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

To: James Clarke who wrote (4446)	7/23/1998 12:39:00 PM
From: Michael Burry	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 78676

Jim, So USU is public, at around 14 1/4, near the low end of the range. I read the prospectus and am less than impressed. At best I see a company selling for a mild premium to book. The dividend is based on a very high payout, and looks like it's around 7.7% at present. They repeatedly state that pricing pressure is intense, and admit that hey, it's a commodity with 4 major producers worldwide and with government regulations and national loyalties complicating the picture. It transfers its depleted UF costs to the government today, but it also pays off a huge chunk of its cash. I see basically stable to very low growth over the next 10-15 years, and the prospectus states that if anything the numbers are declining recently. So it looks like an attractive utility-like company for a decent dividend, but I don't see a dollar for 50 cents. Of course, maybe you know something about the value of their inventories that I don't. I didn't see it in the footnotes. BTW, New Holland is just getting crushed. New lows are becoming frequent and they're adding up, if slowly. I only have a $2200 position, so I'd buy more, but I'm concerned that I'm missing something that the Street is getting. If you hear any scuttlebutt I'd love to hear it. I like a tech company, Asyst (ASYT). Why I like it is up on my web site. Basically, as a contrarian, I can't resist the semi equip sector now, even if it is tech. Given my recent history, that means everyone reading this who likes the idea should wait 3 months and get it 30% cheaper ;) Good Investing, Mike

To: James Clarke who wrote (4446)	7/23/1998 2:27:00 PM
From: Jurgis Bekepuris	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 78676

James and Mike, Here's a beauty. ENC. A company producing collectible figurines. That gives some brand name protection and loyal customers. Margins are great, cash flows positive and enormous. The company turned around this year - sold the money losing direct marketing division, changed name to Enesco from Stanhome. Trades at 1 PSR, ~16 PE, depending how you count it. No debt. Repurchased ~1 mln. shares. 3.X dividend yield. Reported yesterday with good results. There may be a pop up in the near future as PEs are updated (cf PSO). As a negative - the CEO is paid some enormous salary. A friend of mine made killing on DFS, which is in the same business. Now DFS is no longer a great buy, being more expensive at 3.X PSR, but then they did not need to turn around. :-) Another thing. What do you guys think about ELY at these levels? Here's another NKE deja vu. A well known baby-boomer stock. My broker says that a bunch of his clients follow it. Which means that you'll have a NKE story - it will recover (or bounce up to fall again) much sooner than the real recovery. The 64K question is whether the story is intact. Same question as NKE. If golf is growing only 1-2% like Aldila quoted, the ELY growth might be unsustainable. It may need overseas expansion as NKE does to show good numbers. OTOH, it's a cash machine, so buying now is OK too. It's trading at ~1.2 PSR using last 6 months. That's good. PE is 11 or 14 depending whether you use this quarters result or the last 6 months result. However, the inventories and AR are still ugly. I'd wait for <$10 or for a glimmer of recovery. Comments? Jurgis