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Yes, I looked at briefly and put it in the too hard pile. It would be more investable at a higher price if they can get themselves sorted, but they laid off most of their employees, and Carlyle has their nuts in a vice. The other investor agreed to convert their debt to equity, but it's contingent on Carlyle doing the same. I don't think it's gamesmanship, I think the bond covenants prevent them from issuing new shares or debt without Carlyle's approval. So they can't buy more panels for their backlog without cash, but C won't let them borrow more or issue shares. And it looks like it's in C's interest to let it go under so they can "harvest the organs". Maybe the warrants $0.03 might be interesting. I thought about starting a post on it, but it's such a small cap and it's got so much hair on it, that it's not worth it. If C converts the debt into equity it will give them some room to maneuver, but TJ said he's not putting more money in and he's not interested in working for Carlyle for free. He can't stand them. He's a billionaire and could literally buy this whole company with his spare change, but he's not going to do it with Carlyle putting their two cents in.

I thought it was interesting that Thomas Russo sold 12% of Berkshire. https://dataroma.com/m/hist/hist.php?f=GR&s=BRK.A

Yeah, you'll get any number of estimates of IV for FFH. A good, basic approach might be 1.2x or 1.3x adjusted BV. That valuation is conservative enough that you aren't reliant on FFH actually routinely achieving its 15% BV growth target. If they actually do routinely achieve that target, you will in retrospect evaluate that you were too conservative when you bought, but those are the good sorts of outcomes. As you noted, when that SIB was conducted, it was priced slightly lower than book (ie, 0.9x). At that point in time, the market was effectively saying that FFH was worth more dead than alive! In theory, shareholders could have gotten roughly book if management had just thrown in the towel, run-off the business, sold the assets and written a cheque to shareholders! Mr. Market can sometimes be a little too pessimistic, and when the price suggests that FFH shareholders would have been better off if the company weren't a going-concern, that's pretty negative. But, what's it truly worth? Well, if you believe it's worth 1.2x or 1.3x adjusted BV, then the valuation gap has closed significantly, but perhaps there's a bit more room to go. The real question is what to do if Mr. Market pushes it to 1.4 or (gasp!) 1.5x. That will be the point where shareholders will really need to think hard about what it's truly worth. In the mean time, as long as the bottom doesn't suddenly fall out of the insurance market, we can sit back and watch the earnings flow in for the next few years. SJ

I just skimmed Complete Solaria's 10K, and wow, TJ has his work cut out for him. I understand they've reduced costs significantly this year, but it's a mess.

Anchor Intimation - BSE and NSE signed.pdf

https://www.livemint.com/market/ipo/go-digit-ipo-to-open-tomorrow-gmp-issue-details-10-key-things-to-know-before-subscribing-to-the-rs-2-615-crore-issue-11715683489889.html "Once the top end of the IPO pricing range and the existing premium on the grey market are taken into consideration, shares of Go Digit are anticipated to list at a price of ₹312 per share, which is 14.71% more than the IPO price of ₹272."

Dennis Hong, who runs a concentrated book, sold down some Coupang, which is up 20% the past month. https://www.dataroma.com/m/holdings.php?m=SP He also bought a big new position in FOUR, which appears to be a payments processor, like Square.

This is what Biden is afraid of:

Not a cent less, at the top of the - "Price Range Rs. 258 to Rs. 272"

I thought this was an interesting thread and echo’s my own thoughts - that not selling great businesses is so important: Their 13F is as you would expect: https://whalewisdom.com/filer/akre-capital-management-llc Speaking of 13Fs I think Berkshire files tomorrow and we could find out the identity of his secret purchase

This is now under CURRENT as it is "Active" on May 15 after midnight in India. Also, worth watching is their listing on the other major exchange, BSE - https://www.bseindia.com/markets/publicIssues/DisplayIPO.aspx?id=3439&type=IPO&idtype=1&status=L&IPONo=6575&startdt=15/May/2024

I don't believe he had any effect on iPhone sales but did produce a halo around the equity. I also believe the greatness of the iPhone is not so much due the hardware but in how well it integrates with the entire ecosphere.

After a brief technical delay, the NAIC website is functioning again and the Q1 reports are trickling out. So far, for Odyssey Re, it looks like they sold $60m worth of Micron stock on 3/26 and purchased a Digit 10 year bond yielding 9.75% and an IIFL Finance 3 year bond yielding 9.5%, among other trades like Orla that we knew about. This is not for consolidated Fairfax like a 13F, this is just for the Odyssey Re entity Not sure if these will be legible so I am attaching the whole document. Trades are at the end. Purchases Sales 23680.2024.P.Q1.P.O.1.4769174.pdf

Rochon made a nice add to sbux. Also and add to mkl which I thought was odd because I thought I had read that he was cutting.

@StubbleJumper Your post has a bunch of really interesting angles to it. Below are some thoughts. As per usual, I like to stir the pot a little to hopefully generate some good discussion. And estimating 'intrinsic value' at a point in time is a really important topic. Below I bolded the part in your earlier comment that got my attention. @StubbleJumper “The value of my personal shares is independent of the size of the float. My portion of FFH's future cash flows is X/total shares outstanding. So, when 250k shares are retired, my portion of FFH's future cash flows goes up. That part is not optics. The part that might make it mostly optics is the price paid. Continuing shareholders are only better off after a repurchase if the shares were repurchased at a price that is less than intrinsic value. When FFH conducted the SIB a couple of years ago and bought back a boat-load at US$500, it was quite obviously the case that those repurchases were undertaken at a price lower than IV. But, a repurchase price of US$1,100 is probably much closer to IV and the benefit to continuing shareholders is much more limited. As an example if IV is actually US$1300 or $1400, we continuing shareholders collectively benefit by 275k*US$200 or 300...less than five bucks a share?). It's not nothing, but it doesn't move the needle all that much.” Intrinsic value is a tough thing to estimate. When Fairfax did its SIB in late 2021 did investors at the time think Fairfax was buying shares below intrinsic value? I am not so sure. It is clear today that Fairfax got a steal of a deal. With the buybacks so far in 2024, is Fairfax buying shares below intrinsic value? It appears investors think Fairfax is buying back shares today at a price that is close to intrinsic value. Just like 2021, I am not so sure that investors are getting it right. Why? Fairfax is a completely different company today than it was in late 2021 - especially when you focus on earnings. And future earnings is the critical input when calculating intrinsic value. Here is what Prem had to say at the Fairfax AGM. He said this at the very beginning of his slide presentation. “Fairfax -- and I've said it in our annual report, said it last year. I'll say it again. Fairfax has been transformed since 2017. Even we couldn't see it. If you had asked me 3 years ago, 4 years ago, I couldn't see that. Our premiums have gone up… The float has gone up, the investment portfolio, common shareholders' equity. Underwriting profit, because of this expansion in a hard market… interest and dividends… it's running at about $2 billion. … operating income of $4 billion that we can see for the next 4 years. The company has been transformed. And …because of this transformation, the intrinsic value of the company has gone up significantly.” Let me try and explain my thinking in a little more detail. Part 1 I think it is useful to dial back to November 2021. At that time, what were the facts? On December 17, 2021, Fairfax announced the SIB: to repurchase 2 million shares at $500/share, with the offer expiring on Dec 23, 2021. Of interest, at Sept 30, 2021, book value was $562. Fairfax’s SIB was made at about 0.9 x BV. https://www.fairfax.ca/press-releases/fairfax-announces-us1-0-billion-substantial-issuer-bid-and-sale-of-9-99-minority-stake-in-odyssey-group-2021-11-17/ On Nov, 16, 2021, the day before they announced the SIB, Fairfax shares closed at US$432.49. For the next month (mid Nov to mid Dec), Fairfax shares traded in a band between $440 and $460/share, well below the $500/share SIB price. Fairfax shares traded below $500/share for much of Q1, 2022. This tells me that most investors likely felt Fairfax was buying back shares in Dec 2021 at a small premium to IV. In fact, a year later, in October of 2022, Fairfax share traded briefly below $450 - a price significantly below the SIB from the previous year. Today - 30 months later - it is now obvious to investors that Fairfax’s SIB was executed at a price that was well below intrinsic value. The key take-away is this - when the SIB was executed in 2021 most investors got it completely wrong. My guess is most investors - at a point in time - have no idea what Fairfax’s actual intrinsic value is. Yes, those are fighting words. Why do I think that? Intrinsic value is a theoretical concept and a wickedly difficult thing to estimate (just ask Buffett). Especially for a company like Fairfax where so much important stuff is going on under the hood. Instead, most investors simply focus on Fairfax’s current stock price and go from there (and make the buy, sell or hold decision based on what the animal entrails tell them at a given point in time). Look at the commentary on this board when it comes to Fairfax… how much of the commentary is based primarily on a valuation framework and how much of the commentary is primarily based on where the stock price is trading? To be fair, Fairfax’s stock price has been a rocket ship to the moon the past 4 years. But intrinsic value has also been on a rocket ship to the moon. Which has gone up more? Now that is a great question. So let’s explore that a little bit next. Part 2 Fairfax is not the same company today that it was in December 2021. Its insurance business is much larger and is more profitable. Its fixed income portfolio is much larger and earning a much higher average yield. Its equity holdings are much higher quality and performing much better. Fairfax has also been best-in-class with its capital allocation decisions the past 30 months (compared to there P/C insurance companies). The magnitude of the change has even caught Fairfax by surprise. This is what Prem told us loud and clear at the AGM this year (see quote above). As a result, operating earnings have spiked higher over the past 30 months. From 2016-2020, operating earnings at Fairfax averaged $1 billion per year. Importantly, this was the reference point for investors in Fairfax in November 2021. This is likely what they were using as their core input when calculating intrinsic value. Today, operating earnings are in the $4.5 billion range. This is a 350% increase from the 2016-2020 average. This level of operating earnings is sustainable moving forward - in fact, it should actually grow nicely over time (as record earnings get re-invested by the top-notch capital allocation team at Hamblin Watsa, creating larger/new income streams). Of interest, book value has increased from $562 at Sept 30, 2021, to $940 today (March 31, 2024). Book value has increased 67% over the past 30 months. And operating earnings have increased 350%. Back in Dec 2021, Fairfax paid 0.9 x BV ($500/$562) to repurchase 2 million shares. Fast forward to today. So far in 2024, Fairfax has reduced effective shares outstanding by 605,000 or 2.6%. The total cost was $688 million or $1,090/share. Book value is $940/share so shares were purchased at a slight premium to BV of 1.15 x. Compared to the SIB in 2021, does this mean Fairfax is now buying back shares at less of a discount to intrinsic value? Or at a price that is closer to intrinsic value? Of course, the answer is - it depends. It depends on whether or not Fairfax is the same company that it was in late 2021. We know that Fairfax is not the same company. It has been transformed in recent years. Operating earnings have increased 350%. Fairfax’s earnings have improved dramatically in size and quality. Higher quality means the company should now trade at a higher multiple than it did in December 2021. Is 1.15 x BV the right multiple? No, of course not. It is much too low for a company of Fairfax’s quality. But investors won’t see it today. But guess what? It will likely be obvious to investors 30 months from now. Over the next three years, my guess is Fairfax will earn a total of somewhere between $450 to $500/share ($150 x 3 plus some growth). At the end of 2026, this would put book value at around $1,400/share. Let’s assume Fairfax should be valued at a P/BV multiple of 1.3 x. This is a low multiple for a company of Fairfax’s quality. This would put the share price at about $1,800 in 3 years time (early 2027). I view this estimate as a a reasonable baseline - could be a little higher or it could be a little lower. If this is how things play out, buying back shares today around $1,100/share will look like a steal in 3 years time (if the shares are trading at that time at around $1,800). In three years time, when investors look back to evaluate Fairfax’s repurchase of shares in 2024, my guess is they are going to conclude that Fairfax was able to buy them back at a price that was well below intrinsic value. Just like their evaluation today of the repurchase that Fairfax did in December 2021. With hindsight it will be obvious to everyone. But today? Few can see it. And that is what I love about investing. ---------- PS: what is the appropriate P/BV multiple for Fairfax? What if it is 1.5 x ? It would be great to come back to this discussion in three years time... Fairfax are value investors - and they are very good. They are aggressively buying back Fairfax stock today. That tells you loud and clear what they think about Fairfax's current valuation. And they understand the company - and its future prospects - very well.

The U.S. state of Wisconsin purchased 94,562 shares of BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) in the first quarter of the year, a filing shows. The shares are worth nearly $100 million. . . . "Normally you don't get these big fish institutions in the 13Fs for a year or so (when the ETF gets more liquidity) but as we've seen these are no ordinary launches," Bloomberg Intelligence senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas wrote in a post on X. "Good sign, expect more, as institutions tend to move in herds." https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/05/14/state-of-wisconsin-buys-nearly-100m-worth-of-blackrock-spot-bitcoin-etf/

Here are some of the initial pre-IPO investors. https://www.ndtvprofit.com/amp/ipos/go-digit-mops-up-rs-1176-crore-from-anchor-issue-in-pre-ipo-fundraise Go Digit General Insurance Ltd. has raised Rs 1,176 crore from anchor investors, ahead of its initial public offering. The company allotted 4.32 crore shares at Rs 272 apiece to 56 anchor investors. The American multinational Fidelity Investments-backed fund got the highest allocation of 7.95%. Goldman Sachs Funds (5.31%), Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (5.31%), Custody Bank of Japan (4.25%) and Bay Pons Partners (4.11%) are among the other marquee investors in the pre-IPO round fundraising. Eleven domestic mutual funds have applied through a total of 23 schemes, the company said in an exchange filing on Tuesday. They have collectively netted 33.5% of the anchor portion of Rs 204 crore. ICICI Prudential Mutual Fund, SBI Mutual Fund, Mirae Asset and Axis Mutual Fund are among the key investors in this category.

I’m a huge fan of Akre historically, but he hasn’t had an active role in investment management since the end of 2020 when he retired. Succession has also been an issue for his firm in recent years after he retired, FWIW.

Barron's speculation list: https://www.barrons.com/amp/articles/berkshire-hathaway-mystery-stock-bfd8ec86

The quarterly filings are starting to come in and should all be here by tomorrow. https://www.dataroma.com/m/home.php Does anyone see any interesting buys/sells from people? I'll start, it looks like Chuck Akre trimmed some of his American Tower, which he is known for. In an interview I heard him say that a analyst told him that X was the next American Tower and he cut him off and said "son, American Tower is the next American Tower!". He also bought some UBER, along with Tom Russo and Tom Gayner, this quarter.

iPhone is that great. I’m nearly all Apple product. And likely will upgrade to another iPhone when it’s time to upgrade. But it’s kinda one of many great devices too.

Buffett said at the annual meeting, that the iPhone is maybe the greatest product of all time. Now I´m thinking about my buying my first iPhone. Do you think Buffett did marketing the iPhone or is the iPhone really that great?

added some more here

Needs those autoworker votes in swing states