Charlie Bottle

U-Haul Skidding Out of Control?

Dalamar,

Thank you very much for your input and welcome to the seeking alpha community.

It’s great to have these entirely independent and uninterested comments from clients and.or small shareholders of the companies covered, it’s what makes Seeking alpha such a force.

I look very much forward to following any more of your insightful comments on any other of the companies on seeking alpha.

South Africa Still Shines Among Emerging Markets

Large current account deficits. Low on forex reserves. Currency is very risky. Miners which have US$ based prices are a good bet but companies focusing on the domestic market are not.

What Created Market Misunderstandings About Lamar Advertising?

OK, let cash be king (I do belive that your investment in billbords does depretiate over time, but ok). The compnay just raised debt at 12.5% cost. What would you say their WACC is? Beta is pretty high so their cost fo equity should be 15% at least. Let's say WACC is 11.5%. The free cashflow for the last quarter was about $70 million, let's assume that is sustainable moving forward (i.e. annual FCF of $280 million), and further assume that they can grow prices by 2% in line with inflation. The entreprise value would be $2.4 billion...the Company has about 3.0 billion of debt and preferred shares so the common shares are not worth the paper they are written on.



On Apr 03 04:14 PM billboard guy wrote:

> have you ever thought practically about the fact that billboards
> don't wear out? you can have a negative tangible book value on the
> balance sheet and still have a very valuable billboard company. in
> fact most of the private companies in the industry have had upside
> down balance sheets for ages. accounting and economic value do diverge
> when economic depreciation is different than accounting depreciation.

What Created Market Misunderstandings About Lamar Advertising?

I meant negative net tangible equity.

What Created Market Misunderstandings About Lamar Advertising?

Thank you for the article. Investors have hammered this stock and will continue to do so because the company has historically produced returns on equity of 2-3% on average, thefore it is a value distroying company. It has net tangible assets. The company is worth less that the debt on it. That is why investors are concerned not because of the methodology of calculation of the covenant.

U-Haul Skidding Out of Control?

Mac, yes there is some temporary business coming from a spike in forclosures. This mitigates the impact of lower purchases of houses but it is a lower number (I would guess perhaps 1-2 million forecloures while home sales are down 3-4 million form the peak). People are downsizing? Yes - they are getting rid of all the crap by selling it on ebay or simply junking it, the last think they need is a recurring expense in storage.


On Apr 03 01:58 AM mac.barron wrote:

> I don't dispute the author's disection of the financial state of
> the company, clearly there are a couple of red flags in that mess.
> I do have a different take on the business environment. Yes, housing
> is down, but that means a lot of people are moving from houses to
> rental property and also that a lot of people are downsizing andusing
> cheaper storage space. My guess is that the worse the economy gets
> the better this kind of company will do. As for # zagrebzagreb 's
> question about why the competition hasn't run U-Haul off the road?
> Easy: Because all of those companies (Budget, Pensky, Ryder, etc.)
> suck too.

Salesforce.com: Another Chance to Short

I agree but think that DLR and SBAC offer even better shorting opportunties.

CPI Report: Reflation, Part II

Thank you for the toughtful article. I believe that even trickier than raising the interest rates will be to dry up some of the high powered money supply injected into the market when the fed doubled its balance sheet in the last few months even before the latest announcement of another 1.2 trillion dollars of liquidity. With this latest injection we are liklly looking at a tripling of the size of the feds balance sheet. Reducing the hgh powered money mass would require open market operations on a scale never before done, so mistakes are likelly.

In any cae the 1.2 T injection makes me think that the fed does not think that the deflationary threat is at bayjust yet.

Is the Dollar Rally Over Now?

Completely off the mark and asleep at the wheel.

The dollar should appreatiate vis-a-vis the Euro and swiss francs in the 6-9 months ahead as eastern european corporates and then households default massivelly and bring down western european (including swiss banks) and sovereigns (more sepcifically the PIIGS) with them.

You should pay attention to what Marc Faber (a swiss national himslef) thinks about the soundness of swiss monetary policies.

Salesforce.com Turns 10, Where Do They Go from Here?

"the next ten years"?...

"And while Salesforce.com isn’t at the point where the growth figures will slow too much, the trip to $5 billion in revenue will require different techniques."?...

Is this some kind of a joke?

All indications are that the company's operating cashflow has stagnated or is already declining. Looking at deferred revenues, Revenue growth should tapper of in late 2009. The comppany will have no choice but beg to be bought by Oracle by 2010 the latest.

Capitally Challenged Stocks That Could Be Diluted or Extinguished

Good artcile. SBC Communications is a powder kegg, it has been around for 10 years and is yet to produce a profit. Very risky stock and extremly overvalued (earnings would need to grow at vey fast rates to justify current valuation that has not really happened in the past and will not happen now for sure - any growth is capital intensive and capital is much more expensive). Substancial debt coming due in 2010 will require a lot of dillutive capital to get the capital structure back to any level of reasonableness. Take a look at my article.

seekingalpha.com/artic...

Time to Be Bullish on Gold and Precious Metals

The government strated printing money in earnest in September, if anything recently stopped increasing its balance sheet (perhaps only tmeporarilly). Inflation remains ver very low, bordering deflation. What is new to prompt this article with ZERO insight?

Will Italy Be the First to Pull Out of the Euro?

Dany, congratulations. Do you know how much sovereign debt Italy has?....About 2.5 trillion US$. That's 30X those goldreserves you mention. This s the "on balance" sheet liabilities. Euro governments have been creative in moving liabiltes "off balance sheet" so this is just a fraction of total libilities. Italy is broke and will likelly have to restructure debt...My guess in less than 3 years.

Where Are Jim Rogers, Marc Faber and Doug Casey Investing Their Money in This Market?

Simoes,

This is a brilliant article - lots of value add here. Jim Rodgers and Faber don't express their views broadly or clearly enough, so it's great to have your brilliant sinthesys interpertation.

Thank you.

The $37B Roubini Forgot at Wells Fargo

You are preciselly wrong.