Charlie Bottle

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.

The $37B Roubini Forgot at Wells Fargo

You are preciselly wrong.

12 Reasons to Short Gold

Louis shows a shocking lack of awereness of reality. Yes 80% of gold demand comes in the form of jewellery, as is the case since time imemorial in India, Vietnam Turkey, etc. - but that does not make it a superfulous fashon item, it still is largelly due to Gold reserve of value properties.

Yes, European Government's may be forced to sell gold...because they are broke...what do you think their citizens will do - buy their government's bonds...or gold?

The recovery is just around the corner?

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.

Salesforce.com: Great Company, Exorbitant Valuation

Sunil,

The January growth in cashflow albeit low is almost irrelevant because the deceleration in growth is vertigineous and shows no signs of abating. Clearly there is some inertia in sales in that processes that had been ongoing for months possibly still got closed. Next quarter we will strart seeing the full impact of the post lehman freeze up. As layoffs continue and new sales calls do not get return soon enough cashflow growth will turn negative. Not that cashflow means anything is this company run by an egomaniac who will likelly burn the cash rather than return it to its shareowners. Why does anyone think that heads have starting rolling in the executive suite? Because all is dandy? If you think this is a great ime to buy or hold this company. Godspeed.

DISCLOSURE: SHORT CRM

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.

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.

Geithner's Proposed Bank 'Stress Test' Is A Really Bad Idea

The stress test was the only thing that caugh my attention in his speech. I think it's a kind of a Rorscach thest where every investor (and citizen) projects his fears and dreams.

In my case I thought of it as a triage mechanism for banks asking for TARP $, where Banks who passed it were given the $ and those who did not were put into receivership...I'm a dreamer.

U.S. States Should Hedge Their Oil

You are both right; time to go long on the spot market and stack up the inventories.

Colocation and the Financial Industry

Pure profit, thank you.

Colocation and the Financial Industry

I think DLR at 15X EBTIDA is priced to perfection (requiring very fast growth) and thereore bound to disappoint in this environement of dimishing expectations.

The offer is a commodity (real estate) seekign to capture fast shrinking corporate budgets, particullarly in the financial sector. With all sorts of real estate prices coming down why would anyone want to pay 2.6 times book value for a company who historically has delivered value destroying, sub 5%, returns on (book) equity?

This stock is only down 25% from the peak and is a great short in my view.

DISCLOSURE: Short DLR

Treasury Bonds: The Short of the Century

My timing on this article was clearly off as it is now patently obvious and as pointed out by several of the comments (fxtrader07, djzvue and others). clerly inflation is of the table for a while and while the US government creditworthiness look even worst know with all the bailouts and the recession looking much worst, there are really not much safe alternatives to treasuries right now. There will come the day to short them but it is probably many months/year(s) off.

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.