RE:RE:RE:Analyst upgrades are iffyNow I think we need to show some respect, we're in the presence of royalty. It goes hand in hand with rent seeking after all.
I forget the origin of the quote, I think it's Munger or Buffett. Mgmt is the caretaker. It goes something like "if you don't like the gardener, you don't sell your house. You fire the gardener."
WEF has 7 named Execs, which seems lower than I recall. Maybe they are leaning up. Yet, I know of loads of VPs not named on the site -- maybe title inflation only, but I doubt it. There is also an intractable web of other sub-Execs -- those VPs, plus the Directors, Senior Managers, etc. It's not a lean org. You have the rough structure (and compo) of a far larger company -- this is what I'd expect of a West Fraser, with more than 10x the capitalization. But we don't like to address cap, do we -- it's because the strike is no longer blameworthy for a reason on why this is trading at under 1/2 of the 2018 high. Most are nearly caught up now. The issue is a lack of strategic positioning to capitalize on this upcoming cycle. Too focused on specialty, too inept to produce heavy volumes of low conversion cost commodity Hem-Fir, too Japan-centric, too bound by BC.
The news this AM is the rumoured infrastructure package is $3 Trillion. I had been thinking the $1T version wouldn’t happen, but Georgia flipped. This is huge for wood. I posted it in more detail on the CFF board, incidentally as I envision a lot of concrete. It’s going to be small stuff, like concrete forming (i.e. the China play from the past few decades) that push lumber into orbit. My worry is you don’t form concrete with high value products. They have the upside already for DF and Cedar fancy stuff, but they need to be able to better exploit economies of scale and geographic diversification.