Few menu items so singularly express our collective surrender to fat and carbs than the habitual ease with which we order french fries. We can’t get enough of them. At the McDonald’s I worked at one summer in high school, I recall heaving what seemed like an endless bounty of golden fries into the fry […]
In what seems like ages ago now Fintwit darling, Burford Capital, was flamboyantly attacked by Muddy Waters. The prominent short seller claimed that Burford “misleadingly boosted its IRR numbers”, rendering ROIC and IRR metrics “meaningless”; misled investors through the “egregiousness of its fair value accounting”; and was “arguably insolvent”, raising outside capital as a matter […]
I spent several weeks speaking with 70 automotive paint protection film (PPF) installers to better understand the industry and the impact that OEM-direct installations of PPF could have on Xpel. I’d like to share what I learned. But before doing that, let’s bring everyone up to speed. Most of Xpel’s revenue comes from selling a […]
Hi everyone, I embedded audio of me reading this post. Let me know what you think. If enough people are into this feature, I will include it in future write-ups. These recordings won’t be word-for-word translations (I’ll summarize here and there) but pretty close. You’ll notice that I confuse “Vertafore” and “Vertafone” several times in […]
AMETEK was birthed out of failure. After its predecessor, Manhattan Electric Supply Company, a supplier of electrical switches, telegraph sets, alarm clocks, flashlights and other novel gizmos of the late 19th/early 20th century, declared bankruptcy in 1930, months after the market crash, shareholders created a new company from the ashes. The newly formed American Machine […]
Many investors have come to know of Teledyne through Warren Buffett, who in John Train’s 1980 classic The Money Masters, declared the company’s co-founder, Henry Singleton, as having “the best operating and capital deployment record in American business”. Buffett’s seal of approval spawned a vast collection of fawning articles and books about the unconventional engineer, […]
Please check out my annual interview with @LibertyRPF, where I offer some thoughts on investing and provide an update on the business of scuttleblurb. If you’re looking for an eclectic mix of content related to investing, technology, art, and science, I recommend subscribing to Liberty’s newsletter, Liberty’s Highlights. It’s one of my favorites. And if […]
(all $ are Canadian unless otherwise specified) I first wrote up GFL nearly 2 years ago. To recap: garbage collection and disposal is one of the few businesses that you can be sure will still be around in 20 years. Its recurring necessity gives rise to predictable and stable cash flows. Residential collections are locked […]