@MarsC Yes, in terms of keeping with the straw-hats-in-winter...

@MarsC

Yes, in terms of keeping with the straw-hats-in-winter strategy, the disgust and vitriol that the market has heaped on ORI for the past few years makes it stand to reason that there is a very good chance that the stock is mispriced.

The problem I have with ORI is not so much that its a mediocre business (I have some fine form being content buying businesses of far worse quality that ORI); the issue that I have is that its managers have always been such woeful allocators of the company's capital.

I don't mind buying undervalued businesses, but I want to be able to identify some clear mechanism or pathway by which the value gets delivered into my hot little Capitalist hands, and not perennially frittered away on some acquisition or over-investment misadventure.

I don't know what it is in the Orica corporate head office water, but when it comes to splashing cash around indiscriminately, generation after generation of Orica executives behave like reformed alcoholics walking past the bar...they just can't seem to stop themselves.

(Actually, ORI reminds me a lot of ANN: both are ho-hum businesses in terms of their ability to hang onto operating margins, but both are highly cash-generative. And both have had CEO's over the last few years that have operated as if the capital at their disposal, with which they could pursue all sorts of crazy expansion strategies, was both infinite and free.)