Apr 15, 2009
Prem Watsa on Fairfax’s Mistakes
Tara Perkins has out one of the first articles that discusses Fairfax Financial’s annual meeting. It’s short, but it provides answers to a few questions bugging investors, mainly the company’s newspaper investments:
The largest mistake that Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd. made in the past year was underestimating the effect of the recession on the newspaper industry, chief executive officer Prem Watsa suggested.
Mr. Watsa was responding to a shareholder, at the company’s annual meeting in Toronto on Wednesday, who asked what the biggest mistake of the past year had been.
Fairfax took a 90-per-cent hit on its stake in AbitibiBowater Inc., and also lost money on its investment in CanWest Global Communications Corp. , Mr. Watsa noted.
And on removing the portfolio’s equity hedges:
Mr. Watsa also suggested that, in retrospect, he might have waited a few extra months before removing the hedges that Fairfax had in place on its stock exposure.
The company’s stock portfolio was fully hedged last year, but it recently chose to remove the hedges given how far markets had tumbled. “The fact that we hedged covered up a lot of our sins,” Mr. Watsa said.
He added that roughly three-quarters of Fairfax’s equity investments are in big companies such as Johnson & Johnson and Kraft Foods, and he believes that this is a “time of opportunity” for investors who will be in the market for the long term. Markets will not turn on a dime, but the next five to 10 years will be good to value-oriented investors, he suggested.
Its funny, a few months back I looked at the newspaper sector myself (specifically the Sun Times Media Group) but couldn’t figure out what kind of cash flow to normalize my valuation estimates with. I never invested as a result. I guess I got a bit lucky on that end. Then there was also a post I wrote a while back on the NYTimes, I saw what appeared to be declining YoY cash flow numbers combined with difficult industry headwinds and issues with the Class A and B share listing. Since then, the company has fallen considerably.
On the bright side, Prem mentioned that the investment portfolio had two big positions in JNJ and Kraft. Interestingly enough, Kraft looks like they’re trading near a 52-week low. Given the company’s moats I’m going to start digging into them. The predictability there is much better than in the rest of the financial sector.
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