Tag Archives: Kopernik

Time; A Deep Value Investor’s Perspective

Karl Pillemer of Cornell University interviewed 1200 people age 70 to 100+ for his book, 30 Lessons for Living,

asking them:
“If you look back over the course of your life, what are the most important lessons you learned that you would like to share with younger people?”

What was the #1 answer?

“Life is short.”

Seneca, in a beautifully worded passage, strongly disagrees:
“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it… Life is long if you know how to use it.”

No offense to Karl. He did a survey. So he didn’t necessarily get the right answer, he got the most common answer.
I’m with Seneca.

Life doesn’t have to be short.

We all have 24hrs in a day. Every single one of us.
You can use them to create something amazing, to visit that someone special who misses you desperately, to provide for your family, or to savor a great moment.

But don’t waste your hours.

Don’t end up wondering, “What have I been doing with my time?”
Leave a trail of accomplishments or smiles behind you.

– Andrew

A Deep Value Investor’s Perspective: Kopernik vs, SPY and then FANGs

Kopernik Quarterly Call Presentation – Q22018 – Final

Acq. Multiple, Yog Berra and Financial Satire, and Hedge Fund Quiz

While at all times Wall Street analysts try to justify the valuations, here is a fun quote (via Bloomberg) from 2002 looking back from Scott McNeely, the CEO of Sun Microsystems, one of the darlings of the 2000 tech bubble:

“At 10 times revenues, to give you a 10-year payback, I have to pay you 100% of revenues for 10 straight years in dividends. That assumes I can get that by my shareholders. That assumes I have zero cost of goods sold, which is very hard for a computer company. That assumes zero expenses, which is really hard with 39,000 employees. That assumes I pay no taxes, which is very hard. And that assumes you pay no taxes on your dividends, which is kind of illegal. And that assumes with zero R&D for the next 10 years, I can maintain the current revenue run rate. Now having done that, would any of you like to buy my stock at $64? Do you realize how ridiculous those basic assumptions are? You don’t need any transparency. You don’t need any footnotes.

What were you thinking?”

An educational, savagely satirical view of our current market conditions and lessons on valuation.   I read about 40 investment letters a quarter and this is about the best I have read in five years. Hilarious! Mark McKinney – Its Like Deja Vu All Over Again – Final and his prior letter: I Dont Get It – Mark McKinney – Final 8292017 New

An excellent interview by Tobias Carlisle.   CHEAPNESS not quality wins!  Yes, I was somewhat shocked.   Why?

http://www.valuewalk.com/2018/01/tobias-carlisle-talks-acquirers-multiple-valuetalks/

ACKMAN INTERVIEW

Ackman’s embattled Pershing Square hedge fund laid off 18 percent of its staff on Friday — a total of 10 pink slips that brought head count down to 46.

Investors have suffered in Pershing Square (PSHZF) vs. S&P 500:

He wants to hire an analyst who can THINK INDEPENDENTLY.  You walk into his office and he asks you, “Can you think independently as an analyst?”

How do you reply.   Be careful…………think for awhile before you reply.  What proof can you give?

If you are struggling to answer, then  https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/23/conversion-via-twitter-westboro-baptist-church-megan-phelps-roper

will provide clues.


What determines the price of gold:

How the price of gold is determined Monetary Metals 2018

The World is Cyclical; Valuation in a World of Zero Interest Rates


Cyclical Markets

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The NASDAQ bubble showed the highest P/E ratios in stock market history due to low or no earnings technology companies.

Kopernik 1Q 2017 – Conference Call – Final  Worth a read–note high and low market cap sectors of the market (see page 9)–a proxy for expensive and cheap.  A search strategy.

Time in a Bottle – Final A good discussion of valuation methods in an era of distorted interest rates.

Join https://microcapclub.com/

http://tsi-blog.com/2017/04/are-rising-nominal-interest-rates-bullish-or-bearish-for-gold/  A discussion of how to understand interest rates and gold.  Note the analysis using data going back 90 years.   Do not use a small smaple size.

Also, see ETF Weapons of mass destruction FPA 1Q2017 Commentary

https://youtu.be/bZfPJCAVQg0   Recent Greenblatt talk at Google.


A Deep Value Investor in Cyclical Companies

staffimg_IbenDavid Iben is a deep value investor currently focused on highly cyclical industries like coal, uranium, and gold mining.  He has a mandate to go anywhere to invest in big or small companies. He seeks out value.   The world is now bifurcated between a highly valued U.S. stock market and the cheaper emerging markets.  Social media and Biotech stocks trade at rich valuations while depressed cyclical resource companies languish.

VALUATION

Value to us is a pre-requisite and thus we never pay more than a company’s estimated risk-adjusted intrinsic value. But, failing to think deeply and independently about what constitutes value and how best to derive it, can be harmful. Following in the footsteps of growth investors who had allowed themselves to become too formulaic or put in a box in the late 90s, some value investors were hurt by overly restrictive definitions of value in 2007 and 2008 (Price/Book and Price/Earnings, etc). We find it valuable to use many valuation metrics. Additionally, emphasis is placed on those metrics that are most appropriate to a certain industry. For example, asset heavy and/or cyclical companies often are tough to appraise using Price/Earnings or Price-to-Cash Flow. Price to book value, liquidation value, replacement value, land value, etc. usually prove helpful. These metrics often are not helpful for asset light companies, where Discounted Cash Flow scenario analysis is more useful. Applying these metrics across industries, countries, and regions helps illuminate mispricing. Looking at different industries through different lenses, through focused lenses, using industry appropriate metrics and qualitative factors is important. Barriers to entry are an important factor. Potential winners possess different key attributes. Supply and demand are extremely important detriments of margin sustainability. The investor herd has a strong tendency to use trend line analysis, assuming that past growth will lead to future growth. A more reasoned, independent assessment will often foretell margin collapses as industries overdo it, thereby sowing the seeds of their own self-destruction.

Currently, opportunities are being created when the establishment pays too little heed to supply growth. This fallacy extends to money. Many seem to believe that the Federal Reserve has succeeded in quintupling the supply of dollars without a loss of intrinsic value. That is impossible. Evidence of the loss of value is abundantly clear. Gold supply held by the U. S. Treasury has not increased. As economic theory would predict, the price of gold went up. Following 12 straight years of advance and apparently overshooting, the price has since corrected 40%. The trend followers have their rulers out again, confusing a correction in a supply/demand induced uptrend with a new counter-trend.

We view this as opportunity. At the same time, bonds are priced as if they were scarce rather than too abundant to be managed. It is no secret that this is due to open, market manipulation by the central banks. Intrinsic value must eventually be reflected in market prices. These are abnormally challenging times. Fortunately, we believe markets aren’t fully efficient.

If you listen to his conference calls and read his insights, you will have a great education in counter-cyclical investing. It is easy to know what to do but hard to do!

The Twilight Zone – Jan 2015

Value Investor Insight_3.31.14 Kopernik (Interview)

July 2014 The Contrarian Iben of Kopernik (Interview)

Kopernik Annual Report 10 31 14 – Web Ready

Kopernik Semi-Annual Report _4.30.2014_FINAL

When Doves Cry_Final

The Wizard of Oz Dec 2013

THE SADDLE RIDGE HOARD

2014 – 4th Q Call with DI – Transcript FINAL

A tutorial of Deep Value Investing in Highly Cyclical Assets/Companies

The trials, tribulations, and need for consistent approach.

http://kopernikglobal.com/content/news-and-views-iben-insights

http://kopernikglobal.com/content/news-and-views-news

I will be asking for your suggestions for the deep value course. I am collating one reader’s suggestions which I will post next.  Some of you may be quite experienced and advanced investors who tire of the theoretical course materials as well as the mechanical aspect of quantitative investing. We will discuss this next………….Thanks for your patience.