KPO

I’m sure that’s right, but my point was the product set overlaps to a large extent and Buffett bought it due to the simplicity and consistency of the business. It probably brings up an inconvenient truth of many businesses inside of Berkshire in terms of them being sub-optimized for profitability (e.g. UP vs BNSF). I suppose this is upside if Abel is as good as many hope.

CPRI

It looks like Lowe’s buyback is mostly debt financed as their debt has more than doubled to -$36B in the last four years. That said, the other Loews decreased their share count by about a third and paid down a third of their debt over the same period.

It seems kind of strange in an environment where rates are likely to decline from here plus their credit profile should continue to improve leading to a lower premium over the risk free rate. Oh well, I guess they can’t get everything right.

This was on my list as well. Almost 45% since the beginning of 2019. Not bad.

Why would they redeem 4.875% notes 8 months early only three weeks after issuing 6.0% notes? Odd.

Sounds like Berkshire’s MiTek business, which is a good little business.

+1 I feel like I’ve learned more from this board over the last few years than any other single investment resource. Merry Christmas folks!

I wouldn’t be surprised to see something as boring as CPRI beat the indexes next year with a 15% return from here when the deal closes. I realize this is boring, but it’s a solid risk adjusted return investment.

(Re)starter in BTI after a year hiatus. Kind of surprising to see this yielding 10%.

Medicis Pharmacuetical. Purchased around 1996 and in 2012 it was sold to Valeant for $2.6B. I don’t have good records going back this far, but it was a 12-14X return as I recall. The one that got away? MSFT bought in 1995 and sold after a relatively quick double…..

Agreed. Makes me wonder about the level of scum correlation to sports team owners as they immediately used the latest tranche of selling off the family business to buy the Milwaukee Bucks.

The United States, particularly the Midwest. This culture definitely still exists in some areas.

+1

In the case of Hess I suspect the family preferred CVX stock for tax reasons.

I have a smallish position and am thinking about rolling some of my ATVI proceeds here as I like to have one or two merger arb positions at any one time since the risk profile is usually disconnected from general market volatility. I can’t come up with a reasonable market concentration argument for why this shouldn’t go through with the concessions they’ve made. Political pandering risk seems the main reason this gets shot down, meaning the public will generally be against it because SAVE’s unsustainable pricing model will be at risk, so politicians will fall in line with their constituents. The other thing that holds me back on going big here is that I have zero interest in owning this if it doesn’t work out, which wasn’t the case with ATVI.

TRC

Thanks for posting

I’ve met Stewart before at the Berkshire meeting years ago. Can you send a non-paywall link as I’d love to read the story? Thanks for sharing.

This is 100% correct and glad you brought it up as I’ve been telling this to friends and family for years, but it’s not just asphalt. Can you paint your house, re-roof your house or provide tires for your car without fossil fuels? And that doesn’t even get into fertilizer, etc. The zero emissions revolution is largely nonsense. If we cared about the environment we would simply keep all assets such as cars, lawn movers, homes, etc. as long as possible, which no one does other than the cheap among us who are the real (accidental) environmentalists.

More TRC

TRC

More TRC at the close

https://archive.ph/D0KXm Happened upon this article about the other famous Buffett and it states that Berkshire has ownership in Margaritaville Enterprises, the holding company for most of the Jimmy Buffett related businesses. Was I the only one that didn’t know this? I wonder if it’s even true?

40% of my SHEL purchased when oil prices went negative in ‘20. Nothing specifically is negative about SHEL, but I own too much O&G(&P)!