Xerxes

Just went through another grueling session of watching Foundation. I am becoming more and more irritated by this so-called adaptation of Foundation on Apple TV+. Villeneuve should have been the one making this series for Apple TV+. Maybe it is just me but i loved his work on Blade Runner. Have not seen Dune, but it will be epic !!! Sadly, i found it that Warner Brothers have not green lighted Dune part 2 (and it has not been back to back filmed like Peter Jackson's LOTR trilogy). Who the hell is running Warner Brothers !!! In this day and age of chasing eyeballs, free money and bidding up valuable franchise, that says something about Warner Brothers ability to comprehend how huge Dune could be for them with Villeneuve at the helm. Foundation has been more or less turned into Star Trek as far as i am concerned. With the Emperor (i am sorry is that The Empire) going on-away mission on distant planets to meet locals without violating prime directive (ala Cap Picard). I will give it till end of season and will cancel my Apple TV+. I just hope Prime's new Lord of The Ring series (whenever that comes), wont be grueling like Foundation.

I do not have any comments on the real-estate, but if memory serves, Amazon obliterated Toy' R Us side that is based in the U.S. The Canadian operation was profitable, but was being used by the parent U.S.-based Toy' R Us to subsidies its losses in the U.S. So, when FFH bought the Canadian side of the business, they bought a profitable business.

I actually like the Naspers analogy and it might apply Atlas as well, if it goes multi-fold from here [big if]. [sarcasm starts] What we need now is validation of Digit by Masayoshi Son plunging in by throwing money at it [sarcasm ends]

For me, Lewis best performance will always be Lt. Winters in Band of Brothers. PS: I am about to finish off Billions season 5. Funny how suddenly mid-season they were wearing masks or the lead actor shaved off his beard. I guess different production period before and after Covid.

I did listened to the podcast on the AcquirerMultiple. Sounded very interesting. Can someone who read the book can confirm if the book offer some historical anecdote about specific P/E companies and/or specific deal (i enjoy reading history), or is it just one those broad strokes at looking at long term return and showcasing that S&P500 did better etc. etc.

10 Rings (Marvel movie) -- done Sopranos prequel -- done 007 Dune Foundation Trilogy -- on-going Eternal (Marvel movie) Spiderman multiverse (Marvel movie) Dexter Narcos Mexico Season 3 Mandalorian (no clue on release date) Billions (part 2 of the last season ?) Succession (new season ?) Expanse Season 6 Yellowstone Season 4

I finished watching Expanse Season 5. The best scene in the season, where the Martian Admiral talks about .... guess who ? Xerxes.

Recorded only 1 week ago, with half of it on a children book. The other half, the analyst backward circa 2016-17-18 opinion on FFH. Talking about the usual market timing and comparing the Buffett of the north with Buffett. The only right statement is that FFH is a blackbox and that you never know. This guy needs to do some homework. John O'Connell discusses Fairfax Financial - Video - BNN (bnnbloomberg.ca)

thank you. The real hero of this Greek tragedy is the collapsing bond yield from 37% to 1%. Whoever locked-in those distressed bonds at +30% and rode them all the way to 1-3% must be laughing all the way to the Eurobank. The aggregate sum of these Greek investments seem to be as big as (or bigger) than Fairfax India's market capitalization. In another time and place, this Hellenistic basket of investments would have been formally called "Fairfax Greece", if their deeper involvement was in fact pre-planned as oppose to a initial desire to repeat the Bank of Ireland trade, which then grinded them and morphed into a deeper involvement.

Glass half-full: You folks are being overly pessimistic, maybe, just maybe, the Blackberry executive-gentleman thinks Blackberry has good potential, but also maybe he has been watching YouTube Motely Fool videos on the diversification. So, to kind of hedge his bet, he decided to sell his Blackberry shares and re-direct those funds into buying an undervalued Fairfax itself at a good price, thereby holding Blackberry indirectly.

I was not even aware of BAM's legacy investment in the lumber until earlier this year. But it didn't matter, as it was layered under a growing and a very successful asset management business. Agreed that the Resolute is irrelevant in a grand scheme of things. But irritates the hell out of me. The point i was trying to convey is that, if you are an institutional investment manager who is recommending BAM or its subs as investment to your boss or some sort of committee, you have a framework to work with. Something to latch on or chew on. You can try to sell that internally. It may or may not pass, but you can try. With FFH or BRK*, you have no such framework, because everything is based on Tesla-like leap of faith. How can you sell that to your boss. Unless its market value drops by a huge margin of safety below BV, than that becomes a story to sell to your boss as a reversion to the mean trade. But that is it. It ends there. Of course, for retail investors that opaqueness is the opportunity. But one that needs to be hedged by a fair amount of Amazon and Google (in my case). * i am adding BRK so that i am being fair; when you buy BRK as a professional investment manager, basically what you are saying is that, i have outsourced to Omaha

Welcome MMM20 The highlight of your post Joey Levin from IAC on different conference calls had described IAC as a portfolio of call options. Perhaps there is a bit of that here as well.

While i disagree on some/many Gregmal posts on FFH and Prem, and without commenting specifically on BB itself (which i dont know more than an anybody else), ... i would say that in Gregmal's defense, his comments on the situation are probably no different folks talking about Charlie Munger and Alibaba in the other thread. I dont think anyone in the Daily Journal or Alibaba thread has anything but respect for Charlie Munger. But they are looking at it from a life cycle point of view, and great investors like everything else or everyone else have a life cycle, when they think about other things at different stage of their career/life etc. Gregmal is just more vocal about it.

Putting my SJ's hat on: great news for Fairfax India's majority owner: Fairfax Financial. I am learning.

But then they held on the other old-economy names ... I think that is one of the reason why institutional investors stay away from FFH, unless there is a huge margin of safety (i.e. mean reversion). Not because they don't believe Prem Watsa's ability but just that they cannot wrap their heads around what framework Prem Watsa is using to decide when to sell or buy. Think of endless discussion in this very forum about BB and resolute. Institutional investors dont have that problem with say Brookfield. The BAM folks are showing themselves savvy investors using clear framework and speaking clear language that the investor base understand. That framework allows institutional investors to feel comfortable with BAM or BX and the like. Even if it is all optics or smoke and mirror. The investor base feel comfortable that at least they know where they stand (even if they are not in the stock). With Berkshire and Fairfax, the investor would be literally outsourcing all that to the founder-CEO-operator and taking a leap of faith.

Cheers Perhaps we will see each other in Toronto for the AGM. Whether the discount narrows or not, I'll buy you a drink for all the work you have done. The only difference I would say between CDS and Digit is that the former was cold hard cash that got realized. Digit will likely be unrealized gain for a long time even after its IPO. If Prem sells a portion of Digit, I would really question why Digit (a fast growing tech) deserves a trim and not Resolute (a lumbering sawmill) .

I bought the book from a bookstore when i was in BC. Next step: to read it.

Thanks. That was very informative !!

in case, they were not posted before.

Thanks for the good laugh on a otherwise grey Tuesday morning where i live

Short-med term trading aside (which pros and cons have been well documented here in the thread), for those in it in the long term, it will come down to one thing only: The founder-operator-CEO ability to morph himself/herself from empire-building into being laser focus on growing value per share by shrinking the capital base. Some founder-operator-CEO cannot, some founder-operator-CEO do not want to. Who can blame them. Even the mighty Buffett for better of last decade, had more fun playing the waiting game to snatch a prize than doing the boring-boring obvious thing of buying its own shares. That is why the case study of Teledyne is so interesting, where the CEO just flipped a switch purely based on what made sense going forward. ------------------------------------------------------ Prem bought 482,600 shares ($149 million) in 2020 at an average of $308 USD per share. Those are now worth $191 million (barely 28% for 1 year or so). He said his timeframe is 3-5 years on conference call. When he made bet in June 2020, it was a macro bet and it was not a bet on himself (going forward it will be on himself). Same as those buying today who are Seeking Alpha. My sense is that he has some focus on the growing value per share if he made the trade of that size. ------------------------------------------------------ On Resolute and BB, i hope he knows something we don't about these two names, otherwise the optics of not-unloading aint pretty.

I meant a large institutional buyer buying FIH through a private placement from FFH, at a price that is largely above the $10 carry and perhaps also the market value, given that the large buyer would need liquidity and spot price wont do it. That new "mark" will help lift the rest of FFH holding as its BV re-adjust. FFH owners will benefit with some of that intrinsic now in the books. FIH holder will benefit as the ownership will broaden out, albeit not a FIH BV. That means no new equity issued for FIH below book value. Just shares exchanging hands directly between FFH and that buyer. The same way Softbank sold a big portion of Alibaba to 3-party buyer (Singapore sovereign fund if i recall) without disrupting the float as a significant owner of the equity. Of course if FIH traded at a premium, there would be direct issuance of shares, and broadening will happen like that. ----------------------------- bottom line: (1) persistent FIH BV means more FIH buyback; more performance fee to FFH; net results: more % FFH ownership (this was SJ's initial point) (2) broadening the FIH investor base, thus less % FFH ownership: (i) issue new FIH shares for new investors. Net result: more cash coming into FIH for investment. [out of the question given the deep discount] (ii) direct placement to an interested third-party. Net result: Cash going to FFH but no cash going to FIH. The BV of FFH adjusted upward from its current carry of $10 (circa 2016). <=this is my point

Reputational risk. Going back to my comment that there must be a part of this scheme, where Prem is thinking "i want FIH to be must-own asset when investors want exposure to India like BEP is a must own asset in the renewable world, and therefore i want to have the broadest set of investor and not keep increasing FFH% own stake" This means lower %FFH ownership of FIH overtime (not more) and more broad institutional investment, but then again as pointed by others direct listing of the subs (and competing platform i.e. Brookfield) would take that uniqueness away from FIH for large institutional investors.

Prem has been more wrong then right in the past 10 years, perhaps, he would be wrong here as well (if he truly wishes to have a large discount) and the FIH discount does not persist, to the benefit of FIH direct holder and to the detriment of FFH's performance fee. but joking aside, is it logical to think only through the KPI of FFH% ownership ? Isn't there a part of this scheme, where Prem is thinking "i want FIH to be must own asset when investor want exposure to India like BEP is a must own asset in the renewable word, and therefore i want to have the broadest set of investor and not keep increasing FFH% own stake" Also earlier above it was pointed how FIH is carried on the FFH's book for $10 with market being at $13 and FIH BV being at $20. Is it more advantageous for FFH and Prem to: (1) have a large discount, to have an incentive to have FIH buybacks such that BV moves up, and FFH gets more % ownership as a result or (2) perhaps monetize a bit of its FIH holding to a third-party, and get a new "mark" closer to BV of $15-20, thereby lifting its carry from $10 to a higher number, thereby helping pushing FFH's BV close to intrinsic value. Why would a third party want to buy a piece of FIH from Prem when they can buy it cheaper on the market. Liquidity perhaps ...

Thank you VM