Fonterra Shareholders Fund

[Balance]

Still digging your hole by avoiding the central issue. First 42% went offshore when many founders and long owners and nz supports of this company got nil or next to nil. Forgot to comment on the crap that the company would get more money selling to the Aus on rount to the chinese when we all had to pay the same price.
But look thanks for all the comments here as tomorrow i get interviewed by the reporters on this matter. Some ideas here will help. I will use my own name and ask that similiar comments also have to use their names. The name hiders can go on letters to the editor.

Bad enough, Digger, that you made the mis-informed and ill-informed comments in the first place about Fonterra allocating the shares to the Indians and Chinese, rather than to New Zealanders.

Instead of owning up that you were fed bad information, you then attempted to switch the argument to Crafar farms. There has been enough xenophobic racist emotional claptrap spoken about and written about Crafar farms than any reasonable and fair New Zealander will want to ever hear or read again.

You then assert that Fonterra allocated the shares to the Australians so that the Indians and Chinese will buy off them!

Please provide us with the proof - 1. That the Australians are selling and the Indians & Chinese are buying, and 2. Fonterra deliberately sold to the Australians under that pretext.

Xenophobic emotional race based comments have no place in any decent society.

As New Zealanders, we are better than that.

Your thread of comments remind me so much of a real life Digger at a pub in Sydney years ago. He was abusing a Japanese gentleman about WW2 and how he would never share a room with any Japanese as they killed his mates etc etc. Fair enough as he must still be so cut up about what happened during the war. Unfortunately, the 'Japanese' told him that he was actually a Korean. Instead of apologizing, the Digger muttered "you Asians are all the same and you killed my mates." Interesting thing is that no-one in the pub said anything (myself included) but there was a deep sense of embarrassment that 40+ years after WW2, there were still individuals around who could not unburden themselves from the past, and are prepared to apologize and admit their mistakes.

[Balance]

Isn't it about time that this thread got back to discussing the investment merits of these units?

Fair enough, MacDuffy.

Shoeshine of NBR has an excellent piece on the issue and makes many similar points as to the allocation of the shares - without the emotional and xenophobic undertones.

There is grudging acceptance though that Fonterra has done the right thing - as an international company, it has attempted to spread its shareholding as globally wide as possible.

In my view, NZ investors will never pay the kind of price that international investors are prepared and will pay - just a fact of life. Morningstar could not get its head around the issue and Tower decided not to invest.

So where does that take the stock to?

The international investors see Fonterra as a fantastic food play - in a world which will face potential food crises in the future. So they are buying growth potential and they are getting an excellent yield.

Yield wise, I suspect the international players will be prepared to accept in the longer term, 3.5% to 4.0% - so share price could potentially settle at $7.55 to $8.65.

[winner69]

Bad enough, Digger, that you made the mis-informed and ill-informed comments in the first place about Fonterra allocating the shares to the Indians and Chinese, rather than to New Zealanders.

Instead of owning up that you were fed bad information, you then attempted to switch the argument to Crafar farms. There has been enough xenophobic racist emotional claptrap spoken about and written about Crafar farms than any reasonable and fair New Zealander will want to ever hear or read again.

You then assert that Fonterra allocated the shares to the Australians so that the Indians and Chinese will buy off them!

Please provide us with the proof - 1. That the Australians are selling and the Indians & Chinese are buying, and 2. Fonterra deliberately sold to the Australians under that pretext.

Xenophobic emotional race based comments have no place in any decent society.

As New Zealanders, we are better than that.

Your thread of comments remind me so much of a real life Digger at a pub in Sydney years ago. He was abusing a Japanese gentleman about WW2 and how he would never share a room with any Japanese as they killed his mates etc etc. Fair enough as he must still be so cut up about what happened during the war. Unfortunately, the 'Japanese' told him that he was actually a Korean. Instead of apologizing, the Digger muttered "you Asians are all the same and you killed my mates." Interesting thing is that no-one in the pub said anything (myself included) but there was a deep sense of embarrassment that 40+ years after WW2, there were still individuals around who could not unburden themselves from the past, and are prepared to apologize and admit their mistakes.

Prob the same RSL joker who wanted Nokia phones banned .....can't have Jap phones in Aussie can we

[macduffy]

Good points, Balance. (Post 3.26)

I'm still a bit nervous about the risk of unduly favouring the milk price over the dividend-producing earnings - accepting that there is a mechanism designed to prevent this - but can see the appeal to a wide range of international investors. As NZ's leading exporter - and only truly "big" business - it deserves our support despite the controversy surrounding the issue of theses units. Which doesn't mean that we should refrain from criticism of management when/if appropriate.

[digger]

Balance this is my last comments as the hole you are digging for yourself is now beyond a joke. Xenophpbia by my dictionary means a morbid dislike of foreigners with some racial element thrown in. Lets see if i apply.Firstly I am 1/16 north american Indian [Black Foot}.I came to NZ in 1962 and have been a foreigner ever since,as i have been often been told. So I must have a morbid dislike for myself by your reasoning. I have been called many things as I am sure you have and everyone else,but you are the first to tell me i dislike myself. Many thanks from my heart as it does go a millionth of the way to balancing out what other say about how i feel towards me
Now for the racial bit.I have only one son and he is married to a Chinese women and they have given us two great grand kids.The youngest of 1.5 years rang us up the other day from Hong Kong by pressing the redial button.So great I am a xenophpbia. I qualify.

Now for why in particular Fonterra should have limited its units to NZ'S. Peak Oil, World falling food stocks, and rare earth metals will increasingly dominate the world economy and he who has it will control the globe. Already China has the lions share of rare elements and are prepared to exercise that control as the Japanese have just recently found out when the two countries went head to head in a island dispute.China is buying up good agriculture land as fast as possible. When it comes to Peak Oil the Chinese have claimed water right up to the shores of some of its neighbours.Note here that PPPV has premission to keep 15% of a drill coming up because i would say it is north of Vietnam ,but much closer to Vietnam than China. Now we come to Fonterra,the worlds biggest dairy exporter,which has just let 42% of these units be sold overseas,mostly to AUS. Will the Aus keep them.Well they sell everything else to China as fast as they can,so why not the Fonterra units.You are right I have no proof but by the time i have you will never get them back.
Fonterra has been turned down to directly make and sell its products in China. Great so we should let them have as much of NZ as they like and you are a xenophobia if you think other wise. I believe all human dealing have to be on a reciprocal arrangement. Now i will let you go back digger Balance and I will go off somewhere and deal with the strange new sensation of hateing myself.God almighty I am 71 and until you pointed to this small fact ,no matter how indirectly, it out it never occured to me. Thanks we never stop learning do we.

[peat]

Isn't it about time that this thread got back to discussing the investment merits of these units?

the company looks an alright investment from an earnings and dividend perspective, even at market price. there is some risk associated with the structure and its novelty, but that's pretty minimal I guess. earnings trend has plateaued perhaps and world overproduction may be an issue but given the paucity of available quality exposure to the dairy industry it seems like this should become a portfolio core. For debt it has an A+ (outlook:Stable) rating from S&P as of June 2012. You may question the value of agency ratings but that's a high rating and is a very relevant piece of information. It has quite a few significant consumer brands such as Anchor which pull in over half the earnings and also has large international companies as its customers eg Coco-Cola and Kraft. It is geographically diversified with Asia and Latin America very strongly represented in sales . Things going against it are its dependence on commodity prices which do tend to have cycles with large peaks and troughs so volatility in price may be high. In sheer scale though with US15.7 billion turnover it does represent an opportunity to be part of something big, something NZ and something which other international investors can not enjoy. I want some.Fonterra.JPG

[skid]

Gotta say..it does raise some issues with other large NZ co. about to be put on the selling block---sorry,back to business....

[Baddarcy]

Has anyone else had trouble with ASB Securities not processing orders? I put in a sell order this morning and its been sitting there Order Pending for some time now .... Anyone else had a similar experience?

[Anonymous]

Has anyone else had trouble with ASB Securities not processing orders? I put in a sell order this morning and its been sitting there Order Pending for some time now .... Anyone else had a similar experience?

I sold my FSF on Friday through ASB no problem. You haven't set a limit price above market price which is waiting to hit?

[Baddarcy]

I sold my FSF on Friday through ASB no problem. You haven't set a limit price above market price which is waiting to hit?

Gave them a call and sat on hold for sometime, my order had ended up in a error queue apparently, seems they are so busy it took some time to get to it.

Normally that would peeve me off somewhat but in this case the price went up 2c while i was waiting, so can't complain ...too much anyway :-)