Update On My Value Investing Book, Discount For You Loyal Readers, Company Research, Another Baby Girl, and Dole Shareholders Getting Screwed.

I have been spending the bulk of my time lately getting ready to move, getting ready for another baby girl coming in late October, and writing my book.

We are staying in the same area just getting a bigger house to accommodate our growing family but packing and doing house related things to get ready for closing on both of our houses on the same day later in June, yikes, has been taking up the majority of my time in recent weeks.  Excited but also cannot wait until we are moved and settled in so things can start slowing down again and I can start working on me and my brothers business and researching companies more.  I have been researching companies very slowly but up to this point I am finding everything to still be overvalued.  The search continues though and I hope to pick up steam again after I move and get the book finished.

I am done writing my book and am now onto the editing and revision stage.  So far I have gone through the introduction and six chapters and am getting very excited.  While I was writing the book I was just trying to get the main transcript done without concentrating much on how good it actually was.  Now that I am able to read through the transcript as I am editing and revising it I am getting very excited because I think I will be able to help a lot of people become better investors faster and I cannot wait to release it to everyone.  I hope to have most of the editing and revising of the book done by early July and hope to release the book sometime in the mid October to mid November time frame.  I also plan to release a chapter or two online before the book comes out as well.  Of course if I get picked up by a publisher these things will likely change but if I self publish the book on places like Kindle and others than that is the time frame I am shooting for.

As a thank you to the loyal readers of this blog, my followers on Twitter and Seeking Alpha, and my Facebook friends I also wanted to let you know that if you follow me on this blog, Twitter, Facebook, or Seeking Alpha that you will be getting a 25% discount off of each package I am going to offer for my book.  The same discount is going to apply to anyone who mentions this blog or the upcoming book on Twitter, Facebook, or Reddit as well.  If you want a discount when the book comes out make sure to # or @ me on Twitter, get my attention on Facebook, or email with the link where you mentioned this blog or the upcoming book as I will start to keep a list of everyone who has helped me promote this book and who has supported me while I was just getting started.  I also plan to offer an even bigger discount or prize of some kind for the person or people who help promote the book the most but have not come up with a solid idea for that yet.  Again this is all dependant on what a publisher would want to do if it comes to that but this is what I want to do.

I also want to let everyone know that we will be welcoming our second baby girl to this blog in late October whose name will be Kailani.  My family is one of the main reasons I have decided to write a book because I would like to find a way to start making some money from my investment writing so for every book package you buy.  Every book you buy or help promote will help support my family and keep continued free content on this blog, and it will be immensely appreciated.  I would like to keep most everything on this blog free except for the book and some other premium content I have planned and any help you can offer would help support that.

Yesterday news came out that the majority owner of Dole, Mr. Murdock, was attempting to take Dole private again at $12 a share.  Dole came public at a price of $12.50 a share a few years ago.  After some of the things that Dole management has done in the past few weeks from saying their land suddenly wasn’t worth as much money, to saying they were going to do a buyback, then a few days later not doing a buyback, to this low ball buy-out offer I am very glad that I got out of Dole when I did.  I figured that something fishy was going on when they said that some of their land suddenly wasn’t worth as much money as they thought and had a conversation with one of my followers on Seeking Alpha about how something funny was going on and how management might be trying to lower the price of the stock so they could take it private again.  Unfortunately it appears that I was right because by my conservative estimates Dole is worth somewhere between $15 and $22 a share.  If Dole management is able to pull this off and only take the company private for $12 a share then there should be an investigation into what management has done over the past month or so as its shareholders are about to get screwed.

I will continue to update happenings on the book and if I find a company to write an article on but until I move later this month posts will continue to be few and far between most likely.

Remember if you follow this blog, me on Twitter, Facebook, or Seeking Alpha you will get a discount on my book when it comes out so please share this with as many people as possible so they can get the discount too, thank you.

Until next time.

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Some Fantastic Links

Before I get back into research and finishing up my checklist I wanted to give you some links that I thought held some kind of insight or knowledge that we all could learn from.

Warren Buffett on his Investment in See’s. See’s is one of his favorite all time investments and I think his reasons for investing should be studied by every investor. Article is from Valuewalk, @Valuewalk on Twitter.

The Secret’s of See’s Candies is an extensive profile of the business, why Buffett bought it, why it is such a good business, its new expansion plans, and how Buffett and Munger almost blew the investment.

Visiting Warren Buffett are notes from someone who visited Berkshire Hathaway on a trip from Columbia Business School in 2006.  These notes are from an interview and speech that was given while on the trip where Buffett gives some very valuable lessons.  The most fascinating thing to me was that Buffett was the following quotes from the article: Emphasis mine.

Question 12: What would you pay for a solid company that is growing earnings at 8-10%/year?

Not many companies will do that. You see a lot of garbage about EBITDA. Depreciation is the worst kind of expense in that it is prepaid. He looks at EBIT/EV. He’ll generally pay 7x for a decent business. For insurance companies, he looks at float and the cost of float.

Looks like that could be a very good starting point for valuations.

Masters of Compounding: Walmart ($WMT) 1968-2012 is an exceptional article from Student of Value on the history of Walmart and what has made it such a fantastic company over time.  I would also recommend following @dgenchev on Twitter if you would like to see his future write ups as they have so far all been fantastic.

How an Average Business Can be a Great Investment by Oddball Stocks has some interesting thoughts about average businesses and their investment potential.  There is some great back and forth in the comments section as well.  I would also recommend reading his two write ups about Hanover Foods that he links to in the article as the analysis he presents is very detailed.

4 Mistakes When Valuing Companies With Large Cash Holdings, and How to Avoid Them is another fantastic write-up by Simple Value Investing.  I would also highly recommend following him on Twitter @SimpleValue as all of his write ups thus far have also been fantastic.  His write ups on Ibersol were very detailed and he laid out a very good investment case for them. Part 1 and Part 2.

I hope you enjoy the links over the next few days as I am now off to finish up my own investment checklist and to research some more companies.