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Strategies & Market Trends : Value Investing -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: valueminded who wrote (12231)	3/28/2001 9:26:42 PM
From: Freedom Fighter	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 78615

Chris, I sold my shares this morning on the open at $7.81. The after tax proceeds wound up being about $3.00 per share less than I had anticipated. I think that removed whatever margin of safety existed. It wasn't a total surprise to me. I think SFN pretty much got stiffed based on the what I have heard about the market prices of their competitors in Europe. But it was sort of a distressed sale and the management blundered by putting themselves into a position of having to go with the IPO even though the London market has been tanking with the US and the price was very poor. It was bad management plus bad luck IMO. I never did see a prospectus on what the remaining operations will look like, but I was able to make some rough guesstimates based on the the numbers I saw for Michael Page in the various releases. I annualized the "cash earnings" (added back the amortization) of the 4th quarter minus a rough estimate of MP's contribution. Then I worked out various scenarios for the cash. I still believe the stock is a decent value, it's just much less certain and there is less margin of safety at the lower proceeds. The operations are almost certainly going to weaken further during this year. My own feeling was that over time there was a decent possibility that they could cut expenses and get margins up from the depressed 4th quarter level even if the business shrunk a little. So I wasn't really viewing the long term value as being a function of the current earnings level or the predicted poorer results over the next few quarters. I had a few better and more comfortable ideas so I ate my $1.50+ per share loss and moved on. I intend to continue following the situation. I always learn more from my mistakes than my winners. Wayne