Industry Background of People on This Forum

[jschembs]

M&A/corp finance advisory for privately-held businesses.

[keerthiprasad]

Physician, specifically radiologist.

[Packer16]

Started out as an EE designing integrated circuits then joined the AF and worked on satellite communications requirements and survivability (nuclear effects) for a communications satellite.  Next worked as an independent cost contractor for the AF while attending MBA school.  Then worked at PwC as an business appraiser.  Then moved to Rochester, NY and now work as a business appraiser.

 

Packer

[TwoCitiesCapital]

I work in the Middle Office for a large hedge fund in the New York City area. Working on finishing up CFA exams and moving to role more associated with the actual investment decision making.

[investor-man]

15 years of software engineering. CTO of a small finance company.

[gary17]

Fire safety / risk engineering - Vancouver, Canada. Going to eight years now. And enjoying it. The daytime job and value investing keeps my mind working for the 18h I'm not sleeping.

[Guest valueInv]

Side note, this is always why tech threads suck the most on investing boards, because half the folks talking don't have any humility because they are literally already experts (or think they are) in the topic at hand.  When everything thinks they are right, a discussion board is more like a urinal.

 

Or people pretending to be experts in the topic at hand.

 

[jeffmori7]

Side note, this is always why tech threads suck the most on investing boards, because half the folks talking don't have any humility because they are literally already experts (or think they are) in the topic at hand.  When everything thinks they are right, a discussion board is more like a urinal.

 

Or people pretending to be experts in the topic at hand.

 

So valueInv, what is precisely your background?!

[Otsog]

.5 years public housing in a remote Arctic village

 

Now you have my interest piqued!  What sort of public housing is up in the Arctic?  Is this something where you own a property and the government subsidizes the rent for the inhabitant?  What types of challenges do you have up there?

 

Maybe to the Canadians the Arctic isn't anything special, for me at least I think of it as probably one of the most forbidding places on Earth.

 

Almost all of the Public Housing is owned by the government.  A few units are leased to the government from a private owner and then sub-leased to a public housing tenant.  Public Housing makes over 80% of the housing in the community I am in and I think that is similar across the entire territory (Nunavut). 

 

The biggest challenges are:

- Uneducated, unskilled and unmotivated labour

- Extremely high material costs (we get 1 ship a year, everything else has to be flown in, there are no roads)

- Unit wear and tear due to extreme weather conditions, uneducated tenants, extreme overcrowding

 

The Arctic is most certainly forbidding.  It is a bit surreal living here, it feels like you are on the edge of the world and if your not careful *poof* you're gone.  The sun was supposed to come back today for the first time in a month but it was cloudy for the 21 minutes it was up.  Hopefully I will see it tomorrow  :)

[Guest valueInv]

Side note, this is always why tech threads suck the most on investing boards, because half the folks talking don't have any humility because they are literally already experts (or think they are) in the topic at hand.  When everything thinks they are right, a discussion board is more like a urinal.

 

Or people pretending to be experts in the topic at hand.

 

So valueInv, what is precisely your background?!

 

Tech.

[yitech]

Computer engineering then financial engineering in MS.

Worked in risk management, derivative valuation and securitization for 6 years.

Now just investing my own smallish capital.

[nikhil25]

Started out in technology consulting (SAP).. Did that for ~2.5 years.. Went to business school for my MBA and now working in corporate strategy for a financial services major.

[Otsog]

Otsog and warrior... I have some accounting questions.

 

I'm shorting Avid, which is currently deliquent in its financial filings.  The company stated yesterday that it is likely that the stock will be delisted from NASDAQ (and move to OTC/Pink).  Here's what I don't understand about the accounting:

1- They fired their auditor (Ernst and Young) and are replacing them with Deloitte.  Will this impact the length of time that it takes for the audit to get done?  I assume yes.  So it seems to me that this move will delay Avid's ability to file audited financial statements.

2- Avid paid $4,069k in audit fees for YE2011.  Audit fees represent 1.6% of Avid's current $322M market cap.  Autodesk and Adobe paid similar audit fees, but their market caps are >34X Avid's.

 

I never audited companies this large so take this with a grain of salt. 

1. It will certainly be more work for a new firm, but it won't necessarily take more time.  Usually you can increase resources (staff) on an audit to get through it quicker.

2. It probably would be a similar picture, but I'd use something else to compare audit fees in an industry (% or revenue, net income or assets).  More work = more fees, more audit work could be from changes in the nature in the business, high M&A activity, restatements, overly complex corporate structuring or increased scrutiny required because of poor internal controls. 

 

Taking 1+2 together makes it really stink though.  I bet there was some major disagreement over accounting treatment between management and E&Y.  I don't think there is really any significant difference between any of the Big 4 firms.  If E&Y disagrees with you, so will PWC, D&T and KPMG.

[onyx1]

Fixed income MBS securitization and dervivative trading.  Fixed income credit, securitization/structuring and management.  25 years.

[fenris]

M&A first, now investment management at a family office.

[LC]

Real estate consulting, non profit finance, currently an MBA student.

[abitofvalue]

actuarial consulting ---> micro-economic (litigation) consulting --> MBA --> Investment Banking;  hopefully the next step will finally be an actual investing role.

[dpetrescu]

It's good to see other architects and engineers on here. For me, I like the creative aspect of investing that requires looking at something in a new way.

 

What is interesting about Autodesk is they became a monopoly for architectural and engineering drafting with Autocad in the 80s when a big shift occurred in the industry - the shift from laborious hand drafting to 2-d computer drafting. In the mid to late 2000's another big shift (nearly on the same scale) occurred with BIM, essentially a shift from 2d drafting to 3d modeling (and comprehensive information management). Autodesk purchased Revit in early 2000, developed it, and now, more than 3 decades later, still dominates and own about half the market share. The other half is shared between 4 other competing companies about equally. Autodesk is also one of the most expensive programs. Overall, Employees spends the vast majority of their time using this program. One file contains all the drawings and information required to describe and construct an entire building so the file is used for months to many years. There is a lot of time invested for an office to learn the program, develop project standards (templates), develop a library of standard details, a library of 3d elements, achieve an archive of past project files to reference, etc. I think once a program is dominant, it establishes very large barriers for competition, in a self-reinforcing loop. Our office adopted Revit during the recession and it took a few years to fully adopt it. Also, because files and resources are shared by the entire office, it isn't really feasible to gradually shift to a new product. It is all in or all out (with the exception of very large firms).

 

Either way, I'm not advocating buying ADSK, it is very expensive. I've been watching it for a while, waiting for a fall while it keeps soaring. (Sorry for the lengthy post)

 

 

Quote from: gokou3 on Today at 10:11:05 AM

Structural engineer -- thinking about margin of safety all day long! 

 

Me too.

 

Autodesk has a moat, but I expect it to shrink.  For example, Trimble has been making lots of acquisitions recently (Tekla, CSC, Sketchup) in an attempt to have a complete analysis, design, and documentation suite that can all talk with one another.  The Rhino / Grasshopper community is also developing interesting products.

 

[augustabound]

It's good to see other architects and engineers on here.

 

Former architecture student turned custom home builder. I left my last year of school to work for the guy I would eventually build homes with.

Now approaching 40 I'm looking to finish school but possibly on the engineering side.

I don't have the get up and go to contract much longer and I don't have the managerial/customer relation capacity to run a company (as small as it may be  ;D ).

 

So while my wife has a great job she loves, I'll take the opportunity to finish school.

 

I've been taking Autocad classes via distance education to brush up on my cad skills and colleges and universities only offer cad and revit, nothing else (that I've found anyway).

With one exception.  My former college instructor teaches Microstation and I think he may also be the developer for it.  I saw that on his Linkedin profile.  I kind of remember that from my college days and none of the students were even remotely interested in taking MS since we all knew cad was the standard.

 

As for why I invest my own money and have a passion for it, I think it's like someone mentioned above, figuring out a puzzle.  I like to know why something is undervalued and why other people don't (or do also).

I was originally turned on to it but the crappy mutual funds offered.  Even as a relative newbie to money I knew there was something wrong with the system.

[yadayada]

Used to play poker online mostly. If you think there will be another pokerboom in the US, your probably mistaken. I saw a topic on VIC on it.  Seems like the online poker market is heading for a cliff, because every country who regulates only limits their players to themselves. So not much traffic and games to go around. And there are so many part time pro's now who destroy all the profits by quickly killing all the fishes. And who dont play each other. game theory dictates that the more efficient everyone plays, the less they make off each other. If everyone would play optimal, only the site would win through rake. And rational players would quickly quit the game. Poker sites try to limit this by separating player pools. But that doesnt work very well. Too few fish to go around now, popularity of the game dwindling.

 

And if some company with a almost non existant profile in this market is claiming that they will make alot of money off that, they are lying or clueless. V difficult to get into without spending large amounts on marketing, and with no big pro's you barely make a dent. Most of the business goes to pokerstars with their big name pro's that attract fish.

 

[writser]

Haha, you sure sound like the typical bitter poker professional :P Used to dabble a bit in that as well. Don't take offense!

[rkbabang]

As far as this board having a lot of engineers on it, I think part of that might come from the population it's selected from: The Internet.

 

I'm not sure simply being an Internet forum explains the over abundance of engineers.  It might have 10 years ago, and certainly would have 21 years ago (when I first had Internet access). But Now?  Hell everyone I know from age 8 to 80 has internet access, this is everyone from any background and any profession.  Look at Facebook, most people are not engineers.  If non-engineers wanted to be here, they would be.

 

I think it could be that the type of person who is interested in investing would also be interested in a technical field (and vise versa).  In other words if you gather a group of self selected people together who like numbers, a lot of them will be engineers of one type or another.

 

[Kraven]

Career advice and advice on matters of the heart.

[rpadebet]

Chemical Engineer->Software Developer for large Tech firm (2+ years) -> MBA -> Index business @ large European IB in NYC (8+ years)

 

My day job does well for me if the market is efficient and my investment portfolio does well if it is inefficient. I think i will do well if I can just make up my mind one way or the other.

[giofranchi]

Career advice and advice on matters of the heart.

 

I hadn’t answered till now, because I think most of you already know what I do and what my background is. :)

Though, I really envy your day job (besides investing, of course!)... ;D ;D ;D

 

Gio