Monthly Archives: January 2011

January 30, 2011 · 11:00 am

Boeing commercial aircraft discounts (update for 2010)

Boeing released 2010 results last Wednesday. The company reported revenues in excess of 64bn$, 462 commercial deliveries and 530 net orders for its commercial aircraft. All these were widely reported by the media.

Last year I wrote in one post what was my estimation of Boeing discounts. In this post I wanted to update, if necessary, the figure I calculated for the average discount Boeing applies in its commercial aircraft in relation to the published list prices.

Most of the necessary information can be found in its website. Boeing list prices can be found here. With these list prices, the updated average list price per kg is now ~1,750$ (find the post I wrote last year about this).

The number of gross and net orders (after cancellations) year by year can be found here. Last year deliveries can be found here.

As in the post of last year:

  • I needed to make one assumption: new orders come with a 3% down payment in the year of the booking, while the remaining cost I assumed that was paid on the year of delivery (for simplicity I didn’t consider more intermediate revenue recognition milestones linked to payments, the 3% figure was taken from the AIAA paper “A Hierarchical Aircraft Life Cycle Cost Analysis Model” by William J. Marx et al.).
  • I also needed to estimate the figure Boeing Commercial Aviation Services revenues: the figure I have used is 2.5bn$ [1].

Having put all the figures together, the calculation is immediate. Boeing Commercial Aircraft revenues are the sum of:

  • the discounted prices times the delivered aircraft in the year,
  • less the down payment of the current year delivered aircraft, as the down payment was included in previous years results,
  • plus the down payment of current year net orders,
  • plus services revenues.

The discount figure that minimized errors last year was 38%. Using this figure, the error obtained this year in relation to Boeing Commercial Aircraft reported revenues is 2.8%. A little higher discount would reduce the error; the best estimate is now 39% (being the errors in revenues of: 1.3% for 2010, 1.45% for 2009, 1.7% for 2008 and 1.02% for 2007).

Thus, the updated discount for Boeing commercial aircraft is 39% (!). The price of Boeing aircraft per kg after the discount is then ~1,070$.

***

[1] The error in the estimate of the services revenues is negligible when calculating the magnitude of the discounts: an error of 1bn$ up or down in the figure used affects the error in the estimate of the discount in only 3%; or another way to see it: an error of 1bn$ up or down in the figure used for services would impact the discount value in just 2% to obtain the same error, e.g. 36% instead of 38%.

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January 24, 2011 · 8:00 am

A guesstimate about Egypt

Very often when we are with the family dining over the table and someone comments on any topic, you’ll hear my father say “give me a number… come on, you should be able to tell me an order of magnitude”. This is what is called a “guesstimate”, from the Wikipedia:

“Guesstimate is an informal English word derived from guess and estimate, first used by American statisticians in 1934 or 1935. It is defined as an estimate made without using adequate or complete information, or, more strongly, as an estimate arrived at by guesswork or conjecture.”

In this post I just wanted to share a “number”, a guesstimate, I worked while in Egypt.

When we left our stuff in the cruise boat, Luca and I were told by our guide that there were 300 such boats cruising the Nile. We certainly could appreciate that there were many in the harbour, and later we could see the traffic through the river. On one of the conversations we started to build our guesstimate: Can we guess how many tourists come to Egypt every year? If there are 300 boats at any moment, if in our boat there are 21 + 19 + 10 double rooms, if… if…

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Here it is:

  • 300 boats at any moment in the Nile.
  • If our boat was the average boat size: 50 double rooms, thus 100 tourists per boat.
  • If 90% occupancy rate was the average during high season (4 months?); 70% during low season (8 months).
  • If 4 days was the average stay of tourists in the boat:
    • This is 30 rotations during high season; 60 rotations during low season
  • Assuming that 50% of tourists don’t go to Luxor & Aswan, just stay in Cairo, Alexandria, Sharm el-Sheikh…
  • Assuming that of the remaining 50% that go to Luxor, 30% connect between cities in other modes of transport different from boat (plane, bus, taxi, train…)

My guess is that there would be ~ 6 million visitors to Egypt every year.

Later on, I checked with Wikipedia rankings, and the real figure is about 12 million… so my guess is just 50% of the total… way far, sure, but in the order of magnitude, thus I’m quite happy with it.

You never know, maybe the input of the 300 boats was wrong; it could be that there are really 600 boats and my guess would have been just correct! (Please, if you find out that there are indeed around 600 cruise boats in the Nile, let me know ;-))

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January 17, 2011 · 8:00 am

Algunas cifras de la industria cultural

Hace unos días leía una noticia con cifras sobre estimaciones del valor de las descargas de un estudio encargado por la Coalición de Creadores e Industrias de Contenidos (CCIC). En ella hablaban del orden de 10.000 millones de euros al año. Y, claro, pensé “¿se han vuelto locos?”

Con este post no pretendo argumentar en contra de la Ley Sinde, ni explicar porque puede ser una mala ley, o aportar un grano de arena en el sentido de hacia donde crea yo que debe ir la industria cultural, ni defender que las descargas no son ilegales, etc… No. Para eso, ya hay otra serie de personas que han escrito muy buenas entradas en sus respectivos blogs o artículos en periódicos (Enrique Dans, Julio Alonso, Juan Carlos Rodríguez Ibarra, Jesús Encinar, etc…).

En este post solo quiero juntar una serie de cifras para que veamos lo absurdo y disparatado de las estimaciones que se hacen y publican desde la industria cultural. Así que voy a repasar el espectro cultural de mayor facturación a menor.

Libros

El sector editorial facturó en 2009 3.109 millones de euros (dato de la Federación de Gremios de Editores de España).

  • Es cierto que en 2009 cayeron las ventas un 2,4% respecto a 2008, pero es que hubo una crisis de por medio (!), quiero recordar en el 2009 el PIB de España cayó un 3,6%.
  • De hecho en los últimos 10 años las ventas del sector editorial han aumentado un 19,3%.
  • En 2009 se editaron 76.213 títulos, un 4,4% más que el año anterior. Si la oferta de libros crece a ese ritmo, necesariamente los ingresos por libro, en media han de disminuir. Cada vez la oferta cultural es mayor y como publicaba en un post Jesús Encinar, el valor de las obras debe tender a cero.
  • El libro digital todavía solo representaba un 1,64% de la facturación total.
  • Del orden del 28% de las ventas son debidas a libros de texto no universitario… es decir, año tras año se hace pagar a las familias españolas ~870 millones de euros en libros de texto del colegio porque se ha cambiado una coma, porque la forma de sumar y restar es diferente a como era en 2008, y porque la Historia desde el paleolítico a la transición y entrada en Europa ha cambiado (nunca se llegaba a más en las clases de Historia)… (esto sí es piratería).

La literatura no se acaba.

Cine

En el caso del cine los datos son del Ministerio de Cultura, encontrados vía el blog Periodistas 21. El cine en 2009 facturó 671 millones de euros:

  • Un 8.4% más que en 2008.
  • Un 35% más que hace 10 años. Esto es un crecimiento anual del 3.1%.
  • El cine español recaudó 104 millones de euros en 2009 frente a 69 millones en 1999. Esto es un 51% más que hace 10 años (!) o un 4,2% más cada año.
  • El cine español en estos 10 años ha mantenido constante su cuota de mercado frente al norteamericano, y si acaso la ha aumentado (15,55%).
  • En 2009 había un 22.1% más de salas que en 1999.
  • Alguien dirá que en 2009 hubo menos espectadores: 110 millones frente a 131 en 1999.
    • A mí esto lo que me sugiere es que el coste medio por entrada en 1999 eran 3,8€ (630 pesetas) mientras que en 2009 eran 6,1€, un 61.1% mayor! Esto es un incremento anual del 4,9% (¿a quién le han subido el sueldo los últimos 10 años un 4,9% al año?)

Ayudas al cine

En el año 2009 se aprobaron en los presupuestos 87 millones de euros en ayudas al cine (de los que se ejecutaron 76 millones).

  • Esto es el cine español ingresa en taquilla 104 millones y recibe en subvenciones 87 millones. Es decir, el 46% de los ingresos procede de las subvenciones.
  • En 2009 se realizaron 135 largometrajes íntegramente españoles, frente a 44 en 1999 (!), esto es más de 3 veces más o un crecimiento ininterrumpido del 12% al año.
  • Si la producción de largometrajes aumenta a ese ritmo (12% año), naturalmente resulta insostenible que cada película pueda vivir de los ingresos de taquilla por mucho que estos aumenten (4,2% al año) a un ritmo mucho mayor que la economía y los salarios de los consumidores. A este ritmo, el valor de las películas de nuevo debe tender a cero.

El cine no se acaba.

Música

Ventas de discos

De nuevo desde el blog Periodistas 21, he accedido a las cifras de Federación Internacional de la Industria Discrográfica (IFPI), quien para España usa las cifras de Promusicae (PDF).

  • En 2009 ingresaron 211 millones de euros. Un 17% menos en 2008, y un 71% menos que en 2001. Esto es un -11,8% al año.
  • En ese mismo informe se indica que las ventas digitales aumentaron un 10,6%, hasta los 32 millones de €… (eso es no querer ver una tendencia).

SGAE

La SGAE ingresó en 2009 317 millones de euros (canon incluido), un 5,1% menos que en 2008.

  • De ellos, 27,67 millones de euros fueron gracias al canon digital, un 9% de la facturación. Esto es un 72,9% más que en el año anterior.
  • De ellos, más de 120 millones de euros provenientes únicamente por el pago de tasas de cadenas de televisión y radio, un 37% de su facturación total.
  • Los derechos de autor generados de la venta de discos y otras obras en soporte físico (CD y DVD fundamentalmente) ascendieron a 20,46 millones de euros, un 30,5% menos que en 2008. Las cifras de SGAE hablan de ingresos de 60 millones en 2000. Esto supondría una caída del 66% o un -10% anual.
  • Si de los 211 millones de la venta de discos, solo 20,46 millones fueron a parar a los autores, hay un 90,3% del negocio que se lo están quedando los intermediarios (hay que tener en cuenta que los 20,46 M€ corresponden solo a SGAE y hay otras sociedades, que entre todas suponen un 28% del mercado… luego realmente el procentaje que se queden los intermediarios debe ser del orden del ~87%)
  • La SGAE repartió 346 millones de euros (un 6,1% menos que en 2008) entre sus 32.106 socios nacionales y los 181.099 artistas extranjeros representados por otras sociedades; esto es una media de 1.623 euros por artista (suponiendo que lo repartiesen a partes iguales… pero no es así, el 1,73% de los autores se reparte el 75% de los ingresos).

Canon digital

Los ingresos totales por el canon digital en 2009 fueron de 93 millones de euros, entre todas las sociedades de gestión.

El Gobierno publicó una Orden ministerial en 2008, donde determinaba unos límites para compensación equitativa por copia privada de entre 37,2 y 34,8 millones de euros para la modalidad de reproducción de libros, y de entre 75,4 y 80,6 millones de euros para la modalidad de reproducción sonora y audiovisual.

***

Una vez hecho este repaso vemos que toda esta industria cultural apenas superó los 4.000 millones de euros… lejos de los 10.000 que pretenden hacernos creer que están perdiendo debido a las descargas. Estos 4.000 millones se producen después de que el sector editorial y el del cine, que son de largo los mayores, hayan crecido en los últimos 10 años.

Por último, leía en otro artículo hace unos días que a través de estudios de Nielsen y de publicidad se llegaba a que la cifra de volumen de negocio que pueden manejar unas 300 páginas de descargas es de  entre 150 y 170 millones de euros anuales.

Comparación volúmenes de negocio de la industria cultural.

Si tomamos esas cifras como buenas, y dado que ese es el camino que indica la demanda, la industria lo tendría muy fácil: replicar esas páginas de enlaces y dar ese valor añadido que ofrecen las actuales páginas. Con mejores versiones/grabaciones de las películas conseguirían ganar en tráfico. Si lo hicieran bien se llevarían esos 150 millones de euros (verían como nunca son 10.000 millones).

Ah, y una vez hiciesen eso, imagino que tendrían la vergüenza torera de devolver el canon, dado que el “Tribunal de la UE declara que dicha tasa es ilegal y no se puede aplicar a empresas y profesionales que adquieren equipos y soportes de reproducción de contenidos digitales ya que el uso que le dan es ajeno a la copia privada”.

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January 16, 2011 · 11:00 am

Democracy in Tunisia?

Luca and I visited Tunisia last summer. Now that the country is going through revolts, the president Ben Ali has fled country, etc., I find it interesting to remember some of the thoughts and a conversation we then had.

During our trip we had a wonderful guide called Mohammed. We found it funny that he repeated many times some of its explanations. The good thing is that they have stuck in the memory. Some are irrelevant to this post such as “the North of the country produces the citrus fruit”; but others are related to the current situation.

Several times, he praised Habib Burgiba, the first president of the republic, for having modernized the country, extended suffrage to women (“before than in Switzerland!”) and provided free basic education to everyone. He also mentioned that about 20% of the members of the parliament were women.

Habib Burgiba was then judged by some medical experts as not in conditions to run the country, thus the charge was taken by Ben Ali, one of his ministers, and the president until this week.

Travelling through the country, my attention had been caught by the many pictures you could see of the president showing him as a kind of saviour (could you imaging such pictures of the prime minister in every corner of your country?).

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In the way to the Sahara, we stopped at a service station and were having some chips and refreshments when our guide, Mohammed (who was fasting as it was Ramadan), came to us to chat. I then intentionally posed him the question: “Mohammed, you mentioned that there were 20% of women in the parliament, Ben Ali is in office for 23 years, this means he must have won 4 or 5 elections; do you elect him?”

He smiled, and softly replied, as if someone was going to listen, “there are elections, but they are not real. There is someone who acts as an alternative, but everybody knows that the president is going to win… it’s not a real democracy, it’s like in all Arab countries; there are no real democracies… well, may be with the exception of Lebanon, but then, they are not Arabs but Phoenicians…”

Let’s see if this time they finally get to have a real democracy, they deserve something better, at least Mohammed does.

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January 11, 2011 · 8:00 am

Abraham Lincoln

Last weekend I was playing with my new eReader: the interface with the computer, online shops interfaces, how to get files into it, how to make notes… and I read the eBook “Abraham Lincoln” by James Russell Lowell (which is not really a biography but an editorial about the president).

I underlined some sentences that I especially liked and wanted to share them:

  • “Among the lessons taught by the French Revolution there is none sadder or more striking than this, that you may make everything else out of the passions of men except a political system that will work, and that there is nothing so pitilessly and unconsciously cruel as sincerity formulated into dogma. It is always demoralizing to extend the domain of sentiment over questions where it has no legitimate jurisdiction […]”.
  • “We have seen Mr. Lincoln contemptuously compared to Sancho Panza by persons incapable of appreciating one of the deepest pieces of wisdom in the profoundest romance ever written; namely, that, while Don Quixote was incomparable in theoretic and ideal statesmanship, Sancho, with his stock of proverbs, the ready money of human experience, made the best possible practical governor.”
  • “Never was ruler so absolute as he, nor so little conscious of it; for he was the incarnate common-sense of the people.”

Abraham Lincoln memorial in DC.

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January 10, 2011 · 8:00 am

My 0.7%

“0.7%” refers to the repeated commitment of the world’s governments to commit 0.7% of rich-countries’ gross national product (GNP) to Official Development Assistance. This figure was first pledged 35 years ago in a 1970 UN General Assembly Resolution.

Where does the figure “0.7%” come from?

I didn’t know, so I researched a bit and it seems that comes from Lester B. Pearson (PDF, 40KB), former Prime Minister of Canada, who in 1969 recommended that resources equivalent to a minimum of 1% of the GNP of developed nations should flow to developing countries.

This 1%  would be made up of official development assistance, other official flows from the government, and private sector flows; the official development assistance component of the 1% commitment would be equivalent to 0.7% of GNP.

By 2005 only 5 countries of the OECD were meeting or exceeding the target: Denmark, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway and Sweden, not a surprise. The rest of them were well below, some even decreasing the assistance.

OECD 2005 Official Development Aid

What can we do?

Since some years ago, I dedicate 0.7% of my personal net income to development aid. I make the calculation every year in January, when I have an idea of how much I pocketed the previous year.

I took sometime last weekend to make the calculation, research a little bit and direct the funds to the selected NGOs, which this year have been:

  • Kiva: a micro lending portal, that I have talked about in the blog sometimes. I added some more funds.
  • Médecins sans Frontières. Last year, I already donated some cash to the Spanish branch after the earthquake in Haiti; this year I’ve become member of the French one: as a friend who works in development assistance explained to me, this helps the NGO to plan their activities, rather than relying on occasional donations.
  • Vittana: a micro lending portal specialized on credits for education purposes, very similar to Kiva in its conception. I learnt about it last year already and twitted about it, but it has been now the first time I used it.
  • Ofxam: a well-known NGO working “to find lasting solutions to poverty and injustice”.
  • Anti-Slavery: an NGO which works to eliminate all forms of slavery around the world… incredible, “slavery” :-(.

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January 9, 2011 · 11:00 am

San Silvestre 2010 (pics)

Last week I, together with 8 friends, ran the popular San Silvestre Vallecana as a farewell event for 2010 year.

The first time I took part in it was back in 1998. In the 1999 edition I ran together with my brother, that year we were less than 9,000 runners inscribed. This year there were 34,000 inscriptions available (though we did not inscribe ourselves). It took us 45 minutes to start running, by then the winner had finished long before (the winner finished in 29 minutes).

I believe that this has been the time have gathered more friends to run it; 9 of us. Also this year was different in that some of us were using Twitter till the last minute, smartphones to track the route, meters to check heart rate… quite a tech sport event.

The time: around 1h 5’ for 10km.

Enjoy the pictures:

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January 8, 2011 · 5:30 pm

La prairie des Filtres

Today, I found in the mailbox the first issue of The Economist to arrive at my new place. I took it and went for a walk to read it in a park by the river.

The park I went to is called “La prairie des Filtres”, named after the infiltration galleries used to purify muddy water pumped from the river Garonne, cleaned and brought up to the water tower of Toulouse. The system was first established back in 1821.

This park was also the place that served as the first field for the rugby matches of the Stade Toulousain, the local team which happens to be the most laureate club in France and Europe (having won 4 European Cups, more than any other club). The team now plays sometimes at the Stadium of Toulouse, just across the river, though most of the times plays at the Ernest Wallon stadium at the other side of the city. I guess I’ll have to pay a visit to one of its matches.

Now… the park is where I read the paper and run by the riverside…

Enjoy the pictures:

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January 5, 2011 · 8:00 am

New Year’s resolutions vs. goal setting

During the Table Topics session of last week’s Toastmasters Madrid meeting, a friend asked one of the members whether he was the type of person that used to set goals for himself or have New Year’s resolutions.

The member was very determined in his answer: “yes, I am definitely a fan of goal-setting”. He cited a study in Harvard Business School where they found that the 3% of graduates who had written goals, and plans to accomplish them, ten years later were earning ten times as much as the other 97% put together… (it doesn’t say whether within that 3% there was a single individual, the kind of Bill Gates, who made himself just those ten times of the remaining 97%).

Then I saw a Facebook status update by another friend: “85% of my personal goals for this year – achieved.” (Bear in mind that this fellow is an outstanding individual).

Finally, two days ago I found in Twitter  a retweet of another post by Sid Savara about how to undertake a personal year-end review.

… Why not?

I decided that this year I’ll start writing down my goals and attaching a detailed plan to achieve them, instead of just thinking on January 1st of a few well-intentioned resolutions such as “learn languages”, “lose some pounds”, etc., and forgetting them by the 3rd of January. (By the way, thanks to Sergio, Javier, Alex & Conor for their inspiration).

If by 2021 I am making ten times as 97% of the readers of this blog combined, don’t tell me I didn’t warn you well in advance!

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January 4, 2011 · 7:00 am

My investment fund

After two years of investing for fun, I was troubled because neither the ING internet banking tool nor Google Finance enabled me to correctly monitor the profitability of our investments.

  • Google Finance shows each new addition of capital as an increase of assets (price) in the same way as if a particular stock had increased its market price. So after a year our portfolio showed an increase of 97%… but most of it was due to new additions of capital.
  • While with ING, each time we added some cash it lowered the profitability as it went directly to the denominator of the equation (the same happens with Google Finance “gain”).

I discussed this with Luca, read a little bit and then I found out that the best way would be to treat ourselves as a mutual open-ended fund (fondo de inversión). I had to define a net asset value per share (valor liquidativo de la participación) at the beginning of the period and then treat each addition of capital as an issue of new shares to ourselves.

After spending sometime digging in the files and emails of the past two years, reading a bit about how to treat these values, etc., from now on we can readily compare at any moment our “J&L investment fund” with any other fund, stock or index. So did I…

If we had a commercial mutual fund we would announce ourselves with something like:

  • In the year 2010 the gains of the fund were +22.8% compared to
    • S&P 500 ~ +13% (target index)
    • Dow Jones ~ +11%
    • NASDAQ ~ +17%
    • IBEX 35 ~ -17%
    • Euro Stoxx 50 ~ -10%
  • The gains of the fund since its creation in January 2009 have been +86.6%, with a compounded annual gain of +37.6%.

Not bad.

Nevertheless, if we compare it to the leading Spanish value investing fund managers from Bestinver, in 2010:

  • Bestinfond ~ +19%;
  • Bestinver Internacional ~ +26%;
  • Bestinver Bolsa ~ +5%

Since January 2009 both Bestinfond and Bestinver Internacional have fared better than “J&L”, though not Bestinver Bolsa.

Today, now that is already defined, the net asset value per share is 57.19€… however “J&L fund” is not yet that open-ended: it’s open to our own additions to the fund but not to third-party capital… maybe in a couple of years we go and set up an investment club or fund :-).

After reading Ben Graham’s book “Intelligent Investor” I wanted to give it a try with investing, this is why I invest in stocks myself, but, clearly, if you are tempted to follow third-party advice, rumours, tips, etc., you’ll be better off just investing in a low-cost index fund (a strategy described by Burton G. Malkiel’s book “A Random Walk Down Wall Street”) or take a look at the above-mentioned value investing managers.

NOTE: “J&L fund” numbers are pre-tax of capital gains, include dividends (after-tax) and are net of transaction costs & commissions.

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