iBankCoin
Joined Oct 26, 2011
37 Blog Posts

$TDG — “LISTEN TO ME VERY QUIETLY” => CEO OF TRANSDIGM NICK HOWLEY

This man is an impudent little dervish, Nicholas Howley. Or at least that is how he presents himself whilst responding to Noah Poponak of Goldman Ball Sachs on the 3Q15 call. Giddy at the top, I say. Puahahahahahha! Kekekekekekekeke! You’re asking me what ol’ Noah? Don’t you know? Two plus two equals fish!

Lordy lord. This here is a shit-show waiting to happen. Instead of combing through the mundane filings, which for this here company are 99% the same exact filing as the last filing (they haven’t even updated acquisitions in the latest K), just take a listen to some excerpts from the calls.

The glut in 777s is coming down the pipe.

Do you really think the Delta CEO doesn’t know how to bargain shop?

Of course Boeing denies the claim.

“We continue to see a very healthy overall marketplace both for narrow bodies and wide bodies,” CEO Dennis Muilenburg told reporters on Oct. 21. “Traffic growth is sustained. Replacement demand is sustained.”

Don’t worry, only 11% of revenues are exposed to Boeing per Transdigm.

Per the 10K –

Our business is directly affected by, among other factors, changes in revenue passenger miles (RPMs), the size and age of the worldwide aircraft fleet and, to a lesser extent, changes in the profitability of the commercial airline industry. RPMs and airline profitability have historically been correlated with the general economic environment, although national and international events also play a key role.

I don’t know what final RPMs will look like for 2015.

Follow them here:

DATA RELEASES

AGGREGATE RPM DATA

Until the hairline fractures develop, enjoy clips from 3q15 and 4q15 Transdigm calls:

Oh, lastly — Nick “Perma-Grin” Howley is dumping stock. Just do a little search on insidercow.com for updated stats.

SELL NICK SELL

The cycle is long in the tooth. Indeed.

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$TAP $STZ NO ONE WANTS SHITTY FUCKING BEER ANYMORE . . .

. . . they just want less shitty beer, and the perception that they are swilling “premium” product. Because let me tell you something, Blue Motherfucking Moon is god damned disgusting beer, yet it attracts “connoisseurs” of all shapes, colors and sizes. Crispin is also a vile substance, but seems to entrance dilettantes far and wide. And for fucks sake don’t get me started on Leffe. I’d rather drink my own piss. For that shit is unequivocally putrid whilst passed off as “premium”. The knaves heading these “brewers” should be taken out to the woodshed. Speaking of which, who gives a fuck if SAB MILLER and AB INBEV merge. Let’s be real. The argument that these mega-mergers are throttling competition is inane (not really). In fact, let them all merge. Let there be a monopoly in purveying “premium piss” — may you enjoy your “premium piss” out of a german dirnking horn!

Tenth and Blake. Chirst almighty. This is the “premium” shit from our friends at Molson Coors. That is, less shitty than shit but still shit.

Tenth and Blake Beer Company (“Tenth and Blake”), MillerCoors’ also sells Batch 19, Blue Moon brands, Coors Banquet, Coors Non-Alcoholic, Grolsch, Hamm’s, Henry Weinhard’s brands, Icehouse, Keystone, Leinenkugel’s brands, Mickey’s, Miller Fortune, Miller Genuine Draft, Miller High Life, Milwaukee’s Best, Olde English 800, Peroni Nastro Azzurro, Pilsner Urquell, Sharp’s non-alcoholic, Smith & Forge, St. Stefanus, Steel Reserve, Third Shift, Worthington’s and hard cider brands from the Crispin Cider Company.

Just a quick perusal of Molson Coors’s 10K will left me throuroughly disgusted with the state of the state. Reflect upon the following – Molson Coors: 1) distributes Sol, Dos Equis, Sol, Tecate, Amstel Light, Heineken, Murphy’s, Newcastle Brown Ale and Strongbow (all Heineken) and MGD (SAB Miller) in Canada; 2) contracts Asahi and Asahi Super Dry in the US; 3) brews, packages and ships PBR through 2020; 4) brews, packages and ship Labatt’s.

My point here is: these motherfuckers are in bed with each other in every corner of this here bogus blue dot called earth. Peddling urine of every shade, sometimes, fermented with apples (hot trend). If you reside in a country outside of the US, then you will gladly pay a 20% premium over shitty beer, for the perceived pleasure of drinking less shitty beer. Go fucking figure – this “pricing power” gets management all hot and sweaty. And don’t forget Afrique! The Frontierland for Pringles and Piss!

What a clownshow. It’s no wonder small crafter brewers are taking share, only to sell out and have their wares “pissified” by the big boys. According to the Brewers Association, craft beer rose from 3.8 percent of the market in 2007 to 11 percent in 2014 and is expected to reach 20 percent by 2020. Bart Watson, chief economist for the Brewers Association, estimates that on average two new breweries open every day in the U.S. Will conglomerates ever realize that they are merely spinning their wheels, buying out “artisan” brands, adulterating qualtity, losing a fan base, and sloughing off brands that “aren’t working anymore” — for fucks sake! This is the chakra of capitalism I suppose, but it annoys me so, as one is resigned to the “Heineken Lounge” in Dubai Airport. A fucking Heinekien Lounge. Yes, in the land of jewel encrusted butt-holes, the best beer you’ll find at the airport is an ice col’ heiny.

Meanwhile, hippie hop-growers are concerned of short supply. Per Watson, “The current growth trends in the craft beer market – more brewers, more market share, and more hoppy beers – have led some in the industry to worry about the hop supply in the future. Even with thousands of new acres going in and the now widespread usage of hop contracts by craft brewers, there is a fear that growing demand will outstrip supply, particularly in the markets for niche varieties (craft brewers are using dozens of them). Based on the size of the domestic crop in 2014, usage of American hops is northward of 70 million pounds at the moment. If we assume a linear increase to 2020, that’s 504 million pounds of hops from 2015 through 2020.”

Do not mistake my rant for shorting the sector. The craft phenomenon is simply another version of ultimate “line extension” and these buggers will surely buyout every last “less shitty” piss purveyor from here to Tuscaloosa (Brooklyn Brewery, Coronado Brewing, Troegs, SixPoints, VonTrapp) and surely they will tinker with the concoctions to make them less shitty than shit but shittier than less shitty. Follow me?

Your best bet in this idiotic space is to brew some shit (better than shitty) in your garage and put a for sale sign up.

PS: If you are interested in drinking proper beer listen here for a few suggestions: Maine Beer Company – Peeper Ale and Mo Pale Ale, Evil Twin Geyser Gose, Off Color Brewing Scurry, Firestone Opal, Lagunitas Hop Stoopid, BFM Root 225, Cuvée Des Jacobins Rouge – Brouwerij Bockor N.V., and any other West Flanders shit you can get your hands on. Lambic is where it’s at homies.

PPS: If you do decide to home-brew, forget about packaging in aluminum cans. More on this later.

ENSURING COMPETITION REMAINS ON TAP

DRINK DECENT SHIT

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$GWPH PUFF PUFF GIVE – ON THE HISTORY OF DRUG DIPLOMACY

Just take a gander at how deep-rooted the drama is here. Apologies for the length. But this is some good shit. References are below.

‘Marijuana has no therapeutic value, and its use is therefore always an abuse and a vice,’ trumpeted Harry Anslinger, the implacable Commissioner of the US Bureau of Narcotics in 1953:

While opium can be a blessing or a curse, depending on its use, marijuana is only and always a scourge which undermines its victims and degrades them mentally, morally and physically . . . In the earliest stages of intoxication, the will power is destroyed and inhibitions and restraints are released; the moral barricades are broken down and often debauchery and sexuality result. Where mental instability is inherent, the behaviour is generally violent. An egotist will enjoy delusions of grandeur, the timid individual will suffer anxiety, and the aggressive one often will resort to acts of violence and crime. Dormant tendencies are released . . . Constant use produces an incapacity for work and a disorientation . . . often leading to insanity after prolonged use.

Anslinger’s claims have been endorsed by high officials ever since. ‘There is not a shred of scientific evidence that shows that smoked marijuana is useful or needed,’ declared the former US drugs czar General Barry McCaffrey in 1996. ‘This is not a medicine. This is a cruel hoax.’ Our own Home Secretary endorsed this line after his son’s arrest for a drug offence in 1997. Ann ‘zero-tolerance’ Widdecombe is even more opposed to it (except, it seems, when used by Shadow Cabinet colleagues and other supposedly ‘educated, articulate people’)

Early in the 1970s the US Drugs Enforcement Agency was petitioned to reclassify marijuana as a Schedule II drug which could be prescribed by physicians. Finally, in 1986, after prolonged legal tussles, the DEA agreed to public hearings on the petition. The hearings lasted for more than two years. Despite the DEA’s legal expert recommending the rescheduling, and his conclusion that cannabis is ‘one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man’, the DEA denied the petition. Iversen refers to a 1990 finding that 44 per cent of US oncologists had suggested that a patient smoke marijuana for relief of the nausea induced by chemotherapy. If the drug were really unsafe for use even under medical supervision, as its Schedule I status affirms, this recommendation would have been unthinkable.

Despite the DEA’s obstruction, the discovery of the cannabinoid control system in the body has revitalised scientific research. Two synthetic cannabinoids have become available on prescription to patients in Europe and the US. The annual sales of dronabil (sold under the trade name of Marinol) in the US are estimated to be worth about $20 million: some 80 per cent of prescriptions are as an appetite stimulant for people with Aids or HIV, 10 per cent to counteract the nausea associated with chemotherapy and 10 per cent for other purposes. The Eli Lilly Company has developed nabilone: under the trade name of Cesamet it, too, is used to treat nausea in patients undergoing chemotherapy, although it also gave promising results in clinical trials in the treatment of anxiety. In addition, many patients with multiple sclerosis have reported benefiting from smoking cannabis. The possibility of its use in the treatment of glaucoma and epilepsy is being looked into.

During 1997, the American Medical Association recommended controlled clinical trials on the medical uses of smoked marijuana, and the BMA recommended trials of synthetic cannabinoids. The House of Lords Science and Technology Committee reported in 1998 that more clinical research was needed, but recommended the drug’s rescheduling to permit its medical use. A year later, the National Academy of Sciences, Institute of Medicine urged that its therapeutic use in pain relief, control of nausea and appetite stimulation be further investigated. New clinical trials will probably soon be underway in Europe and the US, and I don’t doubt from the evidence laid out by Iversen that they will yield positive data. It will then be hard for governments to refuse approval for the medical use of cannabis or cannabinoids. ‘The argument that approval of the medical use of cannabis would be tantamount to encouraging the legalisation of the drug for all purposes is clearly specious,’ Iversen concludes, ‘and is no justification for withholding an effective medicine from patients who need it.’ Such ideas were anathema to the egregious McCaffrey. ‘There could be no worse message to young people,’ he insisted. ‘Just when the nation is trying its hardest to educate teenagers not to use psychoactive drugs . . . they are being told that marijuana is a medicine.’

Many other psychoactive drugs have a recognised place in European medicine notwithstanding the dangers of misuse. Heroin is the foremost example. Despite Congressman Stephen Porter’s disastrous Act of 1924 prohibiting its medical use in the US, European countries resisted postwar American pressure (directed through the United Nations) to impose this ban globally. An attempt under the Eden Government in 1955 to prohibit its medical use in Britain was defeated by a House of Lords rebellion led by the former Lord Chancellor, Lord Jowitt, supported by a number of medical peers.

McAllister’s is an international history, drawing on diplomatic archives: he does not go into detail on the (UK) Home Office’s troubled relations with cannabis. The Home Office first took notice of what was then known as Indian hemp in 1922, when it was sent a substance found in the coalshed of an Egyptian coffee-house keeper in South Shields. The Home Office confirmed to the Chief Constable that on analysis the substance proved to be ‘hasheesh’, which was not covered by the Dangerous Drugs Act (DDA) of 1920. Next, in 1923, ten tons of cannabis resin en route from Bombay to Djibouti were detained: the shipper was Henri de Monfreid, whose memoir La Croisière du Hachich (1935) – in English translation, Hashish: A Traveller’s Tale (1994) – is a splendid introduction to the subject of trafficking and drugs regulations. The Home Office was consulted before Monfreid’s shipment was allowed to proceed. Shortly afterwards, two waiters, one Italian and the other Sudanese, were arrested in Old Compton Street and accused of offering to supply raw opium. In fact, the brown substance in their possession was hashish, which it was then legal to possess, and the case was abandoned.

But it provided the excuse for an alarmist series of cheap newspaper articles in the silly season – including a supposed interview in the Daily Mail with a Home Office official – in the relevant file in the Public Record Office the official in question has written the word ‘Liar!’ in the margin. On the strength of the hoo-ha Metropolitan Police recommended the incorporation of cannabis in the Dangerous Drugs Act, one CID officer advising that cannabis ‘has practically the same effect as cocaine and morphine upon its victims’. Even the Met was not optimistic about the success of prohibition: the ‘only result’ of prohibiting the drug in Egypt had been ‘an increase of price to its consumers’.

The Home Office did not want to legislate, but foresaw that ‘the prevalence of the vice in Egypt’ – despite prohibition there – might result in ‘international regulation of the drug’. This was prescient. A month later, the Egyptian Ministry of the Interior concluded that as it was ‘practically impossible to keep hashish out of Egypt . . . the League of Nations should consider hashish as an international affair and should try to persuade its members to make dealing in or consuming the drug a crime punishable by severe penalties.’

Consequently, at the Geneva Conference on Opium of 1924-25, Egypt’s delegate proposed bringing hashish within the Hague Convention of 1912. His memorandum, circulated to support this proposal, represented it as ‘a dangerous narcotic . . . more harmful than opium’, and stated that ‘about 70 per cent of insane people in lunatic asylums in Egypt are haschiche eaters or smokers.’ Congressman Porter, the monomaniacal leader of the US delegation, was keen on this initiative. ‘We are asking them to help us to destroy the vice of opium, coca leaves and their derivatives,’ he declared of the Egyptians. ‘This is a good time to practise a little reciprocity. They have their troubles and we have ours.’

The contracting powers at the Geneva Conference accordingly agreed in 1925 to prohibit the import and export of Indian hemp except for certified medical or scientific purposes. In Britain, cannabis was immediately rescheduled as a poison, with effect from April 1925. A few months later, a new DDA brought Britain into line for the ratification of the Geneva Convention. The House of Commons debate on the Bill lasted less than five minutes: Indian hemp, or cannabis, was not mentioned once. The House of Lords debate was slightly longer. Peers followed the advice of Lord Haldane that, as it was ‘impossible to form any judgment on the details of the Bill’, it should ‘be taken by the House to a large extent on trust’. It was on this slipshod basis that cannabis was criminalised.

This might not have mattered much had it not been for the enduring effects of Prohibition in the US. Cannabis was listed in the US Pharmacopoeia as a recognised medicine from 1850 until 1942. It was sold cheaply by drugstores in the form of fluid extracts, and was smoked in cigarette form by asthmatics. Between 1900 and 1920 it began to be used on a limited scale as a recreational drug by immigrant labourers from Mexico and the Caribbean. Its consumption was enormously increased after the 18th Amendment – prohibiting alcohol – came into force in 1920. Alcohol became more difficult to obtain, more expensive and often of poor quality. In urban centres ‘tea pads’ operating like speakeasies provided cheap marijuana. In 1944, Mayor La Guardia’s Committee on Marijuana estimated that there had been five hundred ‘tea pads’ in New York City by the 1930s.

The mass marketing of marijuana for recreational use was the result of bad lawmaking. Congressman Porter’s response to the Egyptians at Geneva showed that cannabis was not then regarded as a problem by anti-drugs propagandists in the US. It first received public attention in a series of sensationalised and false reports in the New Orleans press in 1926 involving drug-crazed black marijuana users and corrupted schoolchildren. By 1931, all but two states west of the Mississippi and several others in the East had made a criminal offence of the possession or use of cannabis. By 1937, every state had outlawed the drug under legislation allowing no distinction between physiologically addictive narcotics such as heroin, habit-forming stimulants like cocaine, and hallucinogens. Anslinger felt that his agents at the Bureau of Narcotics were overstretched coping with opiates without having to suppress a drug that could be easily grown in many states of the Union. He accepted then that ‘the marijuana addict’ did not ‘graduate into a heroin, an opium or a cocaine user’.

Once he’d decided that he would have to submit to political pressure for a Federal law to be passed against marijuana, he did so in a manner calculated, not untypically, to strengthen his own position and that of the Bureau. He strenuously supported the Marijuana Tax Bill. ‘How many murders, suicides, robberies, criminal assaults, hold-ups, burglaries and deeds of maniacal insanity it causes each year, especially among the young, can only be conjectured,’ he said, assuring the House of Representatives that under the influence of the drug, ‘people will fly into a delirious rage and many will commit violent crimes.’ His corrupt rhetoric was contaminating. It produced such an atmosphere than when the official representative of the American Medical Association came to testify against the Bill, he was bullied and insulted. (An editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association of 1 May 1937 advised that ‘the proposed Federal venture into the interstate control of cannabis hardly seems to be justified by experience . . . After more than twenty years of Federal effort and the expenditure of millions of dollars, the opium and cocaine habits are still widespread.’)

Like Lord Haldane 12 years earlier in the House of Lords, Congressman Sam Rayburn assured Congress that ‘this Bill has a unanimous report from the committee and there is no controversy about it.’ When asked what the Bill was about, he added, vaguely: ‘it has something to do with something that is called marijuana. I believe it is a narcotic of some kind.’ The Bill passed after less than half an hour’s debate. If a good law is one that reduces misconduct, while a bad law results in increased infractions, then the Marijuana Tax Act was calamitous. It raises the question that is too seldom addressed when considering policy on drugs: does social deviance lead to social controls, or do such controls result in deviance? In the five years after 1937, about sixty thousand tons of marijuana were destroyed in the US and about a thousand people arrested annually for violating the law. The number of arrests in California rose from 1156 in 1954 to 50,327 in 1968. By 1998, there were 695,000 arrests annually in the US: 86,086 was the comparable figure for Britain in 1997. The policing of cannabis accounted for nearly 80 per cent of police time spent on drug offences in both countries.

The DEA has grown into a second international intelligence agency, with a global network of agents rivalling that of the CIA. The total spent on the ‘War on Drugs’ rose from $537 million in 1980 to $1.2 billion in 1984. By 1991, the Government was spending $7.7 billion on action against illegal intoxicants. Despite the deployment of all these repressive instruments, the US has failed to disrupt the dynamics of prohibition and illegal supply. As the late Jan-Willem Gerritsen writes in his perceptive study of prohibition policies, ‘the high “business risks” keep prices high and guarantee good profit margins for successful entrepreneurs, so that the market continues to exercise tremendous magnetic appeal.’ Although ‘increasingly stiff sentences imposed under the criminal law aggravate the risks on the supply side, they also boost the market position of those able to evade prosecution. The harsher the repressive measures, the greater the reward for successful entrepreneurs, who have every reason to expand their market and increase the volume of their supply.’

Such reasonable observations are anathema to the prohibitionists. Anslinger moved ruthlessly and mendaciously to discredit the authoritative medical and scientific report commissioned by La Guardia. His agents would have been equally hostile to Iversen, who in his temperate and understated book regrets that cannabis ‘has rarely been regarded simply as a substance with effects and side effects’. Instead, it ‘has been equated with morality and the debate about its use portrayed as one of good versus evil. Marijuana has been linked with the pursuit of pleasure and with idleness rather than the work ethic.’ Most scientists believe that the grave short-term risks attributed to cannabis ‘were grossly exaggerated’, but neither scientists nor anyone else can prove the effect of a substance to be non-existent; it is therefore impossible to prove that any substance is harmless. Most mental effects of cannabis are potential rather than inherent; the potential physical effects cannot be assessed without much more data on long-term consumption. While it is less habit-forming than heroin, nicotine and cocaine, Iversen postulates that ‘as many as 10 per cent of regular users will become dependent on the drug.’ Current recreational use of cannabis has less adverse effect on public health than either tobacco or alcohol, but it is likely ‘that an increased use of cannabis would bring an increased public health impact’.

The profits from trafficking in illegal intoxicants are always ‘black’: they fall outside the supervision and authority of governments. As Gerritsen argues, ‘since a country’s sovereignty stands or falls with its monopoly on taxation and the obligation of its citizens to pay taxes, the illegal drugs trade forms a fundamental threat to the system of national states.’ Since 1985, under the insistent leadership of the US, there has been a concerted campaign to control the international laundering of black-market money derived from drugs. This aspect of the War on Drugs, he writes, is leading ‘to something that was never intended: a uniform global regulatory regime, which will be applicable to all types of financial service’.

Gerritsen’s sociological history charts the way 20th-century controls on drugs were used to defend social norms. Men like Anslinger, who was obsessed with Red China, and Richard Nixon, who revived the widespread use of cocaine by his maladroit War on Drugs, regarded their sale and use as a collective threat from outsiders. The ‘silent majority’ (a phrase Nixon borrowed from Homer, who was referring to the dead) refused to acknowledge that prohibitionist legislation and its enforcement are indispensable preconditions for the growth of illicit supply. ‘In a repressive climate of this kind, more informal modes of regulation – which certainly exist among users – are by definition confined to a twilight subculture that is a natural breeding ground for crime and other expressions of counter-culture,’ Gerritsen writes.

HAT TIP TO THE AUTHOR: Richard Davenport-Hines

Related Reading:

The Science of Marijuana by Leslie Iversen
Oxford, 278 pp, £18.99, April 2000, ISBN 0 19 513123 1

Drug Diplomacy in the 20th Century: An International History by William McAllister
Routledge, 344 pp, £16.99, September 1999, ISBN 0 415 17989 0

The Control of Fuddle and Flash: A Sociological History of the Regulation of Alcohol and Opiates by Jan-Willem Gerritsen
Brill, 278 pp, €52.00, April 2000, ISBN 90 04 11640 0

Drugs and the Law: Report of the Independent Inquiry into the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 Police Foundation, 148 pp, £20.00, March 2000, ISBN 0 947692 47

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$CMG MAY FECAL MAYHEM RAVAGE THE NATION

Once upon a time, when there were no millennials, the the Mission district in San Francisco was a quaint locale. There was only one bar that future gentrifiers would frequent. It was called Blondie’s and its specialty was martinis. After drenching oneself in martinis, the requisite course of action was to head over to El Farolito, just one of a bevy of options in burritoville. These days idiots line up for hours just to get a taste of a “Mission Burrito”. Its fashionable.

One forgets however, that the Bae Area is not representative of the rest of the goddam country and finding such an item is not an easy task, even in fairly large cities.

I am here to tell you, that regional markets (ex-Texas) have shitty burritos and Chipotle is the only game in town. In fact, the dirty buggers at Chipotle have openly declared that they style their piece of shit burrito on the very Mission Burrito.

The fact that one can assemble a Burrito in any permutation s/he (no kaitlyn) desires, is a central feature. Mass-customization is the in thing, dontcha know?

Furthermore, long dominated by “whites” of European descent, the average palate is evolving. Having ancestors raised on mushy peas and slabs of unseasoned meat for centuries, the White American palate is finally growing accustomed to “ethnic” flavors en masse, my friends.

With demographics tailwinds (no trump) to boot, we should we should be cheering for more e-coli. May e-coli spread far and wide!

In addition, I would very much appreciate that every cock-sucking analyst on the street downgrade this purveyor of beans, cheese and grade-d meat. CURRY is national dish of the United Kingdom . . . THE MISSION BURRITO will be the US analog. Kapish?

“THE HUNT”

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$RH GET YOUR MOTHERFUCKING POPCORN READY

Friends,

I don’t give a shit what your fucking “independent research provider” has to say about how interior designers in their focus group “lovvvvvve the new RH Modern” — I really don’t. Gary Friedman is a jackass of epic proportions. Behind the glow, is a sad soul. Vapid, much like the product he peddles as timeless. But I am not here to defame ol’ Gary.

I am here to remind all of you that the bozos at RH think its a good idea to broadcast their earnings release with spa music as a soundtrack.

DO YOU REALIZE HOW FUCKING INANE THIS IS? DO YOU DAMMIT?

Here’s a little taste, for the uninitiated:

Tune in on Thursday and bring your popcorn (with cayenne powder, lightly salted).

RH (NYSE: RH) will report financial results for the third quarter ended October 31, 2015 on Thursday, December 10, 2015 after market close FROM A FUCKING SPA.

At that time, RH will post an INANE VIDEO PRESENTATION (NO BIKINI) highlighting the Company’s continued evolution and recent performance on the RH Investor Relations website at ir.restorationhardware.com.

RH leadership will then host a live question and answer conference call and audio webcast at 2:30 pm Pacific Time (5:30 p.m. Eastern Time). The live question and answer conference call may be accessed by dialing (866) 394-6658 or (706) 679-9188. The call and replay can also be accessed via audio webcast at ir.restorationhardware.com.

gilchristsoames_spatherapy_bodylotion_900x900

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“THE FED DID IT, WITH QE, IN THE BOND MARKET”

I tend to agree with @aswathdamodran here. As a collective we are obsessed with the FED, even if we aren’t. I remember a time when the chatter was “the thickness of Greenspan’s briefcase” – sheer idiocy. Quit being rhapsodic about the FED. Unless we’re talking Roger.

Here are some of my notes from the video :

NOTES BEGIN:
– myth #1 = fed sets rates
– myth #2 = fed has kept rates low
– myth #3 = low interest rates “reason” for stocks doing well
– myth #4 = biggest danger to fed: market will react “badly” to change in rates

MYTH #1
– fed sets ONE rate: rate at which banks borrow at the federal window
– it indirectly sets the “fed funds rate”
– ffr: rate at which banks borrow and lend with each other
– the fed: DOES NOT set any other rates
– fed funds rate is connected to other short term market rates
– that is the extent of the direct connection
– everything else is implicit
– the effect the fed has on really long term rates: “much more tenuous”
– really short term rates are set by the market, not by the fed

MYTH #2
– rates => low for the last six years because “fed has kept them low”
– true: the t/bill and t/bond rates @ levels we haven’t seen in decades
– but is it the “fed” that is “doing this”?
– to answer that Q => AD went back to econ 101

– fisher equation: ties nominal interest rate to expected inflation + expected real interest rate
– @aswathdamodaran “made one leap of faith”
– leap: assumed growth in real gdp appoximates real interst rate
– calls this sum an “intrinsic risk free rate”
– expected inflation + real gdp growth = “intrinsic risk free rate”
– see 4:45 for a graph of intrinstic risk free rate
– graph includes the historic 10yr t/bond rate superimposed
– when inflation is non-existent/ growth anaemic => rates are low
– this pehom occurs with or without fed’s tinkering!
– @aswathdamodran suggests:
– the primary reason interest rates have been low =>
=> because fed’s actions have not worked
– this is contrary to conventional wisdom!

MYTH #3
– low rates = bull market
– 2008 => forward looking ERP => 8.5% ; T/BOND = 4.5%
– ERP = equity risk premium = investors’ expected return on stocks
– per AD :
– if rates were the driver of stock prices => ERP should have dropped to ~6.5%
– August 2015: expected return on stocks: 8.5% (roughly same as 2008!)
– what is causing stock returns to be so high?
– per AD:
– answer is straight-forward “US companies returning insane amounts of cash”
– reasons for returning cash:
– profits at historic highs, operating margins, cos earning more than ever
– returning proportions of earnings that are unheard of
– 2014 – US cos returned 91% of earnings as cash flows
– much higher than 80-85% in last decade and ~70% prior to that
– AD’s view: that is the biggest danger to stocks!
– if cash flows stay at current levels with rates up => fine
– but if cash flows drop and rates rise => danger!
– see table at 7:50

MYTH #4
– “rates up – stock and bond markets collapse”
– AD : there are two other scenartios that are “far more dangerous”
– 1) fed raises rates, and nothing happens
– 2) fed doesn’t raise rates: and rates go up anyways (via inflation)

In Summary:
– the fed does not “set” rates; but it has credibility
– investors assume =>
– “fed raise” = “economic strength” and “fed lowers” = “economic weakness”
– as long as fed acts consistently => has credibility
– biggest danger to the fed => anything that attacks the notion of credibility
– if the fed acts and nothing happens to bonds/stock markets => not good!
– tells chanteclier story: rooster crows in the morning and the sun comes up
– the barnyard animals think that the rooster’s crow caused the sun to come up
– per damodaran: this is the fed situation => investors may wake up!
– per damodaran: “we don’t know how equity, bond markets will react”
– “obsession with fed has gone on long enough, lets move on!”

END NOTES.

janet dominatirx

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Dregs. $TST

Recently a colleague queried me: “Let me know if you think there’s any thing left there… cramer’s buying!”

Response below:

TST piques my interest for one reason: the state they are focused on “transition from primarily serving retail investors to also becoming an indispensable data and business intelligence source for institutional clients”, which I think is a better strategy than mesmerizing fools online with its sage advice.

I am skeptical of the demographics of their retail clientele. Since their media business hinges on access to that segment of the population, I fear that it will get “found out”. That said, its averaging $3million in revs over the last 11 quarters.

From the filing:

· #1 Website with readers having a portfolio value over $1 million;
· #1 Website with readers having investable assets over $500,000;
· #1 Website with readers having household income over $75,000; and
· #1 Website with readers checking stock quotes.

Really? Who checks quotes on TheStreet.com? Subscribers perhaps? Confounding. Do the niche sites attract a wealthier demographic? Does wealth necessarily correlate with sophistication? I don’t know. There doesn’t seem to be much in-depth content on the site. If sophistication beckons for anlaysis beyond the perfunctory, I don’t see the purported subscriber/reader matching up to the content offered. Of course, I can’t speak to what is beind the paywall.

It is true that the name is loosely synonymous with “financial information online” and that is a draw for ad dollars. How long does the ruse last?

Does the media business dwindle over time? Mobile traffic up 217% ytd and 35% of uniques are mobile. “Flat is the new up” — says the CEO (of the media business). Which probably means about to crack to the downside. Right now, 70% of traffic comes from desktop and they explicitly state that desktop users are critical to media sales. Would untrammeled migration to mobile devices be deleterious to the subscription business as well as the media business? A potential hairline fracture in the B2C story, in my opinion. I’d inquire about this phenom at any opportunity.

The chief menace to the story (imho) is its association with Cramer. Am I naive? Does Cramer have animalistic appeal? Is there really no sex in the champagne room? Perhaps, as is the case with WWE there will always be a steady flow of animals who get turned on to cramer/cnbc/madmoney cycle. They churn, others take their place, the cycle continues. But a cursory google suggests that his charm is waning (bottoming?). CNBC and its ilk are despondent, at best.

This begs the question: how much of the subscription business is tied to the Cramer brand? Difficult to discern. The company claims its 20% per the most recent call (~$13mil of TTM).

I spoke to a couple of sales gents (who quoted me different rates for the same product). The “deals” were only available “this week”. Anyhow, one guy tried to entice me to “action alerts plus” – Cramer’s real-time calls. Out of 80,000 subs, 50,000 are AAP, he declared jauntily. Of all the products, this was the one that was the most sought after! So, roughly $10 million in revs/year at the discounted “special” price and $20 million a year at the full rate. Unclear what the average subscriber pays. So, perhaps the $13 million (20% of revs) figure is about right?

As a sidenote: on a third call in to the sales desk, the lady tells me that $199 is a rate avaiable year round. Also, a comprehensive subscription package known as “The Chairman’s Club” costs $2k (via phone) or $5K (online) per year. Pick a rate! Per salesperson #1, they purposely keep the subs down to 300-400 people to “maintain exclusivity”. Odd, no?

Let’s assume that all media traffic is driven by the love of Cramer which amounts to about $12 million per year in revenue. Then, if Cramer related subscriptions are (conservativley) about $15 million at an average of $300 per sub per year and 50,000 subscribers, rather than $13 million per the company, total “Cramer Exposure” for the year about $27 million on the high end. TST says only ~20% of revenues are exposed, but I think its more. No other fools on that site are household names. Trailing twelve month revenues at ~$68 million. What if he drops dead?! Probably an aggresive haircut to take $27 million of the topline though. Hmm.

B2B seems solid, predictable. At 400 staff in Chennai and 40 in Wisconsin = $1.8 million in wages. Roughly 30 million in revs on a TTM basis. 90%+ renewals on The Deal. Deal + RateWatch = 30% of revs or ~20mil.

Sentiment is at all time lows for the likes of Cramer and CNBC. What I can’t tell is if its “bottoming”. With WWE, the WWE consumer knows that he/she is being “entertained” — does the TST consumer also know this? Or are we evolving to a world where this kind of shit is no longer tolerated? If so, the B2C business is at risk. Yet the co states mix will stay roughly 55% B2B and 45% B2C despite all the talk of transition!

Taking off $20 mil (instead of the aggressive $27mil) from the top line for Cramer Exposure (cocaine risk) + Media Sales gloom we’re at just above ~1x revs. At $30 mil in cash (of course enough deferred revs to offset), basically breakeven operations and 6% div to boot — still doesn’t sound like a no brainer. Nor does it seem like a 0.

To answer your question, yes I think there is something left but I don’t think it has much to do with its media properties aka “the front porch” — and thus the comparisons that they make to Vox, Buzzfeed and BusinessInsider are moot. What do you pay for the B2B biz? At $30 million in sales, and assuming operating margins are same as blended (roughly 3%) — its a 1 million pre-tax perpetuity at best? Then you’d be getting the rest of the business for “free”, I suppose. That’s a bit extreme, but doesn’t seem cheap given feeble B2C.

JG

PS:
BC Partners, a London-based private-equity firm, agreed to buy financial-data provider Mergermarket Group from Pearson Plc for 382 million pounds ($624 million). Nikos Stathopoulos, managing partner at BC Partners, said in an e-mailed statement today that the company will team up with Mergermarket Chief Executive Officer Hamilton Matthews’s group to invest “in the growth of the business through product development and geographical expansion.” Mergermarket, which was founded in 1999, operates in 65 countries and controls brands such as Debtwire, DealReporter, Infinata, Wealthmonitor, and Xtract Research according to the statement. The London-based company had revenue of 100 million pounds and operating income of 25 million in 2012, Pearson said.

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