oscarazocar

I donate to Rails-To-Trails Conservancy and think they do outstanding work that has a huge positive impact on communities around the country. They are the main lobbying group that works with federal/state/city agencies to promote the building of public bike/walking trails, often through conversion of dormant rail lines. They have a terrific website and magazine (I think quarterly) that highlights their work. https://www.railstotrails.org/about/ https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/521437006

Buffett has spoken very highly of 3G: https://www.reuters.com/article/business/buffett-says-willing-to-partner-with-3g-again-on-very-large-deals-idUSBREA42096/ "I think 3G does a magnificent job of running businesses," Buffett said at Berkshire's annual meeting. "We're very likely to partner with them, perhaps on some things that are very large." https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/10/business/dealbook/warren-buffett-jorge-paulo-lemann-brazil-conference.html Then, Mr. Lemann’s 3G Capital and Mr. Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway teamed up to acquire H.J. Heinz for $23 billion. Two years later, 3G Capital, again together with Mr. Buffett, merged Heinz with Kraft Foods. “I consider it one of the largest mistakes in my life that we didn’t really team up as partners until considerably later,” Mr. Buffett acknowledged Saturday night, but that since doing deals together, “he and I are on the same wavelength.”

I have had this issue for a week and it makes the site pretty much unusable as I can only see the very recent commentary.

This is a quote from a 2007 student visit to Omaha: Question 2: GEICO is one of Berkshire’s crown jewels. You know the auto insurance industry cold, and you have been extolling the virtues of the GEICO and Progressive business models for decades. Why haven’t you ever taken a stake in Progressive? Essentially, "thumb-sucking". That is what his partner Charlie Munger calls it when they identify opportunities in their circle of competence and fail to pull the trigger. Buying one didn’t preclude buying the other. He immensely admires Peter Lewis, the longtime CEO of Progressive. He asks the question of CEO’s – if you had a silver bullet and could kill one of your competitors, who would it be? For GEICO, Buffett would his silver bullet, and all the rest of his ammo, shooting Progressive. Years ago [presumably in the early 1980’s], they were briefly looking at putting the two companies together. He joked that each CEO, Jack Byrne of GEICO and Peter Lewis, would each come to him and report that negotiations were moving along, only that each was under the impression that he was gong to be the CEO of the combined company. Buffett told the story of his initial involvement with GEICO as a Columbia student. It was obvious to him in 1951 that GEICO would do very well for a very long time. Everyone hates buying car insurance, but they are forced to, and a good chunk of them will go with the low-cost provider. Buffett mentioned that GEICO now has a slightly better position than Progressive [due to a lower cost structure, I believe], but that the two of them will be duking it out and both will gain share for a long time. When the internet hit, Progressive actually had an edge for awhile. Because they had no direct distribution up to that point, they were quicker to seize on the internet as their direct distribution channel. GEICO had been so successful with its direct mail and phone strategy that those institutional forces vested in the old systems prevented it from shifting to the internet nearly as quickly as it should have. Buffett eventually had to lock them in a room and tell them they couldn’t come out until they had a viable internet strategy.

Berkshire has had stakes in a number of companies they then acquired: GEICO, BNSF, Precision Castparts.

Why wouldn't he exercise the options and sell the stock? One wouldn't normally do that, but this is a highly unusual case, and the "intrinsic value" of the options doesn't seem terribly relevant here given the dynamics. He dominates the GME options market, everyone knows exactly what he owns, and his selling would crater the price. If he exercised the options and blew out of the 12m shares at $32.50/share, that's $150 million in the till, and he could actually do it. Not bad for a day's work.

How do you know he hasn't exited the call position? Some cursory browsing indicates that the open interest is recalculated once each day. If he exercised the options and sold the stock, would we know that now or would we have to wait until the open interest is updated?

https://www.elitetrader.com/et/threads/kuppy-comments-about-spacs.357294/

Dataroma has a good search site for insider buys that shows a running list of form 4 info and you can filter for various things. https://www.dataroma.com/m/ins/ins.php?t=m&po=1&am=10000&sym=&o=fd&d=d

These guys who had dinner with Munger and then go around posting photos with him and saying stuff like he was their "mentor" and trumpeting his name at every opportunity - it's very distasteful behavior. Munger had dinner with a lot of people. It's like the joke, "How do you know if someone is vegan? They'll tell you."

What are some examples of the big discounts in smaller stocks that you are seeing? Thanks.

The part on Musk's algorithm for operating companies is very good. The algorithm, plus his raw intelligence and intense focus, are the reasons for his unusual success. https://medium.com/@alastairallen/the-musk-algorithm-c241d9d0ee3d

National Indemnity, See's, Buffalo Evening News, GEICO, Scott Fetzer, hiring Jain, KO, AXP, Mid-American, BNSF, AAPL. Scott Fetzer is a very underrated acquisition. Berkshire paid $235m net in 1986, took out $244m (net income = FCF) in first 5 years, $309m in next 5 years, and in year 11 earned $82m net, with Scott Fetzer segment at $32m net income (peak), Kirby at $39m (peak) and World Book still earning $10m. The entire thing did about 24% IRR with minimal leverage. All that cash went into equities and other businesses at attractive prices between 1986-2000.

APOG has a great niche business, the Large-Scale Optical segment, that makes coatings for picture frames and is very steady and highly profitable. It is different in character than the rest of the APOG businesses, less cyclical, and provides ballast if the main business has a big down cycle.

The SEB repurchase wasn't just from a "major shareholder group", but the Bresky family which still owns over 73% and has controlled and run the company for many decades. It's a very odd transaction. Why would they sell a huge block at such a large discount to tangible book value when the stock has traded above that level for many years? Presumably they would get a decent premium to tangible book value if they sold the company outright.