This is a stock I talked about on a podcast with Andrew. It looked cheap based on the simple ratios you might use to decide if something’s a value stock. And the business of writing homeowner’s (and renter’s) insurance in Florida seemed...
Silvercrest Asset Management (SAMG) is an investment manager. It looks cheap if you expect it – as has been the case in the past – to do a good job of keeping its clients and keeping those clients keeping about as much money with them as...
This stock was brought to me by Andrew. He wanted to know more about the title insurance industry. ITIC is a publicly traded (it trades on NASDAQ) regional title insurer. There are four large, national title insurers that account for...
Alico (ALCO) is a landowner in Florida. The company is – or is quickly becoming – basically just an owner of citrus groves that produce oranges for use in Tropicana orange juice. The majority of the land Alico owns is still ranch land....
I’m revisiting Marcus (MCS) with an attempt to appraise the hotel side of the business. Andrew sent me some articles discussing property tax appraisal of Milwaukee hotels (including those owned by Marcus). I looked at some other property...
Marcus (MCS) is not an overlooked stock. Despite having a market cap of around $300 million – the level usually defined as the cut-off between a “micro cap” and a “small cap” stock – well over $10 million worth of this company’s stock...
I’m writing again about Hingham (HIFS), because someone asked me this question: I was wondering how long it would take Geoff to talk about Hingham savings, seems to tick all his boxes – very low cost of funding on the...
This is the one “higher quality, more expensive” bank I mentioned in the podcast Andrew and I did where we talked about like eight or so different U.S. banks. Hingham’s price-to-book (1.7x) is very high compared to most U.S. banks. It is,...
This is a simple situation. But, you’ll want some background info before reading my take on it. Information you might find useful about this one can be found at: Clark Street Value Hidden Value Seeking Alpha And my comments in this...
Flanigan’s (BDL) is a nano-cap full service restaurant and discount liquor store company. All of its locations are in Florida. And all but one of the locations are in South Florida. The company’s ticker – “BDL” – comes from the name of...
This is a follow-up article on Libsyn (LSYN). In my initial interest post on the company I talked a little about the fact that company’s CEO was named in an SEC complaint. That complaint was directed at the former CFO of the company and...
This is a complicated one. So, I’m going to do my best to boil it down to the things that really matter. That’s a judgment call. And it means I may be focusing on the wrong things. I may not be telling you enough about some things that do...
I’ll be doing write-ups on Focused Compounding more frequently now. This means that the quality of the ideas will be lower. Previously, I’d tried to focus on writing up just stocks that looked interesting enough to possibly qualify as...
This might turn out to be a shorter initial interest write-up than some, because there isn’t as much to talk about with this company. It’s pretty simple. The company is BAB (BABB). The “BAB” stands for Big Apple Bagel. This is the entity...
I mentioned this stock on a recent podcast. This is more of an initial interest post than usual. It’s likely I’ll follow this post up with one that goes into more detail. Two things I don’t analyze in this write-up are: 1) What this...
Otis Worldwide (OTIS) is the world’s biggest elevator and escalator company. Like Carrier (CARR) – which I wrote up two days ago – it was spun-off from United Technologies. However, shareholders of United Technologies received one share...
Carrier (CARR) is a recent spin-off from United Technologies. The company has leading brands in Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC), fire & safety, and refrigeration. The best known brand is the company’s namesake:...
Mills Music Trust (MMTRS) is an illiquid, over-the-counter stock. In fact, it’s not a stock at all. The security traded is a “trust certificate” that entitles the holder to quarterly distributions from the trust. These “dividends” are not...
Interpublic (IPG) is one of the big ad agency holding companies around the world. Other examples include Omnicom (also a U.S. company), WPP (a U.K. company), Publicis (a French company), and Dentsu (a Japanese company). There are...
Miller Industries (MLR) has a lot of things to like about it. But, the timing of buying this stock now definitely isn’t one of them. Miller is in a very cyclical, highly durable capital good industry – it produces “car wreckers” and “car...
