The ProLogis Investor Rally
Get it HERE by clicking on “Presentations & Webcasts”.
I am listening to it now and the laughs just keep coming with every word spoken. I am dying that I couldn’t be there in New York and ask a question (I was in court today). It is absolutely hilarious to me that people buy into this stuff.
I know all the moving parts are hard to visualize and understand. However, you actually don’t even have to know the acronyms, the metrics and the jargon to be skeptical. All you have to use is common sense. For example here is a look at page 5 of the PDF presentation:
CLICK TO ENLARGE
The horizontal axis represents four time periods, 2007-Q4 starting on the left and 2008 Q3 endig on the right. You will also notice that the total $ pipeline is charted as Bars with the left-side vertical axis representing $’s. Leasing % is presented as a line chart with the right-side vertical axis represented as percentage, with a maximum percentage of 50%.
Do you notice anything strange? Here are the important easy, common-sense questions:
1) WHY IS THE RIGHT-PERCENTAGE AXIS SCALED TO ONLY 50%?
2) WHY ISN’T IT 100%?
3) WHY ISN’T THE $ PIPELINE AXIS ON THE LEFT-SIDE MATCHED TO THE 2008-Q2 & AMOUNT?
4) WOULDN’T THAT MORE FAIRLY AND ACCURATELY PRESENT THIS DATA?
5) ISN’T IT CUSTOMARY FOR PERCENTAGES TO BE PRESENTED ON 100% SCALE? (After all, PERCENT means: the term for the parts out of each HUNDRED… from its Latin roots per for each, and centum for hundred.)
6) IF IT’S NOT AN “ACCIDENT”, WHY WOULD YOU PRESENT THE DATA IN THAT FASHION?
I know why - do you?
DISCLOSURE: Short: PLD, ARE, EQT, V & HCP / Long: GLD
November 14th, 2008 at 11:41 pm
It was nearly a 3 hour call and your only comment is related to how one slide was presented? Surely you gleaned more than what you thought was poorly drawn graph???
November 15th, 2008 at 4:39 pm
industrial-
Of course I gleaned more. You learn quite a bit about management from those conference calls. #1: If I was counsel to those executives, I would have advised against it. #2: The execs don’t know business and finance as well as they present it. The presentation would never survive a good cross-examination from a lawyer that knows business and economics.
Anyhow, are you suggesting that my first comment is insignificant? Don’t you agree that the slide is not presented in a common sense fashion? I know flipping a coin is a 50/50 proposition but when someone hits heads 10 times in a row… common sense tellls me the coin is loaded. Who loaded it?
The graph looks loaded - that’s my opinion.
November 16th, 2008 at 10:19 am
You are certainly more cynical than I. Whether it was significant that the graph was not preseneted relative to a 100% scale is questionable. I took the comments made and the slide at face value. I do think the point being made which was that even after $350M of property that was over 93% leased was taken out of the pipeline and contributed in a fund the leasing percentage still remained at 47%. What cannot be denied is that this company still continues to lease space even during these tough times.
From a legal side I cannot debate whether it was prudent for these execs to hold a special call, but as a personal investor, I appreciated the transparency.
With that said, congrats on your early identification of what was a great short play. I have invested a relitively small amount in this company as i see it as a risk, but I do like the brand. I am an industrial developer and the position this company has in the industrial marketplace is unlike that of any other reit or developer in any field of real estate.
November 18th, 2008 at 4:22 am
I enjoyed this content, and the feedback from others is interesting.
November 21st, 2008 at 8:35 pm
The graph is actually two graphs, and it helps to think of them so. The two are overlayed, so as to efficiently convey two sets of information.
One graph is pipeline in bars, the other is a curve of percentage rented, after correction.
It would make no sense to make rental % go to 100 — the chart would be half empty space. As to the 47%, it probably represents a figure measured after removal of what was removed.
January 7th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
Some good content and interesting comments - worth a read