10 ms·

I do not know much about how good Colt is doing, but isn't 220mil plus 18mil in stocks a bit cheap?

Spooky23 6y ago
I'd argue it's still a little high, most of these companies are on the wane. Guns in the US are near saturation from a market perspective and regulatory changes will eventually kick the floor out. Time to cash out... It's like when Phillip Morris bought Kraft and General Foods in the 80s to spin them off later when tobacco regulation came.
- rayiner 6y ago
  Monthly gun sales have about tripled since 2000, and we had a lot of guns even back then: https://www.google.com/search?q=gun+sales+per+year&client=safari&rls=en&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjfyKjC6-TuAhUPGFkFHRRuDVIQ_AUoAnoECBEQBA&biw=1241&bih=923#imgrc=6GQORGd1xC9EeM https://www.google.com/search?q=gun+sales+per+year&client=sa... As to regulatory changes: support for a handgun ban is the lowest its been since Gallup started tracking the statistic in 1959: https://news.gallup.com/poll/150341/record-low-favor-handgun-ban.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/150341/record-low-favor-handgun.... It's just 26% today, versus 60% in 1959. Unlike with tobacco, there's no big scientific study or educational campaign that's going to drop. Guns are a well-ventilated issue.
  - groby_b 6y ago
    Like with tobacco, big studies have been suppressed. Guns are far from a well-ventilated issue, they're just well-entrenched. The Dickey amendment got clarified in 2018, and the first earmarks for research were for FY2020 - so, I'd say we wait with those proclamations a few more years.
    - rayiner 6y ago
      What difference are those studies going to make? If Columbia University in the City of New York discovers you can use guns to kill people, are voters suddenly going to go "oh, well then!"
      - 1MoreThing 6y ago
        That's clearly not the kind of research that's going to be done. Funding of gun studies means we can make arguments backed up by data instead of partisan bickering. Calls to arm teachers in classrooms or mandate trigger locks on guns have real world effects, and both sides think they're right about it. Funding for studies of specific actions and policies help us as a society make more informed decisions. More info: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5993411/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5993411/
        da_big_ghey 6y ago
        You will find that many of us gun rights supporters don't care what data comes out. I don't support 2a because fewer than n people die per year from guns.
        wing-_-nuts 6y ago
        Your honesty is refreshing, and psychopathic.
        da_big_ghey 6y ago
        > psychopathic That is a needless personal attack, and I notice that you fail to make a coherent argument against what I said. Do you favor protections against unreasonable search and seizure only until too many criminals benefit from it? My point is that some people value liberty higher than life. If you think I'm wrong, feel free to say why, though I honestly don't know that you'll change my mind on that.
        1MoreThing 6y ago
        > Psychopathy is a condition characterized by the absence of empathy and the blunting of other affective states. Callousness, detachment, and a lack of empathy... That doesn't seem like a personal attack so much as pointing out that this belief lacks empathy and is callous, which I tend to agree with. The standard argument, which I'm sure you're aware of, is that some controls and regulations on the ownership of firearms is a net good for society by reducing accidental deaths, suicides, and murders. Guns aren't responsible for any of those things, people are. But guns dramatically change the scale at which they happen. Ignoring that because of a belief in absolute freedom from regulation for machines designed to kill is callous and un-empathic. Or, to use a synonym, psychopathic. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/psychopathy https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/psychopathy
    - aksss 6y ago
      The Dickey Amendment didn't ban any studies or doing research, it banned the CDC from advocating gun control policies at a time when the administration was pushing it to use its authority/reputation to do so. It would be like me saying you can do all the research you want on teenage pregnancy and the like, but we're not funding your department to do political advocacy campaigns for abstinence. Stick to the science.
      - wing-_-nuts 6y ago
        ...and yet, where are these publicly funded studies on gun violence since? It's a ban in fact, if not a ban in law.
        HideousKojima 6y ago
        Here's a CDC-funded study on gun violence from 2013: https://www.nap.edu/read/18319/chapter/1 https://www.nap.edu/read/18319/chapter/1 You've been repeatedly and blatantly lied to by the media and politicians about the CDC being "banned" from researching gun violence. The ban was on the use of public funds to advocate for specific gun laws/policies, not on research into the subject itself.
  - pjc50 6y ago
    And covid has made the mass shooting argument irrelevant. It's killed about ten times as many americans. The US can sustain 10k gun casualties a year without moving the politics at all. Until it comes to the Capitol, I suppose.
  - Spooky23 6y ago
    Even smartphone demand slows down. And that's a device with daily utility with a 2-5 year life. Seriously, I'm coming at this from a perspective of a country boy who went shooting 3-4 times a month as a teen, and earned a bounty for shooting pigeons on a farm. How much more demand can be filled for more guns the mostly sit around and gather dust? It's a market driven by ignorance and fear -- folks are treating these things as investments for a doomsday that will never come. I'm not an anti-gun guy... I own two shotguns, a hunting rifle and a .22. What's the point of adding more? Pistols, AR-15 fetishization, etc aren't for me. What I have will probably be in great shape beyond my lifetime; if anything I might trade up if I got into skeet again. Say you are right and no regulatory changes take place.... you're still going to have a cohort of old people who hit the gun hoarding profile start to die off and flood the secondary market with estate sales. My parents have a neighbor in the country that probably has >250 rifles, and there are way more people like that than the WW2/Korea generation that has mostly left us. What's the collector value of yet another AR-15 clone?
    - da_big_ghey 6y ago
      Population continues to grow, and there are many Americans who don't own guns who represent a big market. Many have purchased their first in the past year. And yes, lots of people like collecting a shooting a wide variety of guns. Most of then do it for reasons other than or in addition to prepping. The new firearms market is not going to die; the idea that it will is fudd nonsense.
      - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
        The point is that manufacturers aren't really producing a wide variety of guns. I wouldn't be surprised if 3/4 of new guns in the country are black polymer-and-aluminum AR-15s or black polymer-framed tilting-barrel striker fired pistols.
        AlgorithmicTime 6y ago
        There's a reason the tilting barrel polymer fired pistol is basically universal.
- goatinaboat 6y ago
  Guns in the US are near saturation from a market perspective The statistics show record gun sales. More and more Americans are becoming firearms owners for the first time, and existing owners are expanding their collections.
  - aksss 6y ago
    What's interesting (to me) about this stat is that retail sales are up, meaning mostly newly manufactured firearms, at a time when we're seeing a "rolling over" of one generation's possessions to another - baby boomers are actively passing their collections on (or selling) to the next generations in private transactions. So there are a lot of firearms changing hands to new owners now (for the last and next 5 years) that are unseen by these retail stats. Guns are a very durable good.
    - goatinaboat 6y ago
      at a time when we're seeing a "rolling over" of one generation's possessions to another - baby boomers are actively passing their collections on (or selling) to the next generations in private transactions. So there are a lot of firearms changing hands to new owners now (for the last and next 5 years) that are unseen by these retail stats. Guns are a very durable good. It’s a matter of changing tastes as well. A Gen Z would cherish her mom’s old M1911A1 as a family heirloom but she’ll want a tricked-out Combat Master for her own use cases.
  - thom_nic 6y ago
    From my anecdotal observation this is true. Gun sales are also growing among demographics not typically associated with gun ownership (non-white, non-conservative.)
- NoOneNew 6y ago
  There were between 2 to 5 million new gun owners (fbi and atf cant agree on much) in 2020. Legal gun ownership in the US is around 20+ million now. Where do you get your ideas that the market isnt interested in guns? The issue with colt and Remington has been zero innovation and updating with the times. At bass pro shop, you could take a brand new Remington bolt action and need a sledge hammer to pull the bolt. A same class benelli needed barely a pinkie's worth of strength to do the same. Buttery smooth while the new Remingtons were already acting rusty. The market has been going striker fire as well. I haven't noticed a big push from colt or rem before they shut down. Maybe they did, but it was too little too late. Theres a lot more going on than just gUnS bAd. I'm happy for the hit on chemicalized tobacco. Makes it easier for the organic, natural market, mostly cigars and cigarillos. Let that marinate.
AlgorithmicTime 6y ago
Colt has basically been milking the 1911 and AR-15/M-16 for decades. And they lost the M-4 contract to FN a while ago, so they have very little going for them but the name.
woofcat 6y ago
I'd think so given the number of Government Contracts. Looks like this includes things like Colt Canada which is the provider of small arms to the armed forces. C7, C8 etc.
chrisseaton 6y ago
The company was recently bankrupt.
- csunbird 6y ago
  Oh, that explains a lot! Even though I am not a gun enthusiast, I have heard of their name, they are quite famous.
milesdyson_phd 6y ago
I think FN has a lot of the US military contracts now, so it that might help explain why
- cinntaile 6y ago
  But FN is a Belgian gun manufacturer, how does this relate to CZG from the Czech Republic?
  - sueders101 6y ago
    Colt used to sell many rifles to the US military. They lost that business to FN. And with that they lost a lot of value.
  - mallomarmeasle 6y ago
    As pointed out downthread, Colt lost military contracts to FN, decreasing stock value
    - cinntaile 6y ago
      That makes sense, thanks for the clarification.
- groby_b 6y ago
  How does FN enter here? I thought they're owned by the Belgian government?
  - aksss 6y ago
    reduced valuation of Colt
LeonM 6y ago
The billion dollar valuations of silicon valley startups may cloud your judgement a bit. 220 mil is a lot. Most companies won't be worth this much. Except for the US, guns are mostly sold to governments (policy, military) so the gun market isn't that large, and there is lots of competition.
- SilasX 6y ago
  But still, that means several of those highly-valued SV companies could afford to buy most gunmakers in existence...
  - mrweasel 6y ago
    Apple could just have bought the music industry when they launched iTunes. The value, and in some cases the profit, of tech companies are weird outliers in the business world.
    - TecoAndJix 6y ago
      I'm now trying to picture what an Apple handgun would look like
      - zepto 6y ago
        https://blog.emojipedia.org/apple-and-the-gun-emoji/ https://blog.emojipedia.org/apple-and-the-gun-emoji/
      - jeffreyrogers 6y ago
        They would change the magazine design every few years and it would only fire Apple ammunition.
        junipertea 6y ago
        I would be a big fan of planned obsolescence for guns along with proprietary, not easily available ammo, actually.
ISL 6y ago
It stands to reason that if Colt's owners could have gotten a significantly better deal they probably would have. In particular, Colt may have substantial liabilities, making the cost of the purchase to CZG larger than the amount of money that changed hands.
1123581321 6y ago
Their bankruptcy several years ago kept them alive but didn’t really solve their problems. They’re little more than a brand (not an entirely positive one) and manufacturing capacity. Their revenue is offset by their expenses.
- aksss 6y ago
  > Their revenue is offset by their expenses. Sounds like me.

I'd argue it's still a little high, most of these companies are on the wane. Guns in the US are near saturation from a market perspective and regulatory changes will eventually kick the floor out. Time to cash out... It's like when Phillip Morris bought Kraft and General Foods in the 80s to spin them off later when tobacco regulation came.

rayiner 6y ago
Monthly gun sales have about tripled since 2000, and we had a lot of guns even back then: https://www.google.com/search?q=gun+sales+per+year&client=safari&rls=en&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjfyKjC6-TuAhUPGFkFHRRuDVIQ_AUoAnoECBEQBA&biw=1241&bih=923#imgrc=6GQORGd1xC9EeM https://www.google.com/search?q=gun+sales+per+year&client=sa... As to regulatory changes: support for a handgun ban is the lowest its been since Gallup started tracking the statistic in 1959: https://news.gallup.com/poll/150341/record-low-favor-handgun-ban.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/150341/record-low-favor-handgun.... It's just 26% today, versus 60% in 1959. Unlike with tobacco, there's no big scientific study or educational campaign that's going to drop. Guns are a well-ventilated issue.
- groby_b 6y ago
  Like with tobacco, big studies have been suppressed. Guns are far from a well-ventilated issue, they're just well-entrenched. The Dickey amendment got clarified in 2018, and the first earmarks for research were for FY2020 - so, I'd say we wait with those proclamations a few more years.
  - rayiner 6y ago
    What difference are those studies going to make? If Columbia University in the City of New York discovers you can use guns to kill people, are voters suddenly going to go "oh, well then!"
    - 1MoreThing 6y ago
      That's clearly not the kind of research that's going to be done. Funding of gun studies means we can make arguments backed up by data instead of partisan bickering. Calls to arm teachers in classrooms or mandate trigger locks on guns have real world effects, and both sides think they're right about it. Funding for studies of specific actions and policies help us as a society make more informed decisions. More info: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5993411/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5993411/
      - da_big_ghey 6y ago
        You will find that many of us gun rights supporters don't care what data comes out. I don't support 2a because fewer than n people die per year from guns.
        wing-_-nuts 6y ago
        Your honesty is refreshing, and psychopathic.
        da_big_ghey 6y ago
        > psychopathic That is a needless personal attack, and I notice that you fail to make a coherent argument against what I said. Do you favor protections against unreasonable search and seizure only until too many criminals benefit from it? My point is that some people value liberty higher than life. If you think I'm wrong, feel free to say why, though I honestly don't know that you'll change my mind on that.
        1MoreThing 6y ago
        > Psychopathy is a condition characterized by the absence of empathy and the blunting of other affective states. Callousness, detachment, and a lack of empathy... That doesn't seem like a personal attack so much as pointing out that this belief lacks empathy and is callous, which I tend to agree with. The standard argument, which I'm sure you're aware of, is that some controls and regulations on the ownership of firearms is a net good for society by reducing accidental deaths, suicides, and murders. Guns aren't responsible for any of those things, people are. But guns dramatically change the scale at which they happen. Ignoring that because of a belief in absolute freedom from regulation for machines designed to kill is callous and un-empathic. Or, to use a synonym, psychopathic. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/psychopathy https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/psychopathy
  - aksss 6y ago
    The Dickey Amendment didn't ban any studies or doing research, it banned the CDC from advocating gun control policies at a time when the administration was pushing it to use its authority/reputation to do so. It would be like me saying you can do all the research you want on teenage pregnancy and the like, but we're not funding your department to do political advocacy campaigns for abstinence. Stick to the science.
    - wing-_-nuts 6y ago
      ...and yet, where are these publicly funded studies on gun violence since? It's a ban in fact, if not a ban in law.
      - HideousKojima 6y ago
        Here's a CDC-funded study on gun violence from 2013: https://www.nap.edu/read/18319/chapter/1 https://www.nap.edu/read/18319/chapter/1 You've been repeatedly and blatantly lied to by the media and politicians about the CDC being "banned" from researching gun violence. The ban was on the use of public funds to advocate for specific gun laws/policies, not on research into the subject itself.
- pjc50 6y ago
  And covid has made the mass shooting argument irrelevant. It's killed about ten times as many americans. The US can sustain 10k gun casualties a year without moving the politics at all. Until it comes to the Capitol, I suppose.
- Spooky23 6y ago
  Even smartphone demand slows down. And that's a device with daily utility with a 2-5 year life. Seriously, I'm coming at this from a perspective of a country boy who went shooting 3-4 times a month as a teen, and earned a bounty for shooting pigeons on a farm. How much more demand can be filled for more guns the mostly sit around and gather dust? It's a market driven by ignorance and fear -- folks are treating these things as investments for a doomsday that will never come. I'm not an anti-gun guy... I own two shotguns, a hunting rifle and a .22. What's the point of adding more? Pistols, AR-15 fetishization, etc aren't for me. What I have will probably be in great shape beyond my lifetime; if anything I might trade up if I got into skeet again. Say you are right and no regulatory changes take place.... you're still going to have a cohort of old people who hit the gun hoarding profile start to die off and flood the secondary market with estate sales. My parents have a neighbor in the country that probably has >250 rifles, and there are way more people like that than the WW2/Korea generation that has mostly left us. What's the collector value of yet another AR-15 clone?
  - da_big_ghey 6y ago
    Population continues to grow, and there are many Americans who don't own guns who represent a big market. Many have purchased their first in the past year. And yes, lots of people like collecting a shooting a wide variety of guns. Most of then do it for reasons other than or in addition to prepping. The new firearms market is not going to die; the idea that it will is fudd nonsense.
    - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
      The point is that manufacturers aren't really producing a wide variety of guns. I wouldn't be surprised if 3/4 of new guns in the country are black polymer-and-aluminum AR-15s or black polymer-framed tilting-barrel striker fired pistols.
      - AlgorithmicTime 6y ago
        There's a reason the tilting barrel polymer fired pistol is basically universal.
goatinaboat 6y ago
Guns in the US are near saturation from a market perspective The statistics show record gun sales. More and more Americans are becoming firearms owners for the first time, and existing owners are expanding their collections.
- aksss 6y ago
  What's interesting (to me) about this stat is that retail sales are up, meaning mostly newly manufactured firearms, at a time when we're seeing a "rolling over" of one generation's possessions to another - baby boomers are actively passing their collections on (or selling) to the next generations in private transactions. So there are a lot of firearms changing hands to new owners now (for the last and next 5 years) that are unseen by these retail stats. Guns are a very durable good.
  - goatinaboat 6y ago
    at a time when we're seeing a "rolling over" of one generation's possessions to another - baby boomers are actively passing their collections on (or selling) to the next generations in private transactions. So there are a lot of firearms changing hands to new owners now (for the last and next 5 years) that are unseen by these retail stats. Guns are a very durable good. It’s a matter of changing tastes as well. A Gen Z would cherish her mom’s old M1911A1 as a family heirloom but she’ll want a tricked-out Combat Master for her own use cases.
- thom_nic 6y ago
  From my anecdotal observation this is true. Gun sales are also growing among demographics not typically associated with gun ownership (non-white, non-conservative.)
NoOneNew 6y ago
There were between 2 to 5 million new gun owners (fbi and atf cant agree on much) in 2020. Legal gun ownership in the US is around 20+ million now. Where do you get your ideas that the market isnt interested in guns? The issue with colt and Remington has been zero innovation and updating with the times. At bass pro shop, you could take a brand new Remington bolt action and need a sledge hammer to pull the bolt. A same class benelli needed barely a pinkie's worth of strength to do the same. Buttery smooth while the new Remingtons were already acting rusty. The market has been going striker fire as well. I haven't noticed a big push from colt or rem before they shut down. Maybe they did, but it was too little too late. Theres a lot more going on than just gUnS bAd. I'm happy for the hit on chemicalized tobacco. Makes it easier for the organic, natural market, mostly cigars and cigarillos. Let that marinate.

AlgorithmicTime 6y ago

Colt has basically been milking the 1911 and AR-15/M-16 for decades. And they lost the M-4 contract to FN a while ago, so they have very little going for them but the name.

woofcat 6y ago

I'd think so given the number of Government Contracts. Looks like this includes things like Colt Canada which is the provider of small arms to the armed forces. C7, C8 etc.

chrisseaton 6y ago

The company was recently bankrupt.

csunbird 6y ago
Oh, that explains a lot! Even though I am not a gun enthusiast, I have heard of their name, they are quite famous.

milesdyson_phd 6y ago

I think FN has a lot of the US military contracts now, so it that might help explain why

cinntaile 6y ago
But FN is a Belgian gun manufacturer, how does this relate to CZG from the Czech Republic?
- sueders101 6y ago
  Colt used to sell many rifles to the US military. They lost that business to FN. And with that they lost a lot of value.
- mallomarmeasle 6y ago
  As pointed out downthread, Colt lost military contracts to FN, decreasing stock value
  - cinntaile 6y ago
    That makes sense, thanks for the clarification.
groby_b 6y ago
How does FN enter here? I thought they're owned by the Belgian government?
- aksss 6y ago
  reduced valuation of Colt

LeonM 6y ago

The billion dollar valuations of silicon valley startups may cloud your judgement a bit. 220 mil is a lot. Most companies won't be worth this much. Except for the US, guns are mostly sold to governments (policy, military) so the gun market isn't that large, and there is lots of competition.

SilasX 6y ago
But still, that means several of those highly-valued SV companies could afford to buy most gunmakers in existence...
- mrweasel 6y ago
  Apple could just have bought the music industry when they launched iTunes. The value, and in some cases the profit, of tech companies are weird outliers in the business world.
  - TecoAndJix 6y ago
    I'm now trying to picture what an Apple handgun would look like
    - zepto 6y ago
      https://blog.emojipedia.org/apple-and-the-gun-emoji/ https://blog.emojipedia.org/apple-and-the-gun-emoji/
    - jeffreyrogers 6y ago
      They would change the magazine design every few years and it would only fire Apple ammunition.
      - junipertea 6y ago
        I would be a big fan of planned obsolescence for guns along with proprietary, not easily available ammo, actually.

ISL 6y ago

It stands to reason that if Colt's owners could have gotten a significantly better deal they probably would have. In particular, Colt may have substantial liabilities, making the cost of the purchase to CZG larger than the amount of money that changed hands.

1123581321 6y ago

Their bankruptcy several years ago kept them alive but didn’t really solve their problems. They’re little more than a brand (not an entirely positive one) and manufacturing capacity. Their revenue is offset by their expenses.

aksss 6y ago
> Their revenue is offset by their expenses. Sounds like me.