Xerxes

IIRC Repurchase of shares (when above BV) will push down the BVPS Repurchase of shares (when below BV) will push up the BVPS Of course, repurchase of shares above or below intrinsic value has no bearing on the accounting.

Cash is cash in my opinion. Whether it is conventional dividend or return of capital special-like dividend, the dividend cash flows. I am personally not too much concern about their different accounting treatment. That being said, while I am all about FFH building businesses or financing them, i don't care that much about the recent growth of dividend stream they receive, because from my perspective they are just moving on the risk-curve for that extra juice. This is not Berkshire investing in an income-machine like Coca Cola and letting that dividend to growth. But nor it should be, I guess, so I wouldn't put to much stock on the dividend growth attribute nor would I window dress it. If it is there, it is just a bonus. The elusive premium to BV that everyone dreams about requires Berkshire-like quality level investment, otherwise it wont be a "sticky" premium. Nor should it be, after all, if as per FFH management own comment "results will be lumpy" statement is truth, so will premium on the BV be "lumpy" too.

I am just reading this after many years of holding unto it. I am one-third through. It is a great book on the history of the family, the city of Turin and the company. Wish i had it read it many years ago.

One could say that Michael Dell was a value investor first, then maybe a SOB ....

Gregmal, For a moment forget about Prem, out of curiosity, what are your thoughts about Sokol's new outfit: Atlas.

Deal Of The Century: How Michael Dell Turned His Declining PC Business Into A $40 Billion Windfall (forbes.com)

You are not redundant, but people have different ways to manage their portfolio. Some of us (i.e. myself), did not meaningfully owned FFH prior to Covid, so we don't carry any bias. I think north of 65% of my FFH share-count has been bought post-Covid and at a good discount, yet it doesnt make it to the top 3 position. Buying FFH and discussing it doesn't mean that we do not have anything else or do anything else. I was happy to buy Microstrategy @ $380 ish in Dec 2020 and dump it for $1050 some weeks later. I was happy to sell BB @ $25 CAD in Jan (cost being in mid-single digit). I was happy to dump Uber at north of $55 in Q1 and with it good third of LSPD. FFH creates discussion (and controversy) so people tend to post a lot, but (except for a few) i think the quantity of FFH posts are NOT correlated to the % size of it in their portfolio. Perhaps this could be a good survey, to see how many people actually have a large outsize position in FFH. I think that has more merit than the content of FFH bull's numerous posts, which is well discussed. As point of reference on a different name, I bought BEP.UN and BIP.UN exactly at about the sametime: during the market swoon of mid/late Dec 2018. BEP.UN has been an homerun of a sort, while BIP.UN has not done much, and i am sure we can write a PhD thesis on Brookfield's arrogance and their dealing with minority interest and its complexity, yet that does't make that entity a bad hold.

resilience of the BRK machine even with all this !! To be fair that basket of so-so investments in the last decade were more than offset by the Apple homerun in the same period. So net +ve. That said, i somewhat believe the post-Covid canvas-pivot theory.

On the comments about share repurchase at these high absolute dollar levels comments, perhaps what the Omaha team has in mind, is not so much cost dollar value in any given month or quarter, but rather the aggregate average dollar cost of all the repurchases in the past say 20 months or so. So, yes they are buying at $270 ish, but what is the average cost of all the buys since the start of 2020 (maybe that is at $240 per share), I do not think you will see that moving average creeps up to $270, which means slowing share re-purchases going forward to not let the moving average cost creep up. Said differently, in my view, he is more concerned about the volume of stock that he is retiring with a given average cost as a target, than just shoving money quarter after quarter as 100% payout ratio.

There is a possible future out there where the outcome of the Hilton purchase and Sam Zell's REIT would have had a completely different outcome. It did not. Both were spectacular successes and now seared into the Blackstone folklore and investing legend. Investing comes with mistakes and I am sure BX did its share even with its watch-the-downside DNA, it just didn't have a needle moving mistake before reaching critical mass. They are now achieved escaped velocity and can throw their weight around. My point, in my original post, however was not that BX made a mistake and therefore its stock was in doldrum for 10 years. My point was that its business was not recognized or given credit and therefore its stock was in doldrum for 10 years. Rubenstein from Carlyle talked about this as well on a recent podcast, how PEs had to balance public shareholders and fund investors. The former wants recurring earnings, the latter wants the carry to incentives the PE. Faithful, like yourself, that stuck with it did really well, when the market give credit for the recurring earning.

Greg I give full credit to Ackman for his pivot post-Valeant. Not just cutting a getting-smaller position that was consuming 80% of his time, but also for not doing that again. He became the 'activist' on himself. I am all about dumping BB/RFP (am #1 poster here complaining about it), but at the end i can only complain. The two positions that are getting smaller and smaller.

Folks, have a look at Blackstone or Microstrategy. Who wanted to own Microstrategy in 2016 ? i am not saying it is gold now, but like it or not its CEO did something revolutionary and outside the box that brought it a whole host of new investors. Who wanted to own Blackstone in 2014 or 2016. Now that has done the hockystick, everyone cannot stop raving about the genius of Steve Schwartzman and Jon Grey. There was a time, where the conventional wisdom was, you do not want to own the private equity business as a public shareholder, but where you wanted to be is to be invested into their funds. The only caveat is, you cannot time it, and the founder/CEO/operator is not going to do it on your timetable. He/she is not there to serve the traders, looking to do a flip. Because they are not there to do a flip in 6 months on their life achievements.

Agree, In fact Resolute and BB are more about optics: The legacy of the Lost Decade. As a reference point, in 2012, the investment portfolio was $25.163 billion page2 (q4cdn.com) And it was $42.108 billion in 2020. 21zai18401 (q4cdn.com) I don't know the exact position sizes then and now, but say both combined were less than $1.5-2 billion and has gone flat for 9-10 years. Their % contribution dropped as the overall pie just got much bigger, and as the two names moved sideways. We collectively maybe attributing too much to those two names, because of what they represent. But that is to our detriment as the canvas has evolved to something else, and we might be missing the bigger picture. I bet Prem Watsa is going to have the last laugh .... but we can laugh with him too.

No worries, i was just poking

Come on guys, Canada is not just made of Ontario and BC etc and the in-betweens. Monday was not a holiday in Quebec where I reside.

For now only accounting change.

Not totally clear to me. My read is that the regulators in India have to push the limit to 75% for foreigners (which may or may not include FFH - it is not clear). If it does include FFH, than there would have to be cash outlay by FFH at a higher valuation, pushing up their cost basis. If it doesn't include FFH, than they get diluted. I just hope the whole 75% increase ownership hurdle, is not a repeat of Pershing/SEC/Universal/Ackman fiasco, causing FFH to go backward on something that stated to be "done deal" on the conference call. -------------------- On Blackberry i knew it !!! at least someone on the call push for it and asked the right question. The quarter had enough goodies in it, to offset lack of positive news on BB. Even the "Rude Gentleman" from Q1 2021, did not show up. He was probably happy,

It is possible that he closed his Yahoo shorts by buying some of the shares from Mark Cuban as the latter was exited his long.

re: ERIC I wouldn't know. But I will say this: Berkshire considers its equity portfolio composition as a propriety information. I have heard Buffett on one his AGM (perhaps 2018) where he said that as an answer to a question that inquired about his Asian holdings. He added (IIRC) that if it was up to him, you wont see much U.S.-based holdings either, but that 13F filing force him to make U.S. holdings public. These days he is showing BYD because it is a large holding. Nothing to do with FFH, but I don't think we will ever get to see the composition of those shorts and what drove them.

Ericopoly I am with you 100% on how i feel about Shaming of the Big Tech on his annual letter. I usually skip that page anyways because it irritates me (it actually does). But, i believe what he writes (as an opinion) and what he does, are often not the same thing. Except for the mystery short last year (people say it was Tesla), I don't believe we have any proof that he went out there and shorted FANGS. We make that connection, but there is no hard evidence. Said, differently, even if FANGs were to get cut in half today, you will not see him investing in them in a huge way, even knowing what he knows. He wants to own businesses from the ground up, and not ride someone else' glory. This is my perception

Thank you Daphne. Well that's it for me folks, I am going to leave on a high note !

Folks, Not to repeat myself from a month ago or so: On comments on why he didnt buy AAPL/MSFT but bought this. etc. why Quess as high p/e. etc. Prem (i believe) is first and foremost a businessman and then an investor. Therefore, his investing style is always with an eye to build something from the ground-up and help nurture an entity as a financier (if outside his domain of expertise). He is not there to take a swing at Microsoft or Comcast as a game-changing bet. This is not about value vs. growth but rather owning businesses vs. owning stocks mindset. His equity portfolio has two major components: i call them Beta and Alpha baskets. The Beta basket is managed by his underlings, that broadly matches the S&P500. The Alpha basket is his own bet, with an eye to not own as a stock but as a business or a platform. That is the basket that ought outperform with a caveat of having lumpy returns. I believe you all are commenting as investors first, looking at valuation metrics solely, and less as someone interested to have a piece of this business-building machine for better or worse.

Can this be the birth of a futures market, where people make bet on the quarterly results before their release.

I had a look at few article from 2013, (i.e. in 2 years it will be decade), the language and the tone was always about saving the "beleaguered Canadian entity". CPPIB has the right view, I think. A strategic investor was needed more so than financial one. It's a tough sell. Speaking at a conference Monday, André Bourbonnais, senior vice-president of the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board's private-equity unit, said his pension fund would as a matter of course examine any possible bid. But he said he that for any deal to succeed, it needed to include a "strategic" player, such as another technology firm, to help turn BlackBerry around. "My view is it needs the right kind of investor," he said. Fairfax hands BlackBerry $4.7-billion lifeline - The Globe and Mail All these are water under the bridge now. The question is at the moment, what incremental value does holding 10% of BB has (as oppose to use those resources to buyback your own share - a company you know well for instance). Could there be a bid/play from a large FANG name and is that what FFH holding it for. These things take time, but if there are discussion that the public is unaware of, that could be a reason why FFH didn't dispose of it during the Reddit Madness.

Distress investment