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Tilson’s T2 Files 13F, More Sears, More Borders, Less Berkshire

Whitney Tilson’s T2 Partners has files in quarterly 13F. There are some interesting moves.

T2:
Increased ownership in Sears Holdings (SHLD) to over 50,000 shares
Purchased 11,000 shares of Starbucks (SBUX) as a new holding
Increased his stake in Borders (BGP) from 900K to 1.3 million shares
Added a new position (in addition to 797 existing calls) of 45,000 shares of American Express (AXP)
Decreased his Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) holdings by 260 class “B” shares
Increased his Target (TGT) stake from 104k to 185k shares of common and now holds 200 less calls
Increased his Whole Foods (WFMI) stake from 7k to 25k shares.

Tilson is the second value manager, Fairholme’s (FAIRX)following Bruce Berkowitz’ disclosure last week to increase their stake in Sears Holdings. The American Express stake was bought at probably fire sales prices that occurred during the quarter and will probably be a “genius” purchase down the road.

What is of note is the Borders increase heading into the fall as Ackman’s options for the warrants he has comes due.

What will be a great interest now is whether or not Ackman completes the Sears trifecta when he reports his holdings.


Full August Filing


Full May filing

Disclosure (“none” means no position):Long SHLD, BGP, none

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Obama’s "Truth Challenged" Harley Davidson Ad

I am entering this fray because it involves on of my holdings, Harley Davidson (HOG)

A new Obama ad said
:
“The ad featured McCain appearing at the recent Sturgis motorbike rally in South Dakota where he proclaimed to cheering bikers: “Not long ago a couple hundred thousand Berliners made a lot of noise for my opponent.

“I will take the roar of 50,000 Harleys any day!”

With the noise of a motorcycle engine throbbing in the background, the Obama ad’s narrator says: “It’s time to hear the roar of a strong American economy again, and stop John McCain from shipping our jobs overseas.”

Rick Gray, an avid biker who is mayor of Lancaster in Pennsylvania, not far from York, said in an Obama campaign statement that McCain was guilty of hypocrisy.

“John McCain should be ashamed of himself, not just for voting against protecting an American company like Harley-Davidson, but then for going in front of a group of motorcyclists in Sturgis and pretending to be one of them,” he said.

The statement noted that the local Harley factory was shedding 300 workers, as McCain came to York to press home his message to blue-collar workers that Obama is a dangerous risk for the presidency. “

The jobs lost at the Harley Davidson plant have nothing to do with “jobs going overseas”. In fact, not a single Harley Davidson motorcycle is made anywhere but in the US and to the best of my knowledge no local government or the Feds use anything other than Harley’s (mainly police work) . The job losses are simply from the current decline in bike sales due to the economy and tighter credit markets. Simple

I know these ads use populist rhetoric to convey a message in 30 seconds, but, ought they not contain a glimmer of truth?

Disclosure (“none” means no position):Long HOG

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Dow Ag Makes Seed Acquisition

Dow Ag, a division of Dow Chemical (DOW) has reached an agreement to acquire Wisconsin based Diaryland Seed Co., one of the nations largest independent seed companies.

Terms were not announced and the deal is expected to be finalized next month.

By acquiring Dairyland, Dow will boost its soybean and alfalfa breeding program and expand seed sales in the northern Midwest, where the family owned 101-year-old Dairyland is a well-known brand to farmers.

This is Dow’s 5th seed-related acquisition in the past year. The seed business Dow has built currently is strong in corn, sunflowers and cotton and now that is being expended into soybeans and alfalfa with the purchase. Coming into 2010 is the introduction of Smartstax, the first 8 trait genetically engineered seed developed in conjunction with Monsanto (MON).

Dow Ag is growing earnings 15% to 20% annually and with recent (and future) acquisitions and perhaps the largest product launch yet on the horizon, that growth looks to be able to grow unimpeded for at least the next several years.

Disclosure (“none” means no position):Long Dow, None

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Poll Shows 73% of Folks Think Starbucks is "Too Expensive"

They needed a poll for that?

Let’s think about it. Let’s assume the coffee is as good as or better than that had at Dunkin Donuts or McDonalds (MCD). Well, if people aren’t going to Starbucks (SBUX) anymore (or are in increasingly fewer numbers) and sales of coffee at the other two are exploding, then it has to be the price.

Here are the survey results:
“76% of American adults say they rarely or never visit one of the shops, and only 14% say they visit occasionally.

A new survey by Rasmussen Reports shows that 73% of Americans say Starbucks coffee is overpriced. Only 6% disagreed and 21% said they were unsure.”

It continued:
“Along with the perception of high prices, only 38 percent of the 1,000 adults polled gave the coffee behemoth a favorable rating, while 27 percent had an unfavorable view of the chain. About one-third of respondents had no opinion.

Younger adults have a more favorable view of Starbucks than older adults. Just under 50 percent of respondents 18 to 29 give the chain high marks, while only 28 percent of seniors shared that view. And those who make more than $100,000 a year view the chain more favorably than those who make less than $20,000 a year, the survey said.”

So, notice one word that was not there? Value. High prices are one thing if you feel like you are getting what you pay for. I do not expect the same service and food at Denny’s as I do at Morton’s. As long as I feel like the service and food were great when I leave Morton’s, I fell like I got my money’s worth. Starbucks problem is people by in large do not feel that way.

The service is non-existent (worse than McDonalds) and the overwhelming majority of folks, by the time they add milk or cream, flavoring and syrup to the coffee, have no ability to ascertain the quality of the bean they are drinking. I will take it a step further and say that unless you are drinking pure coffee or espresso, in 99% of the drinks could be made with the same beans McDonalds and DD uses and no one would be able to tell any difference. If Howard wants to take me up on it, we can arrange a taste testing here in Massachusetts.

Starbucks could then sell the drinks at reasonable prices and finally shut me up.

Now, Howard Schultz, Starbucks’ Chief Snob will look at the results and say “educated people who know better prefer us”. That, Howard may be true. But, you have 14,000 locations. There are not enough $100,000 plus a year folks out there to sustain the growth you need at all those locations. You’ll need to appeal to the “lesser folks” for lack of a better phrase to accomplish what you want. Either that, or you need to admit you need to close another 1,000 plus locations (minimum) to force feed current traffic to existing locations.

Howard has misjudged his market..

Something has to give, right now it is stockholders brokerage accounts…

Disclosure (“none” means no position):Long MCD, none

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Latest Fed Auction Results Show Jump in Rates

This is the largest jump since the auction was established.

Results:
On August 11, 2008, the Federal Reserve conducted an auction of $25 billion in 84-day credit through its Term Auction Facility. Following are the results of the auction:

Stop-out rate: 2.754 percent

Total propositions submitted: $54.800 billion
Total propositions accepted: $25.000 billion
Bid/cover ratio: 2.19

Number of bidders: 64

The jump from the last auction was almost .5%, by far the largest jump.

This will crimp the interest earnings increases banks like Citi (C), Wells Fargo (WFC) and JP Morgan (JPM) enjoyed in Q2, unless they are able to pass the increase onto consumers.


Full Fed Release

Disclosure (“none” means no position): Long C, WFC, None

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Ackman’s Pershing Files Amended 13D

Bill Ackman has filed an amended 13D this morning for Pershing’s investment in Longs Drug Stores (LDG)

Item 1. Security and Issuer
This Amendment No. 2 (this “Amendment No. 2”) amends and supplements the statement on Schedule 13D, as amended to date (the “Schedule 13D”), by (i) Pershing Square Capital Management, L.P., a Delaware limited partnership (“Pershing Square”), (ii) PS Management GP, LLC, a Delaware limited liability company (“PS Management”), (iii) Pershing Square GP, LLC, a Delaware limited liability company (“Pershing Square GP”), and (iv) William A. Ackman, a citizen of the United States of America (collectively, the “Reporting Persons”), relating to the common stock (the “Common Stock”), of Longs Drug Stores Corporation, a Maryland corporation (the “Issuer”). Unless otherwise defined herein, terms defined in the Schedule 13D shall have such defined meanings in this Amendment No. 2.

As of August 11, 2008, as reflected in this Amendment No. 2, the Reporting Persons are reporting beneficial ownership on an aggregate basis of 3,137,659 shares of Common Stock (approximately 8.8% of the outstanding shares of Common Stock). The Reporting Persons also have economic exposure to approximately 5,296,896 notional shares of Common Stock under certain cash-settled total return swaps (“Swaps”), bringing their total economic exposure to 8,434,555 shares of Common Stock (approximately 23.6% of the outstanding shares of Common Stock).

Item 6. Contracts, Arrangements, Understandings or Relationships with Respect to Securities of the Issuer
Item 6 is hereby supplemented as follows:
In addition to (a) the Common Stock beneficially held by the Reporting Persons and (b) the Swaps previously reported by the Reporting Persons on the Schedule 13D, on August 8, 2008 and August 11, 2008, certain of the Reporting Persons entered into cash-settled total return swap agreements for Pershing Square L.P. (the “PSLP Swaps”) and Pershing Square International, Ltd. (the “PSIL Swaps,” and together with the PSLP Swaps, the “Amendment No. 2 Swaps”). The Amendment No. 2 Swaps constitute economic exposure to approximately 756,000 notional shares of Common Stock, have reference prices ranging from $53.55 to $54.69 and expire on dates ranging from November 30, 2009 through August 31, 2010. Under the terms of the Amendment No. 2 Swaps, (i) the applicable Pershing Square Fund will be obligated to pay to the counterparty any negative price performance of the notional number of shares of Common Stock subject to the applicable Amendment No. 2 Swap as of the expiration date of such Amendment No. 2 Swap, plus interest, and (ii) the counterparty will be obligated to pay to the applicable Pershing Square Fund any positive price performance of the notional number of shares of Common Stock subject to the applicable Amendment No. 2 Swap as of the expiration date of the Swap.

With regard to the PSIL Swaps, Pershing Square International, Ltd. will be entitled to cash payments during the term of the PSIL Swap in lieu of any dividends received by the counterparty on such notional shares of Common Stock. With regard to the PSLP Swaps, at maturity Pershing Square, L.P. will receive a cash payment from the counterparty equal to any dividends received by the counterparty on such notional shares of Common Stock during the term of the PSLP Swaps. All balances will be cash settled at the expiration date of the Amendment No. 2 Swaps. Including the Swaps disclosed on the Schedule 13D and the Amendment No. 2 Swaps, the Pershing Square Funds’ counterparties for their Swaps include entities related to BNP Paribas, Citibank, Credit Suisse and UBS.

The contracts relating to the Amendment No. 2 Swaps do not give the Reporting Persons direct or indirect voting, investment or dispositive control over any securities of the Issuer and do not require the counterparty thereto to acquire, hold, vote or dispose of any securities of the Issuer. Accordingly, the Reporting Persons disclaim any beneficial ownership in securities that may be referenced in such contracts relating to the Amendment No. 2 Swaps or that may be held from time to time by any counterparty to the contracts.

Full SEC Filing

Disclosure (“none” means no position):None

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David Einhorn on "Value at Risk" (PDF)

This is a great read from Grant’s Spring Investment Conference. Discuss is Lehman(LEH), Carlyle Capital, Allied Capital (ALD), Merrill Lynch (MER).

Download PDF Here:

Disclosure (“none” means no position):None

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Tuesday’s Links

MBIA, Fat Pitch, Primus, Steve & Barry, Texas Gov.

– Felix Salmon has more thoughts on MBIA and Ackman

– Check out George’s new look

– Cullen nailed this one

– Didn’t think Eddie was interested

Dope

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Biglari’s Quarter at Steak N Shake in the Books

Check out this post…

Jeff Annello has a good post over at Circle of Competence regarding Sardar Biglari’s efforts at running the company. So far so good.

Disclosure (“none” means no position):None

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Legg Mason is now Freddie Mac’s largest shareholder

Barrons reported Legg Mason’s 12.4% stake in Freddie Mac.

“On Monday Legg Mason (LM) disclosed it now owns 79,880,998 shares of Freddie Mac, or a 12.4% stake. At the end of the first quarter, Legg Mason owned 50,244,068 shares of the government-sponsored finance giant.”

Time will be Bill Miller’s ultimate judge. I haven’t written him off yet.

Disclosure (“none” means no position): None (yet)

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Ackman Before Congress on MBIA

Remember when Ackman spoke before Congress on both MBIA (MBI) and Ambac (ABK)? Seems to me he was on the ball then..


Mr William A Ackman – Get more Legal Forms

Disclosure (“none” means no position):None

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Obama and Taxes on the "Middle Class"

Don Luskin makes some points today that cutting tax A while phasing out credit B can result in an actual tax increase. Again, politics will take matter more in investing now that the policies are becoming more defined.

“Obama’s give-and-take tax policy results in marginal tax rates of 34 percent to 39 percent in the $31,000 to $45,000 income range for this family. That’s an increase of 13 percentage points or more from the current rates.

What accounts for the higher rates? First, Obama expands the maximum child and dependent care credit for families with one young child from $1,050 to $1,500 and phases down the credit over a longer income range, from $30,000 to $58,000. Throughout this income range, the credit is phasing out at a rate of $30 per $1,000 of income, thus raising the effective tax rate by 3 percentage points. Obama also makes certain credits refundable, which introduces a tax penalty of 10 percent or 15 percent, depending on the income bracket.

While Obama has publicly embraced a tax rate of 40 percent for couples earning over $350,000, his tax policies would result in a staggering 45 percent effective marginal rate in the $110,000 to $120,000 income range for this family. That is 11 percentage points higher than under current law.”

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Tweedy, Browne Q2 Letter Released

The Tweedy, Browne Q2 letter has been released. Chris Browne if you remember is the author of the fine book “The Little Book of Value Investing

From the Letter:
“In our funds, it has been financial and media stocks that have accounted for a large part of our poor performance year to date. Even more recession-resistant companies such as our food and beverage holdings have performed poorly, as traders rotate in and out of groups of stocks in response to headline news and Wall Street research reports, which we consider extremely short-term oriented in their perspective. With the exception of a few oil companies in our high dividend fund, we have found precious little value in the high flying energy and basic material stocks which have been the darlings of the market. Strong core holdings such as Nestle (NESN) and Kone (KNEBV), where underlying fundamentals remain very strong and near-term corporate performance has been solid, have also been impacted by investor preference for all things energy and commodity-related. Following this update is a more complete statistical attribution analysis and performance history for each of our funds.

It should come as no surprise that pricing opportunities are surfacing and the discount between market value and intrinsic value is growing in the bulk of our portfolio. Our portfolio, in our view, has rarely been cheaper than it is today. In some instances the valuations seem somewhat anomalistic. For example, over the last several months we have established a position in Swiss Re (SWCEY), the world’s largest reinsurance company. The company at initial purchase was trading at 5 times earnings, 77% of book value, 70% of imbedded value and a 6% dividend yield. Earlier this year, Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett (BRK.A) purchased a 3% position in the company, and has agreed to take on 20% of Swiss Re’s property & casualty business over the next 5 years freeing up reserves for a stock buyback. We have also been buying Telecinco, Spain’s largest television production company. At initial purchase, it was trading at 4 times pretax income (EBIT), and had a 17% dividend yield with net cash on its balance sheet.

Another deeply undervalued current holding is Medikit, a Japanese medical device company, which is currently trading at 1.6 times pre-tax income (EBIT), and has a 2.5% dividend yield, once again with net cash on the balance sheet. While all of our
stocks are not trading at these extreme valuations, they are indicative of some of the incredible bargains we are seeing in equity markets. Unfortunately, great opportunity is invariably accompanied by bad macroeconomics and near-term uncertainty. If the picture were clear, the pricing opportunity would not exist. In times like this, investors must try to steel their nerves and ignore the ever present market pundits who predict stock market collapses at the end of an era. These voices seem to always drown out more reasoned thought in times such as the
present.

As you know, in recent years, we have been less than sanguine about the high valuation levels of public equities which afforded investors very little in the way of a “margin of safety”. We always promised our clients that when we felt it was time to add to their accounts, we would let them know. Well, the time has come, in our estimation, if your measure is buying businesses cheap. While no one can call the tipping point and stocks could indeed have further to fall, at current price levels, we feel we are being presented with unusual opportunities. Carpe diem.


Full Letter

Disclosure (“none” means no position):None

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Oil Prices and Dow Chemical’s Q3

Let’s look at the information gleamed from Dow chemical’s (DOW) Q2’s release and call and do a little projection for Q3.

In the call
the following exchange was had:
Jeffrey Zekauskas – JPMorgan
“Good morning. On average shouldn’t your raw material costs be down sequentially in the third quarter? Natural gas has gone from — I don’t know — $12 to $9 and oil has come from $135 to $125?”

Geoffery E. Merszei – Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; Member of the Board of Directors
“Yeah Jeff, this is Geoffrey here. Just to take oil, Brent crude average price as of this morning, let’s say, $124, $125. At today’s level it is still higher than our average cost during the first quarter. The average cost in the first quarter was around $122. I’m using crude as a reference point. And we are already towards the end of the first month of one-third of the quarter. So if you use an average rate for the third quarter of let’s say around $125, $126 then you are talking about over $0.5 billion additional cost for the company to absorb.”

It would look like that based on current demand for its products every $3 plus or minus in its cost of oil results in about a $500 million cost increase or decrease.

Dow’s Q2 average was $122 and change and oil now sits at $117. What is also of interest is the price increases announced earlier this summer were only about 40% implemented during Q2. By the time Q3 is finished, they ought to be fully implemented which means revenues ought to post another record quarter assuming no dramatic demand destruction (unlikely).

What does it all mean? Should oil prices remain lower than $122 for the quarter and with the price increases now fully implemented, the 66 cents a share earnings that analysts anticipate are beginning to look as though it is far too low.

Where are we at? July crude averaged $134 and August so far is at $120 and falling. On ought to expect that to fall father as July’s numbers were boosted by the early spike to $145 a barrel and to this point in August we have been below $120 for most of it. Of course one should also assume Dow may be entering into more contracts at lower prices now and that this will reduce the average purchase below just a simple daily average reading.

What if oil stays high? Let’s go with the scenario that oil ends up at the same $122 a barrel for Q3. We still have the implementation of the price increases coming through the system that will boost revenues.

This is a fun exercise but when you look at it, as the year goes by it becomes far less necessary. Dow has essentially traded 50% interest in its oil dependent commodity business to Kuwait for Rohm and Hass (ROH) in its entirety and picked up Berkshire Hathaway’s (BRK.A) Warren Buffett as an investor to boot. Not a bad deal when you look at it that way.

It is still only 1/2 way through the quarter but I am thinking there are going to be a whole lot of shareholders very happy with the earnings surprise Dow turns in after Q3 is over…

Disclosure (“none” means no position):Long Dow, None

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"Least Trustworthy CEO"

Check out this post from Bary Ritholtz.

It list a poll from Portfolio that readers voted on. Now, what is odd is that the quotes are all the same. Wouldn’t you think they would just stop making performance promises?

The Big Picture

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