Bought BKS @ 13.56 per the BKS thread and also in view of the annual conference.

Got out of SKUL for ~6.28 a share today. 2p2 has now officially given back to me. That is all.

Maybe a bit early? Seems like this has more to go yet

CTL and RDNT

RDNT has been low because they have been using every dollar for acquisitions. IMHO, they seem to start wanting to actually retain some profit.

CTL fixed line telecom risky but can't help myself with the valuation.

If you are looking at them, look at FTR too.

Neither is my cup of tea.

Without anything having changed with the company in a visible way I'm just not comfortable with any higher valuation. If it wants to go into overpriced territory that's fine... it can go without me.

I'm not a technical analysis guy (although don't get me wrong I wouldn't mind adding it in... I just don't have it now). As a result when the price goes up to a point where I'd start to feel very uncomfortable holding it I'm dumping it 100% of the time.

Thoughts on clear media ltd? Its a hong kong traded company dealing in advertising. Now before you all quit reading here, they do seem to pay large amounts of cash back to shareholders in the form of dividends. No dilution of shares and the original founder is the CEO. Oh and shareholders legally have a right to the assets of the company. But the most important thing is that they actually return the nice amounts of cash they generate.

About the business, its the largest bus shelter advertising company in china. Which means they have a competative advantage over smaller companies because they can more easily reach more people for their clients. its trading like 12x earnings, and like 9x FCF. But i think FCF is higher because they are lagging payments on payables. They have been growing and tripled their revenue and earnings over the last 10 years. And they still seem to be growing nicely, and they seem to have pricing power (because of the large network they have, because their network of bus shelter grew from 15k to 37k).

There are a also a few ways their margins can increase by digitization etc, but you fkers can figure that out yourself. I already gave you the idea, and i dont get that much back from this site lately.

The question is, will their shareholder friendliness continue, and what are the hidden risks involved with investing in hong kong stocks? Because it clearly seems with the prospects and limited downsize risk they have, their PE multiple is too low and should be like 15-16.

What do you guys think of DB (Deutsche Bank) and CS (Credit Suisse). Both strike me as tremendously undervalued, and ripe for any sort of European ressurgence.

DB's PE is in the 7's.

p/e ratio is highly movable depending on their credit loss provisions.

its hard to evaluate these huge financials, how can you tell whats on their books?

Yeah you are not qualified to value banks. I know you are not qualified to value banks because like 8 people on planet earth are qualified to value banks. The reality is that if you read any random 10k from any non financial company... and then you read the same document from a major financial institution you will have no difficulty guessing who got to write the disclosure laws... and who has the best and most creative attorneys.

Banks have absolutely mammoth balance sheets. These mammoth balance sheets are basically holes from which light cannot escape. Without knowing what is going on in those black holes it's impossible to value anything.

EDIT: TLDR: /quote ahnuld +1

Serious question: Does the CEO/CFOs from banks even know how to value banks?

They have a better idea about how their assets are going to perform then regular investors and even professional investors. The problem is large banks have a lot of macroeconomic risk (which is very hard to assess) to their assets because their dealing with households. At the present time households are leveraged to the hilt, even 5 years after the crisis' peak and unemployment is stubbornly high and incomes are stagnant (which bodes poorly on loan servicing and repayment).

That makes sense. Thanks.

I'm invested in DB for quite a part of my money. I would go along with saying that there are only very few people who can really evaluate the big financials but then you'd better ignore every single one of them in your investments. But I'd also say that in the long run DB shares definitily have upside potential.
First of all after, the financial crisis and the fall of Commerzbank to a kind of minor international bank the DB is kind of the only german bank with great international influence and it's quite important to german politics (for example there was quite a bit of discussion before non-German-speaking Anshu Jain was made CEO last year). So for me there's little risk of bankruptcy here.
One might also take in consideration that they were one of the very few big institutes who didn't need financial help from the state during the crisis but used the time to acquire both german banks "Postbank" and "Sal. Oppenheim".
I think a few of the main reasons for their present valuation ist their low dividend yield compared to other financial institutes or their own past dividends as well as a big amount of legal trouble they are in right now.
As for the dividend, they had kept it low to increase their Tier 1 capital quota to meet new Basel requirements and as they had to reserve money for legal settlements. The LIBOR case for example. They might even end up paying about 1.3B€ to heirs of former german TV-tycoon Leo Kirch if they are ruled responsible for the bankruptcy of Premiere TV-Station which was more than 10 years ago. There are quite a few more, but just to give an idea.

I'd also say they seem undervalued, as in a few years they will have sorted out most of the legal stuff and might increase dividend again. Most of analyses I've read go along with that, but as Ahnuld said there's really not that many people who can really value those banks. But it would seem like a good investment to me if I weren't already invested that strongly.

Not really. This is tongue and cheek because I have no idea. The bottom line is that anyone looking to be a 'value investor' should be far away from banks. Interestingly I've had a **** ton of exposure to Wells Fargo through a combination of owning large amounts of DJCO and large amounts of BRK over the last 2 years. Warren Buffett is definitely one of those 8 people. As a result if he thinks a bank is kosher and has put his money where his mouth is I'm generally willing to back him. (Warren is also an absolutely godlike money manager ldo... other people flee to safety by buying treasuries... I buy BRK)

ACW has really pulled back over the last few days. I haven't seen any news but at $4.50 this is significantly below where Coliseum, Cletus, Littlejohn had been buying shares as recently as two weeks ago. Seems like a great price to jump in along for the ride based on your rationale.

Just to back it up with some numbers, litigation reserves already amount to €3bn, with the Kirch case for example being still kind of unbiased as to the result and worth up to 1.3bn.
Furthermore the acquisitions of Sal. Oppenheim and Postbank made the number of employers jump from about 77k in '09 to 102k in 2010, with declining numbers over the last few years as synergies are being utilized. I think those two really diversified the company, as they were looking to get more independent from the results of the investment department of the bank. Particularly with the Postbank being the biggest retail bank in germany with about 14.5mil customers. Add to that the new CEO-Duo of Fitschen and Jain taking over in 2012 and I think it's fair to say that the company is in a phase of reorganization, which I think will likely give them an edge over many other financial institutes.

For me DB is really a long term investment, I don't believe in huge gains until the whole eurozone crisis is somehow fixed, but if they are still around after, I think they will be in good shape compared to others.

Yeah, I am accumulating more ACW.
I wanted to get more MSN, but there's someone out there who is buying every dip with 30-50k blocks and sending it over $2.

I really like the ACW play. Thanks for the thoughts on the hedge activity.

anyone here betting on shipping stocks? Seems like a succesfull shipowner buys his ships low and then sells them when the market is booming. There are quite a few cheap shipping stocks, but alot of them dillute themselves to hell to buy cheap ships.

But some of them have large inside ownership that is also dilluted. So even if you lose like 40% in some of those cases, once the market picks up to like 50% of 2007 levels, you will make a killing with those stocks. When the ships turn into cash cows.
Some of them seem to have pretty strong balanced sheets, and even when dilluted trade barely above asset value (at current all time low prices).

@mori****a: arent you worried that money at msn will be funneled away by that chinese guy? Or some of those lawsuits will eat it up. Or it will take forever to give it back to shareholders. got this from VIC:

kind of scared me off Especially since there are better opportunities out there. Also the time horizon seems kind of unclear to me here.

I've had my face burned off by shipping stocks. I fully expect them to pay off some day, but some day could be a long time coming. They were a value trap when I was first starting this whole value investing thing and I fell into that hole face first. I still monitor the shipping situation trying to pick a good entry timing wise though.

I know that normally timing is something value guys try to not worry about... but basically every shipping company is grinding slowly towards bankruptcy right now. Buying into that process is a bad idea without some idea of when you expect it to end. Right now I have no idea when the shipping sector will recover, but as soon as I have an even the slightest hint I'll probably be long. (The baltic dry index starting to rally will be a huge sign)

It seems like capesize rates shot up in september

http://www.dryships.com/pages/report.asp

What are your thoughts on star bulk carriers? Guy owning it has a rock solid track record (buying low and selling high over the last 20 years), and shareholders and management seem pretty aligned. Their balance sheet is also pretty strong, and they can survive for the next few years. And generally banks are not exactly in a rush to call a covenant breach with shipping companies, compared to other companies. Untill leverage really spins out of control. And ofcourse half their fleet are capesize ships.

Note that they sold like 25m more shares, partially in rights offerings and some dillution as well, so google finance is out of date on this one.

Also Oaktree is pretty heavily invested in this one, and they seem to be pretty solid.

I don't hate them. It seems like them and Diana are the some of the stronger choices (because they aren't probably going to actually go bankrupt) . Ironically the higher leverage weaker choices have a lot more upside when the turnaround in prices actually comes.... because when something is worth 0 and becomes worth 1 it has just shown infinite growth.

You can get the best of both worlds with SEA.* Basically, pay the expense fee to save yourself from trying to guess who in the industry will win.

On value plays, they can always get cheaper. Sometimes it is better to wait for something to show some positive momentum before you get in.

*Or possibly lose your shirt just the same.

When I decide to make a move it will be after we start to see positive momentum backed by fundamental reasons for change. There is virtually no chance the market absorbs the new information quickly enough to stop me from making a nice return. (in other words I 100% agree)

A chunk of my personal edge comes from picking my spots on a more micro level so I won't be taking SEA* but I would recommend it to anyone who didn't already burn 100+ hours reading shipping financials *facepalm*.