keegomaster

How could one get access to Packer's letters?

Berkshire has dropped 50% in a few instances. One of those during 2008 https://www.cnbc.com/2008/11/21/berkshire-hathaway-down-almost-50-from-alltime-high-as-stock-sinks-again.html

The chart title is a bit of an understatement with positions up 120% to 260%

Interesting, what book is this?

I just read the letter, and still have to go through the report, but I noticed two interesting non-financial things: - the color of the report cover is black, which I interpret as mourning or grief for Charlie's passing - seeing Warren refer to Charlie as a father figure: "In a way his relationship with me was part older brother, part loving father" I just found it interesting. Great year. The weakness in Energy and Utilities was more than compensated by the good Insurance and Investment results, which is a statement to the strength and diversity of the businesses it holds.

Very strong annual results. This is what caught my eye: The excess of fair value over carrying value of investments in non-insurance associates and market traded consolidated non-insurance subsidiaries increased significantly to $1,006.0 million at December 31, 2023 from $310.0 million at December 31, 2022, with $315.2 million of that increase related to publicly traded Eurobank.

Have you looked at Quartr?

Would you be willing to share names of the Fixed Income Closed End Funds you own? Haven't looked at CEFs in a long time... wondering what discount to NAV is like these days... Thanks!

I started watching Dumb Money last night on Netflix, and it's looking good. It's about Roaring Kitty the GameStop saga. Decided to stop early, in order to restart watching with the wife, who also find these kind of movies entertaining (eg Wolf of WS or The Big Short). Has anyone watched it yet?

WEB won't change one bit (let alone at his age). He will pull the trigger only when the big elephant is in sight.

I have also started looking at HSY recently, similarly with PFE. These are the companies that one wishes to own for the long term but are usually expensive. So when they start to trade around 52w lows I start to consider them... Especially when most positions in my current portfolio seem to be fairly valued and not attractive for the next marginal investment. For HSY the narrative around the price decline seems to be Ozempic and other related weight loss drugs. To me those fears seem overblown, and I plan to continue reading and understanding HSY's financials and probable future performance. Is there anything else to consider as potential threats or concerns to HSY? Cheers!

As per the 2022 Annual Report, Farmers Edge had a "carry value of $2.76 per share (versus market value of $0.20)". The current market value of FDGE is $0.13 before the privatization offer was announced today for $0.25. This was a ride to the bottom. Hopefully they can turn the ship around. This is what they said about FDGE on the 2022 AR: "Farmers Edge had a very challenging year in 2022. Unfortunately, the performance since the IPO in 2021 has been extremely disappointing. Vibhore Arora, former Country Leader of Amazon Canada, took over as CEO of Farmers Edge in June with the goal of growing new acres, improving execution, product delivery and the customer experience, building enterprise partnerships and a new management team and right sizing the cost structure. We are very excited about the initiatives taken already to move the business on a pathway towards positive cash flow generation. FarmCommand is a leading precision farming application and we are pleased to see that Vibhore has been successful at refining the business strategy, which is key for reducing the cash burn rate and bringing in new elements for future success."

Added more GOOGL, and started a position on AMZN. The return to positive Free Cash Flow (and the relative and absolute magnitude!) is a very good sign of the increasing Operating Income (through increased revenues and reduced costs), together with a more mindful Cap Ex spending. In addition the growth in AWS with relation to AI/ML forebodes good things to come.

GOOGL! Revenues are growing, operating margin is growing. I think that the sell-off on the basis of lower-than-expected cloud revenue is an overreaction. An overall concern with growth companies is the relative valuation vs. risk free rate (i.e., at a 22 PE and 4.5% earnings yield, equities seem frothy and I expect them to come down... not sure when)

@Morgan glad the site and files are useful! have fun analyzing the data... last night I spent a few hours analyzing Canadian provincial bonds and corporates... oh boy, time flies when you are having fun! Cheers!

Hi @Morgan Prof. Damodaran has spreadsheets for each year since 1999 with different multiples, e.g., PE ratios, P/BV, EV/EBIT, EV/EBITDA, etc., in the 'data' section of his website: https://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/New_Home_Page/dataarchived.html Hope it helps!

I use good ol' Google Finance: sort ascending by % price change and look closer at things at the top (i.e., those that are significantly negative for the day).

Started a position on DIS. Bob Iger's turn around is happening (improvement in FCF, ROIC), and the stock is trading at 5-yr lows. Happy to start here and build up if it keeps trailing lower.

Your posts reporting on the C position build-up made me take a quick look at the fundamentals: P/B = 0.42 (ycharts) P/E = 6.55 (google finance) Div yield = 5.13% (google finance) C almost meets the definition of Peter Cundil's magic sixes: "They are companies trading at less than 0.6 times book value (less than 60% of book value), 6 times earnings or less, and with dividend yields of 6% or more." ("There's Always Something To Do" Christopher Risso-Gill) I may add C to the watchilist! Cheers!

Trimmed down some BRK.B. At 1.45x BV it's getting a bit pricy. Planning to repurchase when PB goes back to around 1.3x

Closed my ATVI positions. Exited at $91.92 (19.8% return in 15 months, or about 15.8% annualized). I think there are better options than the residual 3% upon transaction close, and some risks still remain (albeit minor) with the UK's green-light.

Oh, thanks for making me aware that the rate had already been reset. I missed that news release (and it is also on the Enbridge website, so I can't believe I missed it). Yes, like @maplevalue mentioned, the 6.112% rate on $25 face value is $1.528 which represents 8.9% on the $17.11 I paid for the lot I bought.

Bought some Enbridge Preferreds (Series H) on margin. The rate reset is happening on Aug 30th and I anticipate the upcoming rate will have a ~9% yield that should cover the ~6% margin cost. EDIT: Like @lessthaniv pointed out, the rate was reset on Aug 2nd at 6.112%

Added (and plan to continue to add) to GOOGL on pullbacks

After seeing the comparison of P/E and P/B of FFH against the other competitors...I wouldn't be surprised if at some point in the future Berkshire makes a bid for Fairfax (similar to what they did with Alleghany).