This circuitous 2-parter is going to open with the consumer credit bureaus (Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion – EET), switch to FICO, and loop back to the bureaus…apologies in advance for the disorienting structure. Let’s start with Experian, which like many companies formed through motley acquisitions, wasn’t so much created as it was allowed to emerge. […]
I sometimes flatter myself by thinking this blog offers interesting insights when in fact I know a key reason that many of you subscribe is to save time:You could spend dozens of hours talking to management and combing through annual reports, proxies, and transcripts, or I can just do it and share what I’ve learned. […]
LILAK, the widow maker. For many years, a core holding of Generic Value Partners. This stock has been pitched many times, each new pitch underpinned by sensible-sounding premises that are by now so familiar that their recitation seems almost tiresome: cable moat, Malone, consolidation, forced selling, insider buying, secular growth. And yet, since it began […]
When someone says they own shares of X, what they typically mean is that a broker owns shares of X on their behalf in “street name”[1]. But wait, no, the broker doesn’t really own the shares either. Shares are held and legally owned by Cede & Co., the nominee of the Depository Trust Company (DTC)[2], […]
Most auto lenders won’t finance cash strapped buyers with deeply tainted or limited credit histories. Credit Acceptance Corp, founded in 1972 by Chairman and 11% owner Donald Foss[1] to collect loans originated by his own dealerships, steps into the breach with an unorthodox lending scheme that goes like this: the used car dealer originates a […]
It used to be that a chip engineer would design an integrated circuit by hand drawing a few dozen pages of schematics using standard templates, the resulting patterns X-ACTO knifed out of plastic film. But with transistor density doubling every 18 months, this manual process couldn’t scale and was eventually replaced with a technology called […]
In the US, tower companies have enjoyed a 20-year growth tailwind that shows no signs of fatigue. The population of wireless subscribers has grown at a high single digit rate, from fewer than 130mn in 2001 to 440mn in 2018. In turn, network standards have evolved – from 2G (voice, SMS; 2000-2006) to 3G (mobile […]
Related posts[MELI – MercadoLibre] Digging the Moat (Or Is It A Grave?): Part 1[MELI – MercadoLibre] Digging the Moat (Or Is It A Grave?): Part 2In 2016, six years and several pro-competition pieces of regulation after the Central Bank of Brazil and antitrust authorities first pried the merchant acquiring market open to new competition, Cielo, […]