August 13, 2007

Who loves us?

It was about time that I read a Warren Buffet book. And I have to admit, it aroused some of the old feelings. So here I am, writing an update after all these years. He's a fairly simple guy. He likes predictable businesses are within his realm of competence. He likes companies with track records and is not very impressed with restructuring stories. After all, if you've been on the ball all this time, you wouldn't need a major overhaul at some defined period. You'd be making small changes all the time. He also favors annual reports that are understandable. He's of the opinion that if something can't be understood, it's intentional.

Anyway, I checked out the PSE site and tried to see exactly what companies are investor focused. Who proactively tries to inform us? I've loved JFC all my life and I still think that it will provide value. In fact, I will buy it during the next downturn. But it's a bit disappointing when I tried downloading the 2006 annual report from the site. It was the 2005 report that was downloaded. No, it wasn't a user error. So apparently, providing this information is not a priority. Tsk...tsk...I then checked one of the old reliables: ALI. I remembered ALI as a low returns kinda company. Apparently this has not changed. It's ROE over the past five years has been below 10%. How dismal is that? And considering that foreign ownership is at ceiling, a downturn will probably kill its stock price. I then checked one of my old speculative favorites: MEG. The link in the PSE website is wrong! You'd think someone would've moved to correct this, right? And when I found the actual site via Google, it turns out the financial highlights presented are for 2005. So no, I don't think this company focuses on providing its investors information. I'll go sell one of these days. Until next time.