Boring Portfolio Report
Friday, March 15, 1996

(FOOL GLOBAL WIRE)
by Greg Markus (MF Boring)

ANN ARBOR, March 15 (Fool Global Wire) - Busy, busy day. As noted here last night, I sold the Borefolio holdings of Kulicke & Soffa and Potash today. I wasn't alone.

POT opened late, due to a sell-side order imbalance. A Reuters story pinned the blame on worries about weakening exports to China--i.e., the same concerns I voiced yesterday. In the story today, an analyst with Richardson Greenshields in Toronto expressed the opinion that it could be late summer before China is back in the potash market. And even them, it might be Potash Corp's competitors who benefit most.

Perhaps we'll consider some of those competitors at a later date. In any event, the Borefolio's POT shares went at $66 3/8. At today's close, the bid for POT was $65 3/4, with over 1.8 million shares traded.

The Borefolio is also KLIC-less. Montgomery Securities lowered its rating on KLIC from buy to hold today. I sold 200 shares of KLIC at $15 1/8, a tad below the closing bid of $15 1/2. That leaves the Borefolio's remaining exposure to the semiconductor industry with Lam Research. Lam appeared more than willing to shoulder that responsibility today, bounding 3 1/4 to close at $36 3/4, bid, on a good triple-expiration day for chip-related stocks.

Also, Texas Industries reported its third quarter earnings this morning--and they were certainly Texas-sized. TXI's per-share earnings of $1.41 beat First Call's consensus expectations by 13 cents and topped even the high-end estimate by 3 pennies. The stock hit a new highly briefly today, but ended down 1/4 on typical "sell on the news" profit-taking.

I've given the TXI earnings report a quick once-over and see virtually wall-to-wall good news. On the steel-making side, Chaparral's total tonnage, average selling price per ton, and average gross profit per ton were all up; sales revenues rose 20% over last year's 3Q, and EPS of $.41 is more than double the year-ago $.17. As for the cement/aggregates/concrete operations, total tonnage, sales revenues, and operating profit margins were all higher, as well.

TXI kindly permits analysts a few days to mull over the numbers before convening its conference call. When that call occurs next Wednesday, I'll be on the line representing Fooldom. By the way, I've been told that TXI's Treasurer, Ken Allen, recently purchased his own copy of The Motley Fool Investment Guide. If TXI continues to perform as well for us in coming months as it has to date, maybe the SEC will permit us to slip him an autographed copy?

I conclude tonight by noting that despite incurring some fairly significant losses on KLIC and POT in a brief time, the total value of the Borefolio is down only around 2%, including all transaction costs but excluding dividends and interest earned to date (which will get folded in later). Nice gains by TXI and Borders have pretty much offset losses elsewhere. So as Spring draws closer, we are in excellent shape to identify and acquire some terrific new stocks and watch the Borefolio grow.

Oh, I almost forgot: GO BLUE! BEAT TEXAS! (Sorry, Mr. Allen.)

Today's Moves

BGP   -   1/4
GNT   +   1/4
LRCX  +3  1/4
PMSI  ---
TXI   -   1/4