PGW - PGG Wrightson

[winner69]

I am very impressed by the level of recent debate here.

But why anyone would want to be invested in the stock at present completely mystifies me.

Best Wishes
Paper Tiger

Thanks for the compliment PT

Maybe we have a clash of egos going on ....from my journal and cant remember who said it ......"Humans will always have a burning urge to be right and in an ideal world everyone would be right about everything even if it contradicted reality but this would be a paradox, there is such thing as true and false despite what people want to believe."

Maybe that's where this discussion should end .....and let's get back to PGW related stuff only

[Agrarinvestor]

@Snoopy

>>Sparky, Agria did default on their LIC loan. Agria are currently in difficult negotiations with their Chinese and US banks. I think it is all too soon to call, to see if Agria will make it in their current form. Nevertheless one thing is certain. Continuing losses and negative cashflow is not a 'just meandering along' position.<<

Agria had made an extension arrangement with LIC, for that you can not say "they defaulted". If you are serious in investigating the matters of a company you should follow Sparkys example and call the people who know the truth. For the Lic Loans you can call Mr. King from LIC. You have made a lot of strong accusions to Agria and all of them were wrong, except that they will make a loss in 2013.
Agria is an agressiv growing company, it could be possible that in a few years Agrias name is a household name for seeds. PGW will benefit from their teamwork. And in my opinion Agria as the majority shareholder will benefit more.
In their earning release you find one sentence that i thpought would be an error.

>>We expect further consolidation trends in the global agriculture industry, and in particular, in markets which would create merger and acquisition opportunities for us, including North America and Greater China<<
Do you really mean North ?
North America forage variety especially alfalfas is key source of forage imports for China. Together with our PGW forage expertise, we see opportunity to identify suitable strategy in North America so that we will have full array of forage seeds offering to the vast market in China.

That must mean they have found a new investor. Together with the recent recovering of the shareprice and the statements from Mr. Lai i am currently thinking of
repurchasing my shares i had sold.

>>"In three years we could be in the top 10 seeds companies in the world . That is our vision. In 10 years we want to be US$10 billion turnover."<<

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/n...ectid=10875679

[Snoopy]

>>Sparky, Agria did default on their LIC loan. Agria are currently in difficult negotiations with their Chinese and US banks. I think it is all too soon to call, to see if Agria will make it in their current form. Nevertheless one thing is certain. Continuing losses and negative cashflow is not a 'just meandering along' position.<<

Agria had made an extension arrangement with LIC, for that you can not say "they defaulted". If you are serious in investigating the matters of a company you should follow Sparkys example and call the people who know the truth. For the Lic Loans you can call Mr. King from LIC. You have made a lot of strong accusions to Agria and all of them were wrong, except that they will make a loss in 2013.

The loan to LIC was due to be fully repaid last year. It was partly renegotiated at higher punitive interest rates, because Agria could not fully repay it. Granted this means that Agria did not default in terms of not paying anything back. But it was a 'technical default' in terms of being unable to fulfill the original loan agreement.

In their earning release you find one sentence that i thought would be an error.

>>We expect further consolidation trends in the global agriculture industry, and in particular, in markets which would create merger and acquisition opportunities for us, including North America and Greater China<<
Do you really mean North ?
North America forage variety especially alfalfas is key source of forage imports for China. Together with our PGW forage expertise, we see opportunity to identify suitable strategy in North America so that we will have full array of forage seeds offering to the vast market in China. [COLOR=black]

That must mean they have found a new investor.

Yes, well sleuthed Agrainvestor. Agria does need more equity and finding a new investor would be one solution. It may sound a bit crazy but consider this.

The USA imports so much from China, there must be a lot of empty containers going back from the USA to China to keep bringing in that wall of manufactured goods. What if some of those containers were filled with forage, destined for Chinese farms? Ordinarily it would be uneconomic to do such a thing. But if the container space was available at a much reduced rental, maybe such a scheme could be made to work?

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/n...ectid=10875679

And now a quote from the Herald article, talking about a new combined seed company.

"Post the merger (and some prospective M&A activity in the US) PGG Wrightson would have less than one-third of the new company."

What was Lai referring to when he mentioned "prospective M&A activity in the US?". Could that be an oblique reference to bringing on board a new equity partner? If so that could explain why Lai sees PGW only owning one third of a combined seeds company in the future, when given the existing size of Agritech and Agria that one third shareholding would clearly be an unfair balance of power.

SNOOPY

[Snoopy]

Snoopy wrote:
"At the point we sit in the business cycle with the heavy debt burden the company carries it is unlikely that PGW will pay a dividend for at least eight years."
1. Your post about no dividends was pretty black and white. You are trying to twist your own words now.

I have made my point about this Sparky, and I see no need to say more. The only point I will add is that your definition of black and white is not the same as mine.

Agria will not necessarily be taken down by their bankers due to relationships. A technical default would not necessarily trigger receivership if steps were in place address the debt, as Agria appears to have done.

For someone so keen on checking stuff out with management Sparky, your statement on what Agria management is up to is pretty woolly. Of course it has to be that way because Agria has not announced exactly how they have restructured their debt. And Agria don't have to until they are required to file their 20F report for FY2013, in September or thereabouts. I see little point in debating the financial health of Agriaany more until more information comes into the public domain. In the meantime you are fully entitled to keep those blinkers on and consider that Agria are 'just muddling along' and doing OK.

3. If you bothered to ask questions of management, you would have realised the very hot and dry weather from January-March has been perfect weather for generating seed buying in April-June. As George Gould himself has noted, their agriservices business has been going great for pumps and irrigation equipment. You also ignore posts by farmers about how they are busy undersowing in preparation for rain. A bad year for farmers does not mean they give up on the preparation and planning for future years. if anything, it is a trigger for them to invest more.

Farmers are a very diverse bunch Sparky. Some may have the cash to do a pre-winter sow and hope. Others will not have the resources to do this. Pumping and Irrigation may be going well, but it is not big enough to make up for a downturn in the rest of the Agriservices business.

In addition, debt has been paid back meaning PGW pay less interest, meaning money straight to the bottom line. But again, you seek to twist your own words by accusing me of being too optimistic. It is you who said 2.5c in earnings per share FOR THE NEXT EIGHT YEARS!. In fact, PGW delivered 3.1c last year (over 20% more than your flat lining figure for year one of the next eight years).

Yes looking back my 2.5eps estimate was before the result was announced. PGW did have a good year last year, better than I expected. But you misunderstand my 2.5eps for future years. That is a business cycle average. It doesn't mean I am predicting 2.5cps for the next eight years every year.

SNOOPY

[futurist]

To get a clear picture of who has been putting who down, you only need to read PGW and HNZ threads on sharetrader to see that SNOOPY has been obsessed at putting both Sparky and me down.As I have pointed out on HNZ thread he has a history of being wrong.Sparky has cleared the air by pointing out Snoopy's incorrect posts.
We all try to help each other learn and better understand companies,so it is only fair to point out who has a history of getting things wrong.I think most of us admit to our mistakes.Snoopy has failed to apologise once.

Why insists someone else have to apologize to you or the clown or the point of view you both share with many others? I may disagree with Snoopy and tend to agree with you guys, but actually I prefer the existence of Snoopy simply because I have already bought into one side of the debate so I am much more interested to know more about the other side. The best situation for all of us is to balance between the two views with as much knowledge spilled over from and to everyone as possible.

It is difficult to define right and wrong because as long as the world is still moving, things are changing and so it only depends on at which time you decide to evaluate and then measure. Please, stop the personal attack and focus on the issue. I really enjoy reading the analysis from Snoopy even I don't take that view. But I may change my mind one day, who knows, you could too.

[percy]

Why insists someone else have to apologize to you or the clown or the point of view you both share with many others? I may disagree with Snoopy and tend to agree with you guys, but actually I prefer the existence of Snoopy simply because I have already bought into one side of the debate so I am much more interested to know more about the other side. The best situation for all of us is to balance between the two views with as much knowledge spilled over from and to everyone as possible.

It is difficult to define right and wrong because as long as the world is still moving, things are changing and so it only depends on at which time you decide to evaluate and then measure. Please, stop the personal attack and focus on the issue. I really enjoy reading the analysis from Snoopy even I don't take that view. But I may change my mind one day, who knows, you could too.

I think it is just a case of manners .
I always apologise when I have been wrong.
The personal attack was very much against me on HNZ thread.
Read it.Nothing remotely constructive.And surely that is the real issue?
HNZ directors and management told us they were engaging with The Reserve Bank for a banking licence,and it was not too far away,while Snoopy would not listen,but chose to post that according to Reserve Bank Banking Licence application form it would be 3 years.One phone call was all it would have taken him to check that out.Analyst ? Come on!
Much the same with HNZ's equity ratio.Analyst? No.
Both of these grave errors of judgement could have influenced any one reading his posts.

[futurist]

I think it is just a case of manners .
I always apologise when I have been wrong.
The personal attack was very much against me on HNZ thread.
Read it.Nothing remotely constructive.And surely that is the real issue?
HNZ directors and management told us they were engaging with The Reserve Bank for a banking licence,and it was not too far away,while Snoopy would not listen,but chose to post that according to Reserve Bank Banking Licence application form it would be 3 years.One phone call was all it would have taken him to check that out.Analyst ? Come on!
Much the same with HNZ's equity ratio.Analyst? No.
Both of these grave errors of judgement could have influenced any one reading his posts.

If it is really about manners, then why are you hunting Snoopy regarding HNZ in the PGW thread? Show some manners to the rest of us here.

Moreover, you have already reinforced that point about phone call; while yes it is a good idea to call and talk to people if you know who to talk to, honestly can you say this is the strategy that can be applied across all investors? Not to mention that as much information you could source from a phone call, equally there could be misinformation too. You simply cannot conclude that calling the management is always 100% the best move, can you? Same thing applies to Snoopy's method. He relies on published reports which could contain both signal and noise. However, he makes his assumptions very explicit upfront and so we know where he actually feels uncertain. He also scopes things well so I can always tell what is inside and what is outside of his analysis.

At the end of the day, we all make our own decisions and being responsible for ourselves. I don't think the purpose of a forum is for people to blindly believe in someone and follow without thinking. As I said, I may not agree with Snoopy but I value his contribution and would like to continue to hear his voice in this forum without him being attacked. I am not only interested in the result of his analysis, but the way he thinks and frames the issues. Therefore, he does not have to be right about everything and certainly does not have to apologize for them.

Do us a favor, stop the hunting now. If you have some recent conversations with PGW's management or whatever, share with us. I want to know for instance if anyone thinks the collapse of gold would indicate the rise of US$ soon enough to push the share market to hell soon? Is the thing with Agria just noise? Please, continue the discussion. Thank you!

[futurist]

Exactly! That's why some people call, some don't; some believe what they hear, some don't. What is the big deal here? Why call yourself a clown when you don't know how to cheer up?

That link ... those are your opinions but not methodologies. You cannot develop a method without an ontological position which differentiates that method and the meta-method from existing ones. Whatever, call what you want, could we go back to discuss real matters?

[futurist]

I could call myself a religious professor and work out why God has granted me a new acquaintance like you without any prayerful request on my part.

Or I could ignore you on the grounds that my methods work for me, and investing isn't a zero sum game where in order to make money, I need to see you lose money. We can all be prosperous together.

Or I could ask you, in a firm yet polite way to state your own thoughts on PGW instead of trying to play judge. It's possible I might learn something. Even better, I might be highly amused.

So go on, tell us what you think of PGW, and why....

I am not playing judge, because I am not concluding anything here. I simply express my opinion which I believe I am not alone on this - stop the personal attack. If I could take some heat away from Snoopy, I don't mind that though

Investment is not zero-sum game, but speculation is. Discussion is not zero-sum, but personal attack is. Do you see the difference?

I don't have opinion on PGW, that's why I am here! Your ongoing hunting of the cartoon character is destroying the reason I spend my time in this forum and many others as well. Of course I also wonder why the market has not been kind to PGW, but that does not mean I have a belief behind that just because I am curious. Snoopy offers some of his thought, so do you. That was great, until somehow you think it is important to increase your voice to cover his. Of course you can ignore me, or anyone here for that matter, but what is your final goal then? Haven't you preached enough on the subject related to Snoopy?

Maybe I am more a macro guy so I don't really have that kind of sensors you guys have to look into a single company with all that details. That's why I appreciate the debate to reveal more for all of us, but not the meaningless attack. Have I made myself clear enough for you to understand?

[futurist]

Look, if you don't like what I say, use the ignore button. I'm not going to defer my interest in defending my homework based approach to investment because you don't like it. If Snoopy wants to relentlessly criticise a company without bothering to find out important facts (eg, lazy assumptions on his part) , then frankly he can expect to be taken to task over it.

For what its worth, I really liked it when Snoopy was critical when I first invested around late last year (despite his rather demanding attitude), because it made me rethink and recheck a number of assumptions. But his continuing to maintain doom and gloom in the face of mounting evidence that things have indeed improved has made him look silly. And he refuses to acknowledge his mistakes either.

No dividend for the next eight years. Earnings "at an average of 2.5c" for the next eight years. A company with a greater likelihood of going under according to Altman Z. Our doggy friend is really a bear for PGW! But he's also a holder, and one at a much much higher price than I bought in at in late last year. Maybe twice as high. I can understand the gloom in that context.

Edit: Oh, and I saw your last comical statement about "Have I made myself clear enough for you to understand?". Maybe not. What are you going to do about it? Run off and complain to your mummy?

What homework approach? This is a forum and Snoopy is not living in your household, so the ongoing attack is nothing but homework approach. Why keep calling yourself an investor here? You just buy shares, you have no contribution or value adding to the company at all; we are all speculators and just try to free ride on companies. Yes, when companies have right issues you may feel you are "investing" in them; but again because we can get out whenever we want that is hardly an investment. When you do your "homework" you may feel you have invested your time and effort to the company, but guess what? The company does not care and it changes nothing.

So the forum is for people to contribute their thinking in this speculation game, and there is no right or wrong. The result is not as important as the process, because the game is always on until the world ends. Snoopy bought PGW when the price was high, and now he thinks the company is not doing very well. We could suspect the two has some correlation and thus factor that in when we read his posts; but hasn't he also tried to stay as objective as possible knowing that we all would think like that about him? What more do you want?

It is pretty clear you and your fellow clown mates want an apology or some sort; but either you have a smarter way of fishing that out please stop using the forum for that purpose. Why not ask yourself this: could I let this go and move on, like right now? Don't you think you will earn a lot more respect if you do that? As I told you earlier, I bought into your premise on this and I also have more faith in PGW to speculate them doing better soon. However, when the market is not kind to the company, would it hurt to listen to some oppositions even we disagree their viewpoints?

I don't know what's your point on the mummy comment but clearly that is a reflection of your personal issues ... is it why you call yourself a clown because you don't know where she is, and so you could never run off and complain to her? If that is true... I apologize for my insensitivity.