#Windstar Enterprises

[trevlad-sounds]

Invisible Club 44

18.12.2024

Ghost Power – Asteroid Witch – 00:00 Gaudi Kosmisches Trio – In A Modern World – 03:53 deepspace – Sunny Hypnagogia Heights – 08:00 Common Saints – Sweet Surrender – 11:48 Neutral Milk Hotel – A Baby for Pree-Glow Into You – 1995 – 14:49 Misha Panfilov – Storm – 17:17 Zybro – Zybro 2009 – 21:42 Correlations – Blossom – 24:17 THE GAYE DEVICE – The Clean Wave – 27:14 Conrad Schnitzler – 5:50 – 31:36 Neverending Audit – Change To Transient – 36:37 Andrew Wasylyk | Tommy Perman – Climb Like a Floating Vapour – 38:30 Tycho – To Everywhere Pt. 1 – 41:02 cable.percussion – xyz – 42:03 Windstar Enterprises – Ovation – 46:32 Frunk29 – Flyboat – 48:15

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Windstar Enterprises - Solutions...

Never

Be The Same

Again

[scannerly]

Journal: August 7, 2000

• Buy 350 shares of Carnival (CCL) at the market.

You've got more time than you think Before I get to today's pick, let me take a moment to respond to the recent suggestion that as a 29-year-old, I simply possess long-term investment horizons. Hmmm. Living in Silicon Valley proper, I could write volumes in response. Suffice it to say that the twentysomethings I meet are not often interested in my 10-to-20-year analysis horizons. Although you may trade frequently, the wind should be at your back. If all else fails, a long-term hold should pull you through. And the only consistent, prevailing wind in the investment world is that of the present value of future cash flows.

As a practical matter, professional investors are absolutely handcuffed by short-term quarterly expectations. That's why I don't run a mutual fund -- I need control over what sort of investor becomes a client. Of course, financial planners often impose the same quarterly bugaboo on their private money managers. I stay away from those as well. Focusing on quarterly targets is not a method for removing undue risk. On the contrary, it throws the portfolio manager in with the cattle call that is modern investment marketing -- even though increasing firm assets is of little direct benefit to an individual client -- and by default places the portfolio manager's operations in the "risk equals reward" paradigm. The competitive advantage therefore rests with those investors who can go where inefficiency reigns and risk is uncoupled from reward -- beyond the quarterly and/or yearly performance mandate.

Health care will continue to improve, and many people should live a lot longer than they or their financial planners think. As a result, it hardly seems imprudent for people older than me to consider the longer, safer road to investment success. Twentysomethings and thirtysomethings have no unique claim on this path, and often ignore it anyway. It is a complex subject, but without issuing too broad a generalization, there is often time to accept longer-term rewards regardless of age.

Cruising with Carnival Now let's get back to picking a few good stocks. Given the space left, I'll go with one -- Carnival (CCL). As the No. 1 cruise operator in the world, Carnival Corp. has five cruise lines – Carnival, Holland America, Cunard, Seabourn and Windstar -- spanning 36 wholly-owned ships with capacity for more than 45,000 passengers. Carnival also markets sightseeing tours and through subsidiary Holland America, it operates 14 hotels, 280 motor coaches, 13 private domed rail cars, and two luxury "dayboats."

Carnival also owns 26% of Airtours, which operates more than 1,000 retail travel shops, 46 resorts, 42 aircraft and four cruise ships. Carnival and Airtours co-own a majority interest in Italian cruise operator Costa Crociere, operator of six Mediterranean luxury cruise ships with capacity for 7,103 passengers.

During the 1990s, the world was Carnival's oyster. Return on assets marched steadily upward from 8.4% to 13.3%, and return on equity was similarly stable, ranging between 20.1% and 22.5% over the 10-year period. And this is not leveraged -- debt as a percentage of capital fell from 51% to under 13% over the same period. This, of course, implies that return on invested capital steadily rose, and indeed it did, from 9.8% to a bit over 15%.

Recently, however, fuel costs skyrocketed and interest rates rose just as the supply of ships caught up with softening demand, resulting in pricing pressure. Return on equity slipped under 19%, and the stock fell 60% off its highs and now touches the bottom it hit during the October, 1998 currency crisis. After the initial hit, it was hit some more with news of a soft second half of 2000 amid several cruise cancellations.

Carnival still best of breed The basic demographics still favor the industry -- affluent baby boomers will live longer and become a more-significant part of the passenger mix. And Carnival remains the best of its breed, with the highest margins and best management. Moreover, it has historically been difficult to predict the demand fluctuations in the cruise industry. Soft and strong periods alternate without a lot of reason at times. There are reasons now for softer demand and the pricing difficulties, but it is just as possible that with the U.S. economy still fundamentally strong, demand will fluctuate back to the strong side sooner than most think.

In the meantime, here's a stock trading at just 11 times earnings despite a long record of 20% growth. With the company maturing and growth slowing a bit, momentum players have abandoned the stock completely, and few are willing to be patient for the hiccups to stop. The recovery could take the stock up three-fold in the next three to five years. The company is currently a little over 60% through a $1 billion stock buyback it announced last February. In the process, about 10% of the stock has been retired. The company has also been working to broaden its product reach into the baby boomer segment. A recent alliance with Fairfield, a large timeshare operator, is the most tangible evidence of this to date, but other distribution channel initiatives are forthcoming.

The downside risk is low, as simply replacing the ships and other critical operating assets of Carnival would cost more than the current market capitalization, which prices the brand equity as a negative number. And for those investors wanting to stick it to the IRS, here's a chance to do it. While headquartered in Miami, Carnival is a Panama-chartered corporation and does not pay U.S. income taxes -- the overall tax rate is less than 1%. Ironically, the biggest real threat is this thumb in the eye of the IRS. Will the IRS find a way to tax Carnival? It is an open question, but one that Carnival feels is answered in its favor.

Perceptions of the company and the industry are profoundly negative on Wall Street. At an enterprise value less than 11 times EBITDA and with the shares trading at replacement value, I'm buying 350 shares.

[trevlad-sounds]

Invisible Club 43

11.12.2024

Ogle – Yokai Parade 00:00 Elías González – Revelaciones por Telegram 01:55 Nitai Hershkovits, Rejoicer – Oye Igal 03:19 Virgo – Lost Lexicon 07:08 Rhombus Index – Digital Anemone (Rhombus Index Ambient Mix) 13:56 Rum Guzzler – Night Safari 18:16 MuchaMuchaM – Riango Pongo 20:42 30 Door Key – Mistery & Imagination 23:26 Correlations – Hanami 25:13 World Brain – Fromage collatéral 28:38 Von Spar – Garzweiler III 31:14 Anna Butterss – Saturno 35:23 Uncle Fido – They Approach a Trumpeter 40:10 COSMO – Alquimista 41:54 Futuregrapher – Rauðþörungar 44:29 Windstar Enterprises – Guided Viewing 51:29

[trevlad-sounds]

For the birds 029

29.11.2024

Intro 00:00 Mike Dickinson–The Tree of Lives 01:09 Futuregrapher–Ringo Is High 06:31 Domotic–Part six 15:10 swanasa–Swan Song 19:48 Goat–All is One 25:24 Windstar Enterprises–Uniroyal 28:01 Parker Tichko–Gametophyte Green 32:04 Keigo Tatsumi–us 34:30 Rhucle & morimoto naoki–Kigi 40:22 Matthewdavid–Tract of Hidden Animalia 42:35

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Windstar Enterprises - Solutions