Platform Value : The Fall?
Summary
Discussion of the potential effects on equity, bond, commodity, capital and asset markets regarding:
Pershing Square Holdings; Platform Specialty Products; Canadian Pacific.
Valeant Pharmaceuticals; Platform Value; Leverage.
Index Fund Bubble; Liquidity Gap.
(click to enlarge)
In Los Angeles, circa 1915, a silent movie "flickers" stunt man (Lee Pace) has his legs paralyzed while performing a reckless stunt. While hospitalized, the injured stuntman begins to tell a fellow patient, a little girl (Catinca Untaru) with a broken arm, a fantastic story of five mythical heroes. Roy's tale is about six heroes: a silent Indian warrior, a muscular ex-slave named Otta Benga, an Italian explosives expert called Luigi, Charles Darwin with a pet monkey called Wallace, and a masked swashbuckling bandit. An evil ruler named Governor Odious has committed an offense against each of them, who all seek revenge. The group is later joined by a sixth hero, a mystic. Thanks to Roy's fractured state of mind (verbal input) and Alexandria's vivid imagination (visual output), as the line between fiction and reality blurs, together they build a preposterous world. A visually stunning epic fantasy (amazingly with no CGI) that the child in you will either hate or fall in love with.
A mad folly, an extravagant visual orgy, a free-fall from reality into uncharted realms. Surely it is one of the wildest indulgences a director has ever granted himself. Filmed over four years in 28 countries and a movie that you might want to see for no other reason than because it exists. There will never be another like it. - Roger Ebert
Free falling mad folly?
From Bill Ackman's letter to Pershing Square Holding's (OTCPK:PSHZF) shareholders: "Our biggest valuation error was assigning too much value to the so-called "platform value" in certain of our holdings.We believe that "platform value" is real, but, as we have been painfully reminded it is a much more ephemeral form of value... [which] depends on access to low-cost capital... and the pricing environment for transactions."
We pull no punches, what Ackman really believes but can't say is, his business model is based on keeping people in the market. Much like Roy (in The Fall) Ackman does not "Ack-knowledge" the market follyof the "platform value" paradigm which has obviously caused Pershing Square and his "Valeant Fall".
Platform Specialty Products
(click to enlarge)
This missive was published as an exclusive to Seeking Alpha. To access the ENTIRE text for FREE on Seeking Alpha, please click here. The Nattering One does not receive remuneration if you register, only satisfaction.
There is no cost involved and it has been our experience that if you exert control (by unchecking a box of two) over your communications settings in your Seeking Alpha profile, your email inbox will not be polluted with one bit of Spam (not even the cured pork shoulder variety. Tasty even.)
As we are now a "contributor" at Seeking Alpha, our published articles, instablog and comments can be found here. Please continue to follow The Nattering Naybob here and at Seeking Alpha. We thank you for your support.
Comments