gfp
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Posts posted by gfp
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1 hour ago, SafetyinNumbers said:
The Digit IPO should allow for recognition of an additional gain in BV assuming its higher than the current mark which seems more likely than not.
It seems like approval for Fairfax to own a majority interest in Digit would result in their conversion of the preferred and they would then own 74% and Digit would become a consolidated subsidiary. Currently the 49% interest in Digit is held on the books for about $130 million and is equity accounted and the preferred that could convert to another 25% ownership interest has been marked to the Sequoia Capital valuation. Then presumably Fairfax would sell some Digit in the IPO?
I don't know what the accounting treatment is when a hybrid equity method / market to market ownership interest becomes consolidated but it may be a one-time adjustment to book value at the IPO event. I don't see it continually being marked to market at Digit's share price.
I guess the 49% will be written up once sort of like Gulf Insurance was just treated upon consolidation. One and done.
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1 hour ago, Jaygo said:
Does brk break down the revenue or are you getting the numbers from another source?
Berkshire discloses Marmon's revenues in the annual report and Marmon discloses a more up to date figure ($12 Billion) on their website. We'll get another update on Saturday. Marmon has done several acquisitions and is also the home for most of the operating companies Berkshire bought with Alleghany. Marmon management also ran Duracell when Berkshire acquired it, although it is not part of Marmon. I don't know if Duracell is now run by Marmon or not but I assume it is fully stand-alone reporting to Greg directly now.
Marmon bought another business from the Pritzkers, Colson Medical, in 2019, reuniting the companies after Colson was carved out many years ago.
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On 2/8/2024 at 10:16 AM, gfp said:
Might be lost in the news of the morning, but Prem resigned from the Blackberry board of directors today (as of 2/15)
"in connection with the Company's repayment at maturity of its $150 million principal amount convertible debentures held by Fairfax"
1 hour ago, ValueMaven said:No one mentioned that FFH just received (2/15) $150M from Blackberry for the convert note they issued. Prem also resigned from the board.
I mentioned it back when it was announced but there was a lot other stuff going on that morning.
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23 minutes ago, SafetyinNumbers said:
I’m determined not to let that happen again but I assume it will become more difficult once we are in the IV range especially for shares held in registered accounts where there are no tax consequences.
Currently, it’s easy to own or buy FFH given the set up. My current strategy is to wait until my forward ROE estimate is less than 10% to sell any.
The best selling decisions are usually when a new opportunity comes into your life that is so good you start scouring the couch cushions for more capital to buy more. That's when your mature investments trading around intrinsic value get trimmed. It doesn't have to be all or nothing of course. Until that happens or something changes with the firm just let it ride and enjoy the tax deferral.
A great lesson from Buffett's partnership days when he actually had more ideas than capital - he was willing to sell out of undervalued positions quickly if another idea came along that was juicer.
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2 minutes ago, Munger_Disciple said:
@gfp What % of your portfolio is BRK? I agree with your views. I think tax considerations make it very hard to sell BRK even if it is at intrinsiv value which it appears to be at currently because the alternative needs to outperform BRK after paying taxes on BRK sale if one diversifies.
My personal capital it isn't a huge percentage anymore. But for some of the separate accounts I mange for others it is very large. One is like 92% although she has maybe 130% long equity exposure so 100% isn't the total. Many of these accounts are in Berkshire with a cost basis averaging around the post - 9/11 market rep-opening price. It was like 2000 on the B-shares at the time, I guess that's like $40 on today's B-shares? That was a major buying period for me and I have sold most of the higher basis shares by now. Most of what I manage is taxable money. I was buying Berkshire before 9/11 in a normal way but that reopening dip was when I bought everything I could. Tax considerations can save you from a lot of foolishness in this game if you aren't naturally wired right for the long holds.
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27 minutes ago, treasurehunt said:
Me too. I have sold about 15% of my BRK.B position in the last few months.
It's a tough call. Berkshire was valued at something like $888 Billion at the highs today. In this market environment I don't see any reason they shouldn't be a 20x owner earnings company. So it's not a crazy valuation. I think for a long time we had great results using price to book as a quick shortcut to valuing Berkshire and maybe that usefulness is waning. There won't be high rates of growth, but some of us have large tax considerations and it really is a tough decision to reduce on valuation alone. Maybe Charlie (munger not dealraker but not much difference in this context) said it best to his heirs, "just hold the goddamn stock."
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24 minutes ago, Thrifty3000 said:
When FFH reports mind-blowing results and the stock price drops...
Weren't those the approximate results that we all expected? Which may have been a major factor in the bull run preceding the earnings announcement?
Did you expect a worse Q4 than what was reported?
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Now there's someone who will survive a little inflation!
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13 minutes ago, jks327 said:
Research started in April 2023, not much interested in keeping cash in an investment account!
Seem like your track record will be influenced to a great degree by whether or not January 2024 was a good time to go from zero to fully invested in US stocks. Sounds like this isn't a fund? Good luck, I do hope it works out well for you and I like to see the meaningful position sizes.
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13 minutes ago, jks327 said:
As of this morning:
STLA 11.83%
MLI 10.36%
WIRE 10.28%
STM 9.87%
TOL 9.86%
DHI 9.45%
VSH 9.38%
TEX 9.15%
CCRN 4.28%
BRK/B 4%
GS 3.78%
OSK 2.99%
FLEX 1.17%
EGRX 1.08%
RELL .9%
SCSC .83%
WY .65%
NKLA .01%
Read about it here:
So is this a new fund you started and fully invested all of it in January 2024? Didn't waste much time getting fully invested.
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14 minutes ago, SafetyinNumbers said:
Why do you want to? FRFHF is generally more liquid although for both I would convert the FFH.to bid/ask before putting in an order.I usually prefer to own the actual underlying over a non-marginable OTC ticker. I am fine with FFH in Canadian dollars (30% margin requirement for the most part, sometimes 50% since MW report). But in US tax deferred accounts I buy FRFHF because I don't want to buy the CAD before each trade and can't borrow it.
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Hmmm. Why is it a good idea to sell a crown jewel just because you can?
"
Truist Agrees to Sell Rest of Insurance Arm to Stone Point, CD&R
- Deal ‘will further strengthen our balance sheet,’ CEO says
- Truist Insurance Holdings valued at about $15 billion in deal"
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Thanks for the clarification. I primarily use Interactive Brokers in the USA and I can never seem to find FFH.U (the US dollar traded Toronto shares) - does anybody else with IB have access to FFH.U ? Fairfax India shows up no problem.
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Well not that it matters much but the newswires are showing that both RBC and BMO have increased their "price targets" for FFH.
RBC from $1085 -> 1200 (
I assume this is CAD and they aren't very bullish) USD, good for themBMO from C$1550 -> C$1650
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12 minutes ago, ArminvanBuyout said:
What happened to it since 2021? Seems like share price has completely collapsed and is barely above pre-COVID levels
Russia invaded Ukraine?
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9 hours ago, Haryana said:
Next Hint: Prem Watsa of Fairfax mentioned it somewhere in the last few years.
Well now you are just handing out the answer. This is one remnant of the company Prem and Buffett reference periodically
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The hint made me think of RLI (replacement lens insurance for contact lenses originally !!) but despite having a similar return profile since 1999 it isn't the chart you posted. Plus RLI has a data series going back to 1972.
Oh well keep guessing
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1 hour ago, Hektor said:
I guess Berkshire mostly writes short tail insurance, while Fairfax tends to write more long tail insurance. Is this assumption true? If true, how, if at all, does this impact the quality of the float at either companies?
Berkshire writes some very large, very long tail policies. They are a specialist in messy long tail stuff like the Lloyd's deal and the more recent AIG deal. They also write some shorter stuff like 1 season Cat and a lot of what GEICO writes - but I wouldn't say that Berkshire's business is shorter duration than Fairfax's on average.
An example:
https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN1541TN/
$10 Billion premium paid to Berkshire up front (float). First claims payments by Berkshire didn't start to go out for many years later.
A description from the WSJ at the time:
"The agreement with Berkshire’s National Indemnity Co. requires AIG to pay the first $25 billion of claims as they come due. It is expected to be at least several years before Berkshire would begin tapping the roughly $10 billion for its portion of responsibility. The Berkshire unit will pay 80% of net losses and related loss-adjustment expenses if more than the $25 billion is needed for policyholders. Berkshire’s exposure is capped at $20 billion."
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9 minutes ago, ValueMaven said:
dumb question - whats the difference between FFH.TO vs. FRFHF - which is OTC. Honestly, I dont even really know how OTC works.
There is not a ton of difference really. FFH.TO trades in Canadian dollars and is marginable. FRFHF trades in US dollars and is usually not marginable.
Sometimes in a US-domiciled IRA it is easier to buy FRFHF since you can't borrow Canadian dollars and it adds an extra step to first purchase the exact amount of Canadian currency you need to make the trade and then buy the FFH.TO. In taxable accounts I just buy the Toronto listed shares.
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18 minutes ago, Parsad said:
Float is just a more useful version of debt. There is no net tangible increase or decrease in value from float.
I'll agree to disagree on that one!
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5 minutes ago, Viking said:
If Eurobank initiates a dividend this would provide a big tailwind to dividend income. I think Eurobank reports results in early March.
While a dividend is a dividend, I don't think it will have much of an effect here since Eurobank is receiving equity method accounting. We are already recognizing our full share of Eurobank's profits as profit so a Eurobank dividend won't likely show up in the official 'interest and dividend income.'
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Thanks, I couldn't find it in my own downloads. Didn't think to download it again and check the pdf meta data.
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Does anybody remember the date that the Annual Report / shareholders letter was released last year? I couldn't find a press release. I suppose I could check my 'downloads' folder..
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1 minute ago, TwoCitiesCapital said:
Going to be honest - the share price reaction to an a amazing earnings report is a bit disappointing
Makes me wonder if 1) the market had it "right" and the earnings rally was what we saw in January or 2) if we're back to the days of the getting the earnings look for free and the stock responds 2-3 days later
Either way - I am somewhat shocked we didn't get a pop of 5-10% from market participants who haven't been following this as closely as we have.
Were there any surprises in the Q4 earnings? Seems like we knew all of that ahead of time: TRS profit, Micron profit, October bond moves, interest rates move for the quarter, lack of big Cats, etc
Fairfax 2024
in Fairfax Financial
Posted
Sounds like you confused some tickers there unintentionally. FIH.U and FFXDF (OTC) are Fairfax India. The others mentioned above are Fairfax Financial.