Zwu, I'm essentially with Alpha again on this.I've been trying...

Zwu, I'm essentially with Alpha again on this.

I've been trying to get you in particular to check directly with the companies of interest rather than relying on just certain Comsec figures from last year you'd been repeatedly crunching for us. My post about the different figures from the different services was to highlight the problem of relying on any one external source, especially for these tax effective companies during this month. Look above in this post for the E-Trade figures you've selectively quoted and note I have shown some from other services as well, trying to show how staggeringly different they are.

I don't want to keep picking over tiny aspects of information and ignoring the big picture and I stopped, as did Alpha, replying to the very long series of posts last week in part because of this, as previously mentioned in other posts. I have, however, on the question of debt, pointed out before about the hard to make sense of twists your posts have included so often. To that end, it was pointed out you had accepted my comment about TIM's debt one day and then said four days later that you couldn't find anything but income on Comsec (as mentioned before, I keep copies of my posts and have done so for two years).

All I'm really asking is that you look deeper. It will help you with your investing. It's best if you learn to do this yourself, so I simply gave a hint about a place to start looking ie. the convertible notes. I've also pointed out the danger in trying to talk about exact figures at this important and fast changing time of the year for these types of companies which is one reason in the string of arguments about NTA's I've not provided any current estimates of my own. As pointed out before, the new DRP figure for GTP is only an interim one based on a simple calculation (which you provided) relating to an increase in the number of shares. It does not reflect what is going on in the underlying business at the moment or how the accountants are going to treat last year's excess land bank etc. The company has indicated an upside adjustment, but until final figures are through that's all that's worth focussing on.

You have seemed for some weeks more bent on trying to pick an argument with me, Alpha etc more than learning how to find out where companies are at and having a balanced discussion. Even when having long discussions with people a year ago who felt strongly about this subject, no one was as difficult and emotive as you have been in recent weeks, for who knows what reason.

Where the stuff came from about analogizing TIM's debt with Japan is a mystery to me. I never said the TIM debt was the same as APL's, either in nature or size and haven't said they are in danger of having the plug pulled by a bank. I did say that GTP being debt free (and having had $100 million of franking credits to give out) could not be touched by a bank at the moment (CBA share holding aside of course) and discussed the pulling of the plug for APL last year and the alarm bells that rang for companies with debt in the sector. As I went to great pains to illustrate this time last year, there are significant differences between the various forestry companies, especially when one looks deeper. Going by trading patterns, most people seem to lump them together. That's common in the market of course. Most of us can only take so much in.

I never said TIM's PE was 2 or 3. I and others have quoted GTP's as being so on many occasions. In my case, it was almost always referring to the PE of 2 they had at the lows last year.

I've never said that the (general) media comments have been in favour of GTP against TIM. Far from it. My central point about media stuff in this regard has been that TIM has almost always been favoured, in part because their PR department is so good (something other forestry companies could learn from) - second to none in their sector as far as I'm concerned.

Disclaimer: I don't own any forestry shares.