Xerxes
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Posts posted by Xerxes
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Most importantly, In the 18 years I have been involved in Fairfax their insurance business has gone from a hard time sleeping over reserves to reserve redundancy. Even as the business has grown into a global Goliath. In a hard market these potential returns are mouth watering and they are the reason to believe we are headed back to all time highs in the stock.
With the insurance business firing on all cylinders and capital investments and portfolio returns stabilizing the Fairfax corona virus blow up is not only over it’s time for offence. Prem and his team are great investors in blow ups and they have once again shown their strength , unfortunately, not unlike 2003, Fairfax was part of the blow up this time. It’s over...We are headed to all time highs.
Hi Dazel, great post.
If you don't mind me asking since i am not verse in the history from 20 years ago in 2003.
Are you suggesting that FFH was unable to take advantage of the environment in 2003 just like today.
Was 2007-09 the only time they really nailed it ?
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More BRK, closing in on 20% allocation!
Currently, BRK is a 12% position size for me (in my RRSP).
After seeing this post, I am itching to bring it up.
I got a Citigroup position that i am itching to dump, but it dropped 7% today.
My breakeven (my emotional anchor) is set at $70 USD. I did not add to it during the bear market.
Thinking to dump most of that on BRK. That would bring BRK to 16%, make the portfolio ever tighter. BUT my BRK average cost would go from $192 USD (my emotional anchor) to $200 USD.
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I am all against FFH' taking advantage of the price increase.
Blackberry is a secular play, not a cyclical play, stick with it.
If there are things to take advantage by selling partially, it is the cyclical names.
The only time BB would become unbearable as a position if it goes-to-the-moon (borrowed terminology from the other side); this is hardly it.
When (or if) it pulls a Overstock it might be time to trim. But this far off.
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Here is a video that i watched over the Holidays from Chen. The video was filmed right before Atlas holding was formed.
For those interested to see how he is like, this should serve.
WARNING: this was filmed pre-Covid, therefore, it might cause you anxiety to see two people so close together. It caused me discomfort.
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https://www.fool.ca/2021/01/14/blackberry-stock-could-be-on-the-verge-of-a-parabolic-move/
or articles with headlines like this "BlackBerry Stock Could Be on the Verge of a Parabolic Move!"
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FFH will not outperform as a multi-bagger on an absolute sense even if there is a huge pivot to value, but may outperform on relative sense if all fancy stuff start to deflate a bit.
Xerxes this comment intrigued me. I actually think many of Fairfax's investments could do 2-3x or more from these levels. Very rudimentary analysis on my behalf but Iam estimating FFH could be trading at $USD1000/share in 2025. The caveat as always is that they have to do sensible not "clever" things. Guess it also depends what we call a multi-bagger, in this day and age the expectation is set by Tesla so 20% compounding is pretty mediocre ;)
“What gets us into trouble is not what we don't know. It's what we know for sure that just ain't so.” Mark Twain
cheers
nwoodman
Multi-bagger for me is more than triple.
in this environment, you need at least two bags when you come to the party.
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haha; it would.
Only 5 years ago Ms. Wood were seen to be on the fringe and weird (outside mainstream), now she came out of the pandemic as a hero. Her AUM is shooting up and now launching ETFX Space as new product offering. Cycles come and go.
10 years ago, FFH came out of financial crisis as a hero, Prem's AUM was shooting up (not exactly AUM but interest in his stock), he also launched new products (FIH and FAH). Cycles come and go.
With the 10-year yield perking up, FFH may yet have its day in the sun.
FFH will not outperform as a multi-bagger on an absolute sense even if there is a huge pivot to value, but may outperform on relative sense if all fancy stuff start to deflate a bit.
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That would only solve RFP. Need a step further.
We need Cathie Wood launching a ETF and calling it the Fair & Friendly ETF, tracking FFH's common stock portfolio.
Bad joke I know.
My only one for 2021 hopefully.
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For re-charge stations and convenience stores, a good view is to see what Couche-Tard (the owner of Circle-K) has been doing. They bought a convenience store network in the Baltic states, Norway, Sweden etc. some 7-8 years ago (I believe) and used that microcosm to study how electrification will impact consumer behavior and capture its lessons for the future of North American market. Some years later, they are still in business even with all the electric cars in those Northern European countries.
The reality (IMHO) is that convenience stores are what they are "convenience stores"; some of them happen to have gas/plug-in stations some don't and are just convenience stores. Doesn't mean that whole thing is going to go away due to electrification in my opinion.
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Agreed, and i am not planning to do anymore post there or any other thread (Sorry Vikings).
It seems to me that discussion about politics/foreign policy tend to divide people and bring out the worse in them, while discussion about investment tend to bring the best out of people (specially when they disagree). Why propagate/absorb negative energy when you can propagate/absorb positive energy and cover your cost of capital while you are it.
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Chart 33 is interesting on the link above.
Heading to GFC, they had a 17% equity exposure, coming out of it they had 23% exposure (in 2010).
So an increase but not that much.
The big change was on their fixed-income portfolio. More the 50% in government bonds in 2007 down to 23% in 2010, whereas municipal bonds and corporate bonds allocation went from 1% and 4%, in 2007, to 23% and 9%, respectively, in 2010.
I guess that what that shows is the deployment of its dry powder. Moving from safe haven government bonds to municipal and corporate bonds to capture those as their spreads were blowing up. Weighted average yield went from 4.6% to 6.5%.
Did a quick math,
In 2007, the 5% of the portfolio allocated to municipal and corporate bonds was a $950 million holding on a $19 billion portfolio.
In 2010, the 32% of the portfolio allocated to municipal and corporate bonds was a $7.4 billion holding on a $23.3 billion portfolio.
In contrast, in the 2020 short lived bear market, FFH announced that:
" Since mid-March 2020, Fairfax has been reinvesting its cash and short term investments into
higher yielding investment grade U.S. corporate bonds with an average maturity date of 4 years
and average interest rates of 4.25%, that will benefit interest income in the future. To date, taking
advantage of the increase in corporate spreads, Fairfax has purchased about $2.9 billion of such
bonds. "
That is a 7% exposure on a $40 billion portfolio. So both in terms of dollar value and percentage, FFH wasn't able to re-shuffle the bond portfolio in 2020 as well as it did in 2008-09, thanks (but no thanks) to Central Bank distorting of the market and closing the spreads. But if the Central Bank didn't do what it did, FFH itself might have been in a dire situation, so it is not easy to square the logic in my head.
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Question for everyone,
There is no doubt that the narrative supports the continuation of rally-of-everything, including Crypto.
I was listening to an interview with M. Novogratz, where he said that 60-70% of all US dollars have been created since 2010. this is crazy !
Specifically, on Bitcoin, why is that no one is talking about the fact that a significant portion of the Bitcoin are held by less than 5%. Surely, that level of concentration, would wreak havoc if unleashed. Now, there is no reason for the 5% to do so, as the bull case supports the going-up narrative, but at a certain point, there will be a data point that will change the base-line going-up narrative. It is hard to imagine that there would be no selling by the very large investors, for diversification sake.
My own argument against that is the following:
I would classify the crypto investors in three camps:
-#1 hard core early investors (libertarians, entrepreneurs etc.); these folks wont sell, because they were crazy enough to believe in it long time ago, and thus are crazy enough to keep at it.
-#2 MOFO crowd, last seen in 2017 and then again now; emotions will govern their buy/sell.
-#3 institutional/retail investors who are looking at it from a portfolio diversification point of view (putting 1-10% of asset in BTC) portfolio diversification will govern their buy/sell.
Of these three, the whales are mostly made of the first batch. So unlikely to sell, but doesn't change the fact that the supply is there. The second and third batch are the most likely source of supply on the sell-side, that should provide short relief to the market.
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Here is mine -- all in registered accounts (so no taxes).
% net of commission paid + dividends
RRSP --- ~7% gain y-o-y
TFSA --- 63% gain y-o-y
note1: my RRSP is 3 time larger than TFSA
note2: USD/CAD was more or less stable year over year
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RRSP
During the down turn in Q2 2020, I bought BRK, FFH and BAM more than anything else. My outdated view was that the trio as investor/capital-allocators would salivate in a market dislocation. I was humbled. All three were incapacitated for different reasons, discussed in depth in this forum endlessly.
That said, my view is that these planted seeds will blossom in 2021. The trio make up 40% of my RRSP portfolio at current prices.
I also added to RTX/L3 later in June.
My main gains that offset the losses and put me in the black were primarily due to y-o-y gains in:
-Amazon
-Tencent
-Walt Disney
-Alphabet
-Alibaba (was doing well till it went down)
These five make up 35% of my RRSP portfolio at current prices.
Interestingly, i did not add/remove anything to the 5 names above in 2019-20. It seems doing nothing helped me! On the other hand, I had shamefully sold Nvidia on March 23, at about $212. My cost was $125-130. The rest is history.
I think selling Nvidia at exactly wrong time, helped my overall gain be limited to 7% compares to S&P500's 15%. With 25% of S&P500 being made up of the FAANGs, one cannot afford in selling a tech name at the wrong time.
That said, my view is that i got the FFH/BRK/BAM/RTX/L3 vs. the rest of 495 companies in the S&P500 (beyound the FAANG), and that the seeds I have planted will blossom.
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TFSA
Most of my gains were due to Lightspeed, IAC and Uber etc., melting up like it is 1999.
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Happy New year everyone.
Wish everyone health, happiness and more health, ... the rest of the stuff doesn't matter.
Thanks also to Parsad for providing this medium for us to interact. I have joined about a year ago, and looks like I have found a home.
As for the rest of you Mortals, thank you for all of yours thoughts and different views. I have immensely benefitted.
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Grand Moff Tarkin said it best.
https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/707df9ef-dd22-47e3-82df-63761e418426
Can we just move on, if not, please move this discussion to a different thread.
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Hope, you all fine folks are having a well deserved Christmas Holidays after this crazy year.
I know I have been.
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Great summary Viking.
The bulls here are really playing the reversion back to the mean trade here, while bears are stung by FFH past historical bias.
And I am the only fool here who actually has a 2030 holding target. That said my share count size has increased 100% since March.
In a nutshell, i don't think it is rocket science, it comes to Arithmetic and math. A book value crushed due to mark-to-market accounting (that can be reversed) and write-off (that cannot be reversed) just means a higher torque on the ROE (i.e. double-digit) if you get the same pre-Covid earning power from the whole franchise, post covid. So, coming off a low base. That is all. If your earning power actually increases post-Covid even better.
Now, once Book value has gone up, naturally, the ROE will drop off dramatically, given the higher base, and it will be depend on by how much earning power increases going forward. If the vaccination does what it will need to do, the economy will rip, inflation will pick up, cyclical will power on (albeit could be a temporary boost) at the back end of next year.
Sometimes in late 2021, it may even be ok to make the comment that Covid-19 created the make-up-demand for cyclical just like it created a pull-in-demand for technology. With book value up in dollar terms in mid-2021, will the Covid-19-induced make-up-demand for cyclical help with a FFH re-rating. Did it really take a once in a hundred years pandemic to make Prem Watsa right !
Question remains on the bond portfolio, as we are in the first innings of a long term bear market in bonds. The first innings itself might take 5 years after a few false start (ie 2018 interest rate rise). That view kind of ties in with Prem' view since 2016 that interest rate will be marching upward over the long term (the pandemic delayed that). That is all fine and well, but what in the meantime. Perhaps, if he could throw $500 million into the Bitcoin frenzy to offset money supply expansion in the short term (3-5 years) ...
The last cult-stock that i know that was cratering before a big bounce was Tesla in 2018 ... now now, you wont get 10-fold here with FFH but at least reversion to the mean should be you low hanging fruit.
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Thx for posting
Glad to see that CNBC is not putting that under their Pro
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Q4 2019 Conference call; pre-Covid, so timetable and valuations impacted
A question with respect to your minority insurance partners. And they've helped you make acquisitions in the past. And I think the trend has been to sort of help -- to buy them out. But the RiverStone acquisition seems to go a little bit the other way, where you're actually selling some of the stuff back to them. So do you see -- envision an increasing role with these partners going forward? Or do you envision a role where you're going to be buying up your ownership from these partners going forward?
Yes. So our -- yes, there are 2 ways -- 2 sides, right, Tom. One is our insurance companies, and we've been buying back our partners' interest over time. So like that would be Brit and that would be Eurolife and that would be Allied. Allied comes this year. So yes, so we'd be looking to eventually own those companies 100%. They are insurance companies and over time, we'd be looking at only 100%. In terms of the RiverStone, we've taken that -- we've taken OMERS as a partner, and we think what we've done is that, as a partner, we've allowed -- that allows us to deconsolidate. And our U.K. company now, RiverStone, can -- there's a lot of Lloyd's companies, and there's a lot of runoffs in the U.K. So it helps us to finance that separately with our partner. And eventually, there's all sorts of possibilities, including taking it public at some point in time. So we're looking at Riverstone U.K. in a separate basis. But it's very much -- it's been a great performer, U.K., and we think the big advantage is it allows us to finance it separately from the Fairfax insurance companies.
And what would be the -- in order to take Eurolife and Britain and Allied up to 100% ownership, what's left for you? What kind of cost do you see of that over the next couple years?
Yes. So the year Eurolife we'll doing it sometime this year. That we'll probably do it, right, from the company itself. We've done very well in Eurolife. So that won't need much money. And for Brit, we need about 10%, we have to buy back and we're looking at buying back that as soon as we can. And then Allied is -- opens up in June, I think, somewhere June, July, and then we have the ability to do that. I think the -- for Allied, Peter, if I remember, it was something like $1.5 billion, something like that, that we need to buy at some point in time in the next 3, 4 years.
Okay. And what about -- and in the Brit, is that -- what's the dollar amount on that?
The Brit, we don't have to, but it's approximately $100 million, plus/minus $100 million."
2020 letter; i believe that means the value has increased !
"Through the crisis in Greece, we acquired a gem in Eurolife, a Greek property and casualty and life insurance
company that operates predominantly in Greece but also in Romania. Alex Sarrigeorgiou has run Eurolife since 2004,
following Eurobank’s decision to grow its insurance business, and we acquired it with OMERS as our partner in 2016.
Since our initial 40% purchase of Eurolife in 2016 for A163 million, Eurolife has earned A347 million and paid
dividends of A298 million and shareholders’ equity has increased from A400 million to A720 million at the end of
2019 after the payment of dividends. This phenomenal performance was predominantly because Eurolife had a
significant holding of Greek government bonds whose rates went from 8% to 1% during that time period while its
non-life business had an average combined ratio of 72%. We currently own 50% and equity account for Eurolife but
plan to buy the rest of OMERS’ shares in 2020."
2019 letter; Prem's perspective on minority buyout vs. buyback, before stock was dirt cheap. That calculus has indeed changed
"I mentioned to you last year that we are focused on buying back our shares over the next ten years as and when we get
the opportunity to do so at attractive prices. Henry Singleton from Teledyne was our hero as he reduced shares
outstanding from approximately 88 million to 12 million over about 15 years. We began that process by buying back
1.1 million shares since we began in the fourth quarter of 2017 up until early 2019 – about half for cancellation and
half for various long term incentive plans we have across our company. This was after we increased our ownership of
Brit to 89% from 73% while having the funds ready to increase our ownership of Eurolife from 50% to 80% in
August 2019."
2018 letter; seems to always be in the next 2 years
"Not shown in the table above is our investment in Eurolife led by Alex Sarrigeorgiou. As you know, Eurolife is one of
Greece’s leading life and non-life insurance companies, created by Eurobank in 2000. We bought our share of Eurolife
in 2016 for $181 million, with Eurolife being 40% owned by us, 40% by OMERS and 20% by Eurobank. We expect to
buy out OMERS within the next two years, so Eurolife will become a Fairfax insurance subsidiary. Eurolife has earned
$111 million (our share) since we acquired it, benefitting greatly from a Greek bond portfolio of about A1 billion. The
non-life portfolio had a combined ratio less than 70% again in 2017. We are very excited to be partners with Alex and
his team at Eurolife as they build a very successful company in Greece."
2017 letter
"We agreed to acquire 80% of Eurolife, which closed this past August. At closing, OMERS purchased 40% of Eurolife to
help us finance this acquisition. Eurolife, led by Alex Sarrigeorgiou, had an outstanding year in 2016, writing
A496 million of premium, achieving a non-life combined ratio of 55% and producing A68 million of net income.
Given our 40% ownership, Eurolife is equity accounted in our financial statements."
2016 letter
"Late in 2015 we agreed to acquire 80% of Eurolife, a life and property and casualty insurance company which is the
third largest insurer in Greece and which distributes its products through Eurobank’s network, for $347 million – at
about its underlying book value. We got to know Alex Sarrigeorgiou in the last few years and were very impressed
with him, his management team and their track record. The company writes A306 million in premiums –
A248 million in life insurance and A58 million in property and casualty. Over the past ten years, the property and
casualty operations have had a combined ratio of 60.0% while the life insurance operations produce stable earnings
with plain vanilla products. Eurolife had net income in 2015 of A48.4 million, 45% from life and 55% from P&C. We
welcome Alex Sarrigeorgiou and the over 300 employees of Eurolife to the Fairfax family. As we did with Brit, where
OMERS purchased 30% from us to help us finance the acquisition, we expect OMERS to buy 40% of Eurolife’s shares
at close to help us finance the acquisition. In the case of both Brit and Eurolife, we expect to be able to acquire the
interests back within the five years after closing, after providing OMERS with an acceptable return. The team at
OMERS has been a pleasure to deal with."
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I think my point is that, FFH has already enough to work with, and doesn't need the additional distraction of managing short positions (whatever they are).
It is not a question of Tesla being a good short target or not. In fact we do not know anything about FFH's short positions and it is all speculation (and we will probably never know), other than inference of Zoom on a conference call and the occasional list of Dirty Dozen high-flyers techs on the annual letters.
I am no expert in any of this, but my guess is if FFH is shorting anything it will be based purely on (1) high valuations, and not because (2) they see fraud or else. If it was the latter (i.e. (2)), one as a short seller can make their fraud case public, and often times the target company itself stumbles in its public communications and screws up. Assuming the thesis was correct.
But if it is the former (i.e. (1)), then it is not enough just to declare publicly that X company has this crazy Y multiples compared to its peers and it only makes this much Z. Because it is not illegal to have a high valuation, so time is not on your side. And keep referring to the 2000-01, is not going to make it come faster. Furthermore, shorting requires a second degree thinking that goes beyond valuations. is it a cult stock ? is it owned by an insider that can make things difficult for you. is it a trend-setter that has a tailwind ,,, thus unlikely to change soon.
At the end of the day, point is to make money the easiest way possible.
And not to go and try to short the hurricane.
Lastly, I personally feel, the more time is wasted in the trenches of being short seller, less mindshare is available to truly think about strategic long terms goals.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiYRYlKteGU&t=1660s
Probably only applicable to the hardcore Prem fans and FIH fans. The above link is virtual conference chaired by Prem regarding the current state India economy (uploaded Nov 12 - with regards to current covid case load and death rate situation this video is already stale-dated)
Observations
- India economy is growing again
- Prem described Deepak Parekh's HDFC bank as the best bank in India. What about CSB bank?????
Thanks for posting. i am pretty sure i wouldnt have come across that on my own.
HDFC even made it on The Economist several times.
https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2020/10/29/who-is-the-worlds-best-banker
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1.) funding subs in hard market ==> Allied, ORH, Brit and Zenith are okay, but over a few years C&F and NB could use perhaps $300m
2.) funding likely January dividend ==> $270m/year for each of 2021-23 = $810m
3.) take out Eurolife partner (OMERS) ==> does anyone remember this amount???
5.) take out Allied partners (OMERS) ==> working from memory, isn't this one $750m?
To satisfy the items above basically looks like it would require more or less all of the Net Income that could reasonably be expected over 2021-23.
close ..
"We closed our acquisition of Allied World on July 6, 2017 and we welcomed Scott Carmilani and Allied World’s
1,430 employees to the Fairfax family. As you know, Allied World is the largest acquisition that we have done and we
pursued this acquisition because of Allied World’s outstanding track record over its 15 years of existence and the
quality of its management team. We are very thankful to our financing partners OMERS ($1 billion), AIMCO
($0.5 billion) and two others. We issued a total of 5.1 million shares for Allied World. The effect of this acquisition is
shown in the table below, which was previously presented to you at our 2017 annual shareholders’ meeting:"
"Not shown in the table above is our investment in Eurolife led by Alex Sarrigeorgiou. As you know, Eurolife is one of
Greece’s leading life and non-life insurance companies, created by Eurobank in 2000. We bought our share of Eurolife
in 2016 for $181 million, with Eurolife being 40% owned by us, 40% by OMERS and 20% by Eurobank. We expect to
buy out OMERS within the next two years, so Eurolife will become a Fairfax insurance subsidiary. Eurolife has earned
$111 million (our share) since we acquired it, benefitting greatly from a Greek bond portfolio of about A1 billion. The
non-life portfolio had a combined ratio less than 70% again in 2017. We are very excited to be partners with Alex and
his team at Eurolife as they build a very successful company in Greece."
unless i am reading this wrong, Eurolife is pretty insignificant
ref: 2018 letter
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I will be astonished, and actually a bit disappointed, if they do a large buyback.
They have consistently communicated that supporting the subs to take advantage of the hard market is the priority. And that's exactly the right decision. Buybacks are an excellent use of spare capital when shares are cheap, but reinvesting to grow at high returns on capital should always come first. Building per share value via growth has many advantages over doing it via buybacks. For example it can augment competitive positions and impact morale in a way that buybacks can't.
They can buy back shares all they like in the next soft market. But despite all the positive moves made recently, they still don't have spare capital, so for now they should allocate what they have to growth.
I might think differently if the stock traded at 0.4x or 0.5x book, but it doesn't.
They have been injecting capital in their insurance before the pandemic started and ever since.
Prem will have his "slug" of FFH shares, funded by some of the asset sales from the company's balance sheets.
We just wont know when it will happen, but it will be sooner than we think (IMHO), for the simple fact that going-forward, as the recovery unfolds (while 2nd wave is playing 2 steps forward 1 step back), FFH's book value will pull the market value up in an absolute sense (simply said taking more investment $ for buyback), even if on a relative sense the discount remains there say 6 months from now.
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Good read on Stelco, just hope there is an exit strategy on this cyclical name, when good return has been made, this is not a compounder-in-the-making; or maybe it is ... what do I know. Then again, ICICI Lombard and Bank of Ireland, were both homeruns for Prem Watsa - sadly little do we talk about those wins here - and he was prepare to sell and lock-in profit. Hopefully, will see the same on Stelco. Over the longer term, i am just not interested in cyclical names (of course, even secular names are cyclical, over a very long term), so let me define cyclical as short-term highly GDP sensitive names.
I am actually intrigued to listen to Stelco's conference call, not for the sake of owning it directly myself, but rather try to see what Prem Watsa saw in them. In the past conference calls and AGMs, Prem only talked about Stelco' CEO as a key a reason. If i recall correctly, he never really made the case to his investor base why a GDP-sensitive cyclical name like Stelco was the better choice than the universe possibilities that the market offered to him in 2018. I am sure he had good reason, but he never build that case publicly. And mind you, although today's stelco can be thought as a great way to play the recovery, we are talking about 2018.
Fairfax stock positions
in Fairfax Financial
Posted
Dazel/Parsad
Apologies if i am bit slow on the insurance related acronyms. There seems to be a inconsistency in the statements above.
If the redundancy is high, that means the insurance businesses are well capitalized; if they are well capitalized what is this theme about "we need to invest first in our insurance business". Maybe i am not catching the overall concept, but it seems to me that the statement (1) there is enough redundancy and reserves being in excellent shape doesn't square with (2) FFH investing and adding capital into to those very same businesses.
Am i missing something very obvious