sholland

I believe that I once read that the only reason Fairfax established a dividend is because Prem personally wanted more money, but didn’t think it was fair to shareholders to increase his compensation. The dividend is a way for Prem to get more money while shareholders get the same too.

Buffett gets monthly numbers on all the businesses. Buffett and Munger believe that have having honest and able managers and getting out of their way (bureaucracy is like a cancer) is the reason that Berkshire works so well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_private_non-governmental_companies_by_revenue

My thought also.

to answer the question posed by the original poster - if you are having any doubts you probably shouldn’t do it. 52 second YouTube video below:

You say $140 per share, but Prem said $125 per share in the annual letter. Has something changed?

As it says below Mark Calabria’s picture in the 11/19/2019 issue of the WSJ, the plan was to do an IPO in 2021 or 2022. In a recent interview Mark Calabria said w/o the pandemic the GSEs would be out of Conservatorship. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/audio/2024-06-11/calabria-on-fannie-freddie-conservatorships-votes-and-verdicts

The Wall Street Journal

I know this is over a year old, but I assume a similar situation happens every year that pricing is favorable (I don’t know about this year). I believe that were only 4 hurricanes in the last 100 years that would have caused BRK to be on the hook for the entire $15B: Historical examples (source August 2012 Karen Clark report Repeat of 1926 Miami Hurricane is estimated to cost $125B in insured losses Repeat of 1928 Great Okeechobie Hurricane is estimated to cost insurers $65B Repeat of 1947 Fort Lauderdale Hurricane is estimated to cost insurers $50B Repeat of 1992 Hurricane Andrew estimated to cost insurers $50B Pretty good bet to make $7B in the good years and be on the hook for up to $15B in the rare bad years. Total cost to insurers would be spread out to other reinsurers so a $50B industry event probably wouldn’t cost BRK $15B.

I agree with JRM. Day-ahead scheduling is not load following. Nuclear reactors need to operate at a steady state because of Xenon poisoning.

Yes, flooding a depleted conventional oil field with CO2 will extend the life of the oil field. Before Denbury was acquired by Exxon they had a nice long presentation about the mechanics of CO2 flooding which stated that primary recovery usually recovers ~20% of the oil in place, secondary recovery (waterflooding) usually recovers ~18% of the oil, and CO2 flooding (tertiary recovery) usually recovers about ~17% of the oil. At injection pressures of ~1400 psi the CO2 and the oil become miscible. The reservoir rocks in the depleted reservoir are still covered in a film of oil. The CO2 thickens the film and the flooding can push off some of that thicker film.

I am glad this thread was created because there must be opportunities driven by dumb government mandates that overrely on intermittent, weather dependent renewables, but I am having trouble finding any. I have spent a lot of time looking at CEG/VST/TLNE, but in my opinion the FCF yields are too low at prevailing rates. I believe their investment theses are too speculative and too dependent on future AI energy demand driving a premium on green baseload electricity. Small modular nuclear reactors are too speculative. NPWR is very interesting, but again too speculative. Natural gas is a widow maker although probably will end up solving the problem. Coal? I do have a position in uranium. Anyone have any other ideas?

It’s a Trump trade. Share prices going up lately because Trump’s poll numbers have gone up. Trump floated the idea of John Paulson being the treasury secretary. Paulson was a backer of the Moelis Plan to recap and release.

I believe that point #2 is irrelevant to the discussion because of Jevon’s paradox. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox