Matt Schifrin’s Forbes “Buffetts next door” blog shines the spotlight on Tim Eriksen, one of Marketocracy’s best stock pickers (see his track record). Eriksen identifies a few stocks that I hold, and for the same reasons:
Vodafone (VOD). Vodafone is one of the world’s largest mobile communications providers in the world. Vodafone owns 45% of Verizon Wireless, which it has not been getting any dividend from due to cash flow being used to pay down debt. Verizon Wireless is expected to be debt free relatively soon, leaving the business with significant cash flow that can be distributed to the owners (Verizon and Vodafone). Shares trade at approximately 10 times earnings and the stock has a near 6% yield.
Reading International (RDI). RDI is in the business of owning and operating cinemas, as well as developing real estate in the U.S., Australia and New Zealand. RDI has 23 million shares outstanding and trades just under its book value of $4.85 per share. It recently announced that it is selling a large property in Australia. I believe the sale could bring close to $100 million, or a $50 million pre-tax gain. The sale should increase book value by $1.50 per share. More importantly the sale will provide the company with $80 million in cash, after taxes, which the company can use to reduce debt, develop other real estate parcels, and repurchase stock.
See the RDI archive here.
Long VOD and RDI.
Greenbackd 
Andrew,
“My” metrics can be found on page 14 of RDI’s most recent 10Q
50.6 acres with a current carrying value of 50.2 million $ equals a valuation of just under 1 m $ per acre.
Now the question is whether that is heavily undervalued, or not. As said in previous post, I googled around a bit since I myself have no idea how much undeveloped land is worth in urban/suburban areas and found the analysis on affordable housing (which I linked there) in Canada where the author estimates $1m/acre in outer urban areas. If you have any better numbers / guesstimates, I’d love to hear them.
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going through old posts, I note that subsequent to your question. Reading put out a press release summarizing its disclosures made at its May 2011 Annual meeting, including one that discussed CBRE appraisals done on two of the three zoned pieces of Burwood. The full press release can be found at http://www.readingrdi.com/pdf/2011-05-24%20Annual%20Meeting%20Press%20Release.pdf The three different zones being referred to are illustrated in the parcel map Reading has on their website at http://www.readingrdi.com/pdf/Burwood%20Plan.pdf The green portion is the residential portion for sale with the AUS$1.7MM/acre appraisal and the Blue portion is the commercial/residential piece for sale with the AUS$11.5MM appraisal. The yellow entertainment/retail piece is what Reading will be developing on its own or in JV with others.
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Gino,
I don’t understand your metrics nor where you get your figures for what Burwood is on Reading’s books for.
If it is of any help to you I think my reply to a comment by Albert on a separate RDI post provides substantial history and information on Burwood that might help you refine your analysis.
This reply can be found at https://greenbackd.com/2010/06/24/guest-post-andrew-shapiro-updates-reading-international-inc-nasdaqrdi/#comments
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About RDI:
I’ve been looking into that Burwood sale and to be honest, I don’t see 100 million in that piece of land.
If you google per acre prices of developed (and I’m not even sure if Burwood would qualify as that), you get estimates ranging from 800k to 1.3k (like http://www.vtpi.org/aff_acc_hou.pdf p.24). I also asked a few people who are familiar with those prices in continental Europe and they roughly agreed with that figure.
Since they currently have it on their books for over 900k, I’m skeptical that there’s major upside in that sale.
I’m not saying there’s no opportunity in that stock, but I think this Burwood sale is overrated.
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