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Showing content with the highest reputation on 04/16/2023 in Posts

  1. @SafetyinNumbers great point. My deep dive into the equity portfolio excluded (on purpose) the insurance holdings. The equity portfolio at Fairfax gets most of the attention. The real jewel at Fairfax is the insurance business. It has grown in size by 420% since the end of 2009 (organically and acquisitions). Net premiums written increased from $4.3 billion in 2009 to $22.3 billion in 2022. Fairfax has demonstrated they are excellent at seeding new insurance companies/management teams and then getting out of the way. They are also good at integrating acquisitions. Andy Barnard was put into his role in 2010 - managing the insurance side of Fairfax. He manages the business through 200 profit centres… which indicates just how decentralized the insurance operations are… separate insurance businesses all over the world that are quietly growing year after year - some for decades. Lots of the value that has been building in this group for decades is NOT captured in book value - for people who need convincing see the list below. Over the past 6 years Fairfax has opportunistically monetized a few of their insurance businesses and has booked significant pre-tax gains on these sales of more than $4 billion (see list below). Yes, Digit, seeded in 2017, has become a home run. Ki, seeded in 2020, is growing like crazy. Gulf Insurance Group, seeded in 2010, has quietly grown into a very large insurance company in the MENA region. So much is going on under the hood with the insurance business at Fairfax. As i have said numerous times before: Fairfax has three engines that drive results and all three are performing exceptionally well right now: insurance (hard market), fixed income (high interest rates) and equities (much improved portfolio of holdings). Importantly, the macro environment has also aligned (value investing, cyclicals, commodities, energy). Investors in Fairfax have never had this set-up before (with everything working together at the same time). We are seeing the early benefits of the flywheel effect at Fairfax. Except their transition has not been one from good to great; rather, their transition the past couple of years has been one from bad to great (yes, the cumulative losses from the equity hedges from 2010-2020 were bad). The company is generating record levels of free cash flow. In turn, that is driving record levels of spending on (good) investments. My tracking sheet for Fairfax says they invested a record $2.4 billion in 2022 across 20 different companies. I expect more of the same in 2023. And more again in 2024. Compounding is a beautiful thing - when it is done well. I think investors continue to underestimate the results Fairfax is going to deliver in the coming years. The stock is trading today at 1 x trailing BV (Dec 31, 2022) and at 0.95 x March 31 BV (est $690) and 5.5 x 2023E earnings (est $120/share). Despite the run up the past 18 months, the stock still looks crazy cheap to me. And that is because the business results keep getting better. And the story keeps getting better. So, despite the big run up in price, the stock stays cheap. Yes, i know… makes no sense. Peter Lynch loved these situations. ————— The flywheel effect: The Flywheel effect is a concept developed in the book Good to Great. No matter how dramatic the end result, good-to-great transformations never happen in one fell swoop. In building a great company or social sector enterprise, there is no single defining action, no grand program, no one killer innovation, no solitary lucky break, no miracle moment. Rather, the process resembles relentlessly pushing a giant, heavy flywheel, turn upon turn, building momentum until a point of breakthrough, and beyond. - https://www.jimcollins.com/concepts/the-flywheel.html ————— 1.) ICICI Lombard - India Seeded in 2001 Sold in 2017 (down to 10%) and remainder in 2019 for about a $950 million pre-tax gain Fairfax had to sell ICICI Lombard (down to 10%) to invest in Digit 2.) First Capital - Singapore Seeded in 2002 Sold in 2017 for $1.02 billion after-tax gain delivered a compound rate of return of 30% since 2002 3.) Riverstone Europe - runoff sold in 2020 & 2021 for proceeds of $1.3 billion (+$230 million contingent value instrument) 4.) Pet Insurance seeded with two purchases in 2013 and 2014 sold in 2022 for a $992 million after tax gain 5.) Ambridge Partners purchased by Brit in two transactions in 2015 and 2019 sold in 2023 for $275 million pre-tax gain (hasn’t closed yet)
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