. Seems too good to be true.

 

BeerBaron

[prunes]

To be clear, "all cancers" is not a claim that the company nor I are making.

 

If you have some time and want a good read, check out http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0068561

 

This is an independently run study of the drug's mechanism of action at the Moffitt Cancer Center. Note that particular study was done on mice. A human study at Moffett is currently underway and the results should be out in the next few months hopefully.

 

Edit: One other article that might be worth reading. This one is by the head of MD Anderson's melanoma unit https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0D003V6RyQqMDBfRTBoWHpsWm0tRHEwbHJTTXhTWmJJRUYw/edit?usp=sharing

[ItsAValueTrap]

Adam Feuerstein writes a lot of interesting things about pharma stocks.  Here's his piece on PVCT:

http://www.thestreet.com/story/12261242/1/the-obsolescence-of-provectus-skin-cancer-drug-means-current-speculative-run-ends-badly.html

 

*Disclosure:  I am short PVCT.  I shorted PVCT before I read Adam Feuerstein's piece and didn't do that much research on it.  I figured I would short it because Alpha Capital Anstalt was involved and because the company spent more money on G&A than R&D.

[prunes]

Would love to trade notes offline if you're interested, IaVT.

[OracleofCarolina]

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303880604579401550894502122?mod=ITP_newyork_1

 

seeing more and more stories on downtown Brooklyn, from todays WSJ(brief quote below)

 

"The median sales price for downtown Brooklyn condos has increased from $406,900 in 2009 to $585,000 in 2013, according to StreetEasy. Median asking rent also rose from $2,500 to $2,972 during the same time.

 

Retail in the area also has boomed lately. New tenants include national retailers and restaurants such as H&M and Aéropostale, Sephora, American Eagle, American Apparel and Hill Country Barbecue. Hotels such as Hotel Indigo have also come to the area. Macy's is looking at options to upgrade its downtown Brooklyn location"

[BG2008]

Spike Lee's 7 minute rant about gentrification in Brooklyn - The audio file is down below

 

http://www.uproxx.com/up/2014/02/spike-lee-went-seven-minute-rant-motherfcking-hipsters-brooklyn-last-night/

 

 

[no_thanks]

Another article about Downtown Brooklyn Real Estate.  Sure do hope Mark Greenblatt is planning on capitalizing on this.

 

 

http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20140226/FINANCE/140229900/jpmorgan-moves-2k-employees-to-brooklyn

[BG2008]

To be honest, at today's price, Mark Greenblatt just need to "not f*** up" for this thesis to work out really well for shareholders.  It's an one foot hurdle at these prices. 

[OracleofCarolina]

Macy's Envisions Brooklyn Upgrade http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304610404579405642184285118.html

[yadayada]

untill they sell it or actuallly get bigger leases this stock is a valuetrap tho. And it seems that you have to wait up to 7-8 years for some of those contracts to come down. I guess the significant upside makes up or it. Because in 2013 they barely generated any cash.

[BG2008]

I've thought a lot about what makes a value trap.  I think a value trap is an investment where you think you're paying 50 cents for a dollar.  But that dollar is a melting ice cube and becomes 25 cents over time.  I don't think anyone will argue that the fundamentals are indeed getting better over time.  So, you pay 50 cents for a dollar and that dollar becomes $2 in 7 years.  If there is a catalyst, i.e. dividend initiation, take over, debt recapitalization (just take out a mortgage and dividend out to shareholders), in the near term, that's great.  If you have to wait, you quadruple your money in seven years. 

 

Should probably move the discussion to the J.W. Mays thread since someone recently created one. 

 

 

[tiddman]

One of my highest conviction ideas of 2014 is Brookfield Asset Management (BAM), a company I don't see mentioned here very often despite the concentration of Canucks.

 

BAM the stock was a laggard in 2013, up around 11% before dividends, but the business is doing quite well.  I think the recovering economies in various regions around the world will benefit them, and in 2013 they finished restructuring the octopus so that they now have several pure-play publicly traded subsidiaries with BAM sitting top them collecting management fees.

 

2013 results were fantastic, but just like Berkshire and other investment companies, you need to treat one-time gains differently than recurring results.  I think they are best valued on a cash flow basis rather than net income.

 

This is high conviction for me because if the financial crisis wasn't a test of a leveraged asset owner then I don't know what is, and they went through the entire crisis unscathed.  I think the underlying business provides a solid but unspectacular ROE (something like 12-13%) and they have opportunities to exceed this through deal making and other maneuvers.  The focus on real assets should be beneficial in an environment with inflation, increasing energy prices, or both, and I suspect we are going to see both of these over the next 5+ years.

[DCG]

Don't have any high conviction ideas at the moment, but just purchased Chevron and Kinder Morgan. Focusing on high-yielders in this market.

[DTEJD1997]

Hey all:

 

My highest conviction idea is an industry...mining, specifically copper, silver, gold...

 

I am slowly assembling a portfolio of small miners.  They are typically selling at a discount to book, LOW single digit cash flow, EXCELLENT financials, good prospects.  A good percentage of them are selling for low single digit P/E.  A gaggle of them are paying good dividends.

 

If the following things can happen/hold, these stocks are going to move significantly higher...

 

A). Price of gold, silver, copper does not go down significantly.  Pricing appears to be firming up in 2014 so far.  We'll see if it holds.

 

B). Some of the companies are in dicey jurisdictions.  None of them are having significant problems AT THIS POINT....the situation in S. America & Africa can change quickly though...

 

C). There are no operational problems at the mines.  All of the companies I'm buying are executing according to plan, OR very close to it.

 

So far, I've got a huge gain in NevSun (NSU).  I've got smaller gains in Mandalay Resources (MND.to) and Caledonia Mining (CALVF).  I've got other positions that are small gains/small losses.

 

I find the field FULL OF BARGAINS.  I can't think of anything else that comes close at the moment.