If someone appears to be repeatedly personal, lean towards patience as they might not mean offense. If you are sure, however, then do not deepen the problem by being negative; instead, simply place them on ignore by clicking the unhappy yellow face to the right of their name.
- Manlobbi
Halls of Shrewd'm / US Policy❤
No. of Recommendations: 7
Props to nola622 and DTB for weighing in so promptly and knowledgeably the day of the short report on Fairfax Holdings. There's great value in these boards on days like that.
Given Fairfax's structural similarities to Berkshire, I wonder if there would be interest here in a Fairfax board. Given how close the price is likely to be to 1x year-end book value, with peers generally trading closer to 1.5x, it might even be a candidate for a Manlobbi IV10 calculation. If nola and DTB were willing to weigh in on earnings next week, and maybe engage with EVBigMacMeal's post about Mr. Watsa's capital allocation skills, it might get off to a strong start!
No. of Recommendations: 11
I certainly have no opposition to a Fairfax board if people want one. There are many investment alternates to BRK that well might be worth considering.
For myself, I've enjoyed prime beef for 3 1/2 decades now. So I have no particular interest in hamburger or flank steak, or whatever the market might be serving up at better prices. But still of a similar nature. What would be alternates?
I do find myself continuing to look at BAM, but that cools when tax considerations enter the discussion. Perhaps one for my heirs if step-ups are still lawful?
Why I bring this up is that I see BAM as a different dish, but one that has its own attributes. Toll gates have their own attractions if they're located on well traveled roads. Including international.
XOM is another one.
Those are two that come to my mind when I think about the old Henny Youngman joke:
Q: How's your wife?
A: Compared to what?
No. of Recommendations: 1
I certainly have no objection to a Fairfax Financial board here. I've never gone to any of the other stock boards here and they don't entirely make sense to me. Why are there so many tickers? Why would you have a separate message board for Fox class A and Fox class B? Are these tickers companies that were popular to discuss at the motley fool?
No. of Recommendations: 10
For myself, I've enjoyed prime beef for 3 1/2 decades now. So I have no particular interest in hamburger or flank steak, or whatever the market might be serving up at better prices. But still of a similar nature. What would be alternates?
No question Berkshire is in a class of its own. The appeal of Fairfax today is it's available at a much lower multiple to book value with accelerating earnings from a fixed income portfolio benefiting from higher rates. So it might provide a one-time gain from multiple expansion. Of course, you have to decide if Mr. Watsa's idiosyncratic style is right for you.
I do find myself continuing to look at BAM . . . Why I bring this up is that I see BAM as a different dish, but one that has its own attributes. Toll gates have their own attractions if they're located on well traveled roads.
Not sure if you're referring to the old BAM or the new BAM. The old one, which is now BN, used to advertise itself as a toll booth collecting predictable contracted revenues from things like office towers, shopping malls, hydroelectric power plants and various infrastructure assets, including actual toll roads. More recently, the fees it collects from investing other people's money in such things have dwarfed the other income streams.
The new BAM is a pure play on those asset management fees, with a yield approaching 4% after its recent dividend hike. BN now presides over a sprawling empire of nine publicly-traded subsidiaries focused on infrastructure, renewable power, private equity and a nascent insurance business, along with a large commercial real estate portfolio, so there's a lot to keep up with.
Brookfield was an early player in alternative asset investments, but all the big private equity houses have joined in, so there are now plenty of flavors to choose from in that space. Blackstone, KKR, Apollo, Ares, Carlyle and the new Blue Owl all offer their own variations on the theme. Several of them have leaned into the burgeoning field of private credit and have been richly rewarded by Mr. Market during the current rally. BN management calculates an intrinsic value far above its market quote, but this difference has persisted for years.
No. of Recommendations: 1
"XOM is another one."
Energy is hated on by the Street right now
XOM fat pitch buy?
I think Canadian Natural Resources (CNQ) is a Canadian CO like Fairfax that is a screaming buy at current price. Giroux, CIO of T Rowe, who wrote the book on capital allocation (literally) said in Barron's Round Table a few weeks ago, that they were the best capital allocators HE HAS EVER SEEN.
No. of Recommendations: 11
Not sure if you're referring to the old BAM or the new BAM.
I was thinking in terms of the old BAM. It had several attributes that appealed to me from a business standpoint.
o First it met my basic requirements of shareholder oriented management, a long track record of proven performance, the size and strength to ride through severe market cycles, management having their own assets at risk, etc. Maybe not BRK quality but pretty damn good.
o They addressed a large and on-going role - a place for pensions and other institutions to put money to work. Maybe not as cheap source of capital as float, but even larger in terms of supply.
o They were truly international. BRK isn't - albeit trying.
o They were capable of doing turnaround projects - buy, fix, sell and repeat. Not a basic strength of BRK.
o Wide circle of competence.
In other words, a broader range of investment opportunities. And not as subject to key-man risk as BRK.
So, like others, looking for an attractive buy-and-hold investment mostly outside of BRK's major operations.
I would probably tell my heirs to somewhat try to reconstruct the old BAM, but with perhaps a greater weight on the new BAM segment. I like the toll-booth aspects including management fees.
XOM is a different story, not appropriate for today's discussion. But I don't think most people recognize how much the company has been transformed in the past six years. And they've basically successfully followed the game plan they laid out in detail in the early 2018 Analysts meeting. I wish BRK was paying more attention to it.
I'm not trying to start new discussions on BAM or XOM. Just intended as a comment of other types of investment I consider rather than looking for mini-BRK's. And I don't want many. I'm of the Munger school that you don't need but a few, carefully chosen, of them.
No. of Recommendations: 2
Given Fairfax's structural similarities to Berkshire, I wonder if there would be interest here in a Fairfax board. Given how close the price is likely to be to 1x year-end book value, with peers generally trading closer to 1.5x, it might even be a candidate for a Manlobbi IV10 calculation. If nola and DTB were willing to weigh in on earnings next week, and maybe engage with EVBigMacMeal's post about Mr. Watsa's capital allocation skills, it might get off to a strong start!There is already a very good Fairfax board here:
https://thecobf.com/forum/5-fairfax-financial/So one might ask whether a Shrewdom board would really add much. But we could try it, and it might at least allow for linking to some of the excellent posts that are made there every week or so. I do think that Berkshire fans should be at least as interested in Fairfax as they are in Markel, another insurer that has clearly taken much of its inspiration from Buffett’s ideas.
Fairfax’s tickers (FFH in Canada, in Canadian dollars, FRFHF on the pink sheets in USD) are not in the stocks A to Z on the Shrewdom board, but I presume Manlobbi would have no objection to adding it.
dtb
No. of Recommendations: 2
XOM is a different story, not appropriate for today's discussion. But I don't think most people recognize how much the company has been transformed in the past six years. And they've basically successfully followed the game plan they laid out in detail in the early 2018 Analysts meeting.
Intriguing. Do you care to elaborate? I’ll see what I can find on XOM’s IR site.
dtb
No. of Recommendations: 17
>Why are there so many tickers?
There are a lot of tickers at Shrewd'm because we don't know in advance which boards will become popular, so I pre-loaded (*) the company boards to give everyone the opportunity to continue the company-specific communities.
When focussing on a company not related to Berkshire, but preferring the audience here to read your post, you can create the post on the specific company board and then add a post here with OT with a brief summary of your post, and a link (copy-paste the URL in the browser's address bar) to the post itself.
A number of other Shrewd'm company boards are becoming increasingly popular but where there is a will there is traffic.
I have created the Fairfax Financial board here just now:
https://www.shrewdm.com/MB?bid=1513- Manlobbi
* To pre-load Shrewd'm with so many companies, I referenced companies in the S&P500 as a starting point, but authors here have made requests for a lot of other companies outside the S&P500 - especially from the NASDAQ - and every request has resulted in a new board.
No. of Recommendations: 3
Thanks to Manlobbi for the quick response. The new Fairfax board is up and running. I christened it with a post that links to some research materials for those, like me, trying to get a better handle on this company.
https://www.shrewdm.com/MB?pid=149749169Q4 earnings are coming Thursday. There's more anticipation than usual for what Mr. Watsa and his colleagues will say following the critical Muddy Waters report last week. I hope some of the knowledgeable Fairfax shareholders on the Berkshire board will participate on this new board as well!
