On Buffett’s successor:

“He is so good at what he does, it’s almost insulting to think that he doesn’t have a reasonable succession plan. And I frankly don’t see why he should tell anyone. And even if he did not and this was the end of Berkshire Hathaway, he’s done an outstanding job for people over many decades. Nothing lasts forever. I hope Berkshire Hathaway lasts forever, but I don’t think Fairholme’s going to last forever. I think the succession plan is a bit overblown. I know it’s important–corporate governance, public company–I understand it. But I don’t think there’s going to be another Warren Buffett. There are great people at the company–many great people at the company. And I think shareholders are just going to do fine after Warren Buffett.”

Berkowitz on his outlook for the stock market:

“I am bullish on the country. I am bullish on the markets. Government has done a great job of pulling us from the precipice and saving what I consider to be the global financial system. And now, this is just a huge opportunity for Fairholme to start to do its part and help, sort of, restructure, build a more solid foundation to help companies rebuild and move forward. I think it’s a unique time. And I’m looking forward to the next few years. It’s going to be good.”

Berkowitz may not be a household name to most investors, but he should be. During the past decade, Fairholme has produced an annualized return of 11.6% over a span in which the S&P 500 (SPX) has risen a paltry 0.7% a year on average. Since the fund launched in 1999, Berkowitz has beaten the market every year except one (when Fairholme was up 24%, vs. the S&P’s 29% rise in 2003), and he’s on track (up 17% through early December) to easily beat it again in 2010. “The highest compliment I can give,” says hedge fund billionaire Leon Cooperman, who got to know Berkowitz when they both invested in telecom stocks earlier this decade, “is if he called me up to recommend a stock, I would pay attention.”

The fund’s outstanding returns — along with Berkowitz’s being crowned U.S. stock manager of the decade this year by investment research firm Morningstar — have attracted a flood of new money to Fairholme. Investors have poured in more than $4 billion over the past year. And they’ve added $330 million more to his Fairholme Focused Income Fund, which launched in January. He plans to open a third fund, one that focuses on smaller opportunities, early in 2011…

Can Berkowitz continue to beat the odds? Can a single investor, even one with singular focus and discipline, successfully manage a portfolio the size of Fairholme? “It’s a challenge for any manager to take in that kind of inflow and repeat,” says a large Fairholme investor. Says another: “You hope that when you buy a manager, it’s a seasoned team. Having a one-man band can be risky.”

Berkowitz acknowledges the concerns with his usual candor. “Right now,” he says matter-of-factly, “we’re at an interesting junction point where people can’t decide whether we’re about to blow up.”

Bruce Berkowitz: The megamind of Miami (Fortune)

Whenever you read about Berkowitz these days, the articles have consistently mentioned that Berkowitz is nearing the point when many star managers end up hitting a slump in their careers — notable examples include Bill Miller of Legg Mason and Ken Heebner of the CGM Focus Fund.

For me, I could see this going either way. Most hedge fund managers complain that as they grow larger, it becomes more difficult to find good investment opportunities. To a certain extent, I think that’s true. Just looking at Fairholme’s portfolio, you’ll mostly see investments in massive financial services companies. Citigroup is the perfect example of that. If you look at the average volume for Citigroup, almost $2.6B is traded daily. For Fairholme, that kind of liquidity is great because it means they can enter and exit positions with ease. Plus, the risk/reward break down, given the liquidity must be attractive, especially if you believe Citi is worth what Berkowitz says.

The benefit to size is that Berkowitz can really invest across the capital structure and use his size to influence the outcomes of distressed situations:

Second, stockpiling cash is in keeping with Berkowitz’s plan to evolve Fairholme from a regular, stocks-only mutual fund into a more versatile distressed-asset investment vehicle, and to profit from the coming wave of corporate restructurings he anticipates. He believes that dozens of overleveraged companies will need to fix their balance sheets in the next couple of years — commercial real estate is one industry ripe for it, he says — and he wants Fairholme to be ready to step in as a Warren Buffett-style lender of last resort, with highly favorable terms for his investors, of course. As Berkowitz puts it, “There aren’t many people in the world you can call who can write a check for $1 billion today.”

So in theory, it’s possible that Fairholme will be able to cope with its increasing size. Still, I’m a bit concerned at the lack of a real investment team at work there. From the sound of the article, it really consists of Berkowitz and Charlie Fernandez plus a support staff. It’s true that the firm will hire experts to come in and advise on different industries, but I don’t know if that’s enough. A team can help provide varying perspectives which could be critical when making a bit, concentrated bet on just one sector of the market. A team might also be more helpful going forward, as Fairholme seems poised to enter more complicated areas of the market with their restructuring and bankruptcy activities.

When Ted Garrard took over as chief executive officer of Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children Foundation last year, donations were down, investments had sagged and there was a public outcry over the $2.7-million paid to the former CEO.

Some wondered whether the foundation, one of the largest charities in Canada, would recover.

It looks now like those fears were misplaced.

According to recently released annual filings, donations have held steady at $88-million, costs are down 20 per cent and executive pay has been curtailed.

Even more stunning, the foundation’s investment portfolio generated a 41-per-cent return for the year ended March 31, 2010. That helped boost overall assets, which includes other holdings, to a record $670.2-million at year end.

So how did he do it?

Mr. Garrard credits much of the success to Prem Watsa, chairman and CEO of Fairfax (401.99-3.26-0.80%) Mr. Watsa is famed for contrarian market calls and he has been using that same approach as a volunteer at the foundation, where he has overseen investments for 15 years. “This comes naturally for me,” Mr. Watsa said in an interview.

Mr. Watsa said his investment strategy at the foundation has been fairly simple: Keep the asset mix relatively steady and look for value.

When he started at the foundation in 1995, 80 per cent of its then-$148.2-million portfolio was invested in equities. Mr. Watsa brought that percentage down slightly over the years and, in 2007, slashed it to 35 per cent, convinced the markets had peaked. Most of the remainder went into government bonds.

How Prem Watsa Turned SickKids’ Portfolio Around (Globe and Mail)

One of the things I really admire about Watsa’s approach to investing is the constant monitoring of overall market conditions and how it shapes his asset allocation break down and whether or not he hedges. I think it’s the right approach, some investors are so fixated on equities or bonds that they’ll stay in the asset even when their markets become frothy. Instead of remaining disciplined, they relax their investment standards and invest blindly. That doesn’t end well for their investors.

via: Dataroma

The new position in Bank of New York is really interesting to me. I have had this theory for a while now that asset management/trust banks would become attractive going forward because of their large fee income businesses.

See, for a long time, most banks operated on this 80/20 model where 80% of revenues came from interest activities (loans) and 20% came from fees (overdraft, credit card interchange, debit card interchange). But that’s changed a bit with the Durbin Amendment which is scrapping the debit card interchange fee from banks. Most bankers have publicly said that they will be figuring out new ways to make up the lost income — most likely by charging customers for things that they take for granted (free checking).

The other model though, might be to acquire financial institutions that are driven primarily by fees. There are a few ways to do this. A bank could acquire wealth management firms that are within their geography — BBVA did this when they came to Houston. Or they could acquire a trust bank, which typically has the income structure split closer to 65/35 than 80/20. We saw one of these acquisitions when M&T Bank (another Berkshire Hathaway holding) acquired Wilmington Trust in an immediately accretive deal.

So where exactly does Bank of New York fit into all of this?

Bank of New York is regulated as a bank but actually derives most of its income via fees. It acts as a custodian for financial assets. As a result, Bank of New York can charge asset management fees to clients, typically at a percentage of AUM. Plus, it can also charge clients on a per transaction basis – so if you expect an increased level of volatility going forward, then the bank should do quite well. This is a great business to be in and throws off a lot of free cash flow when times are good.

The only thing that concerns me about Bank of New York is the company itself. The business they are in is great and should have excellent prospects for the future, but historically the bank’s own results have been less than spectacular. To illustrate, look at BoNY’s EPS since 2000 versus Wells Fargo:

Those earnings seem pretty weak, which makes me wonder about BoNY. At the same time, they have engaged in M&A over the last 10 years, which might have hurt earnings growth — especially if there were integration costs and dilution. Maybe Buffett is expecting some kind of shift in operations, much like what happened with Coca-Cola when he invested.

I’d suggest taking a deeper look at trust banks and banks that have some kind of non-interest fee stream that makes up a greater than 20% portion of their business. This looks like a really fruitful area for some of the bigger banks to do deals and might be beneficial to investors.

Grantham gives his thoughts on a wide range of topics from the Fed’s policies, US equities, emerging markets, commodities, and even farmland/timber.

Miguel: What was it like being the world expert on Berkshire Hathaway?

Alice: I thought that it would be interesting to our retail brokers and to a limited number of institutional investors. I knew that a lot of people on Wall Street were indifferent to Warren Buffett and some even disliked him for one reason or another.

What I didn’t expect was that the new role would become huge, but it did, because, until that time, Warren had been so inaccessible. The New York Times ran a front page business section story “The Oracle of Omaha Taps a Medium on Wall Street.” For a while I had 3 people answering the phones. I can’t tell you how many phone calls just never got returned; it was like a wildfire. Thankfully, it calmed down after a few weeks.

Berkshire was a very interesting stock to follow, especially as you began to really understand it and its most important elements. Shortly after I began my new role, Warren made a series of acquisitions in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. There was, as there still is, a fascination with the minutiae of these companies. But it seemed to me that the most important part of what he did resembled a factory-like process. What interested me was the factory.

Meeting the Oracle of Omaha (Simoleonsense)

Berkshire Hathaway Inc. has hired Todd Combs of Castle Point Capital to manage a “significant portion” of the investment portfolio built by Chairman Warren Buffett.

Combs, 39, issued a letter to partners of Castle Point announcing his decision, Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire said today in a statement distributed by Business Wire.

For three years, Vice Chairman Charles Munger and I “have been looking for someone of Todd’s caliber to handle a significant portion of Berkshire’s investment portfolio,” Buffett said in the statement. “We are delighted that Todd will be joining us.”

Buffett Names Castle Point’s Combs to Investment Post (Bloomberg)

Overall, I think that this decision makes a lot of sense. If you look at Berkshire over the course of its history, one of the common trends is a tendency to invest in financials. I’ve often wondered why this is but can speculate that it’s because insurance companies and banks tend to have recurring earnings and the threat of technological obsolescence is pretty low.

So who exactly is Todd Combs?

Combs (39 years old) runs Castle Point Capital, a long/short equity hedge fund focused exclusively on the financial services sector. Formed in 2005, the fund is based in Greenwich, Connecticut. Trident III provided the hedge fund’s seed capital in November 2005.

Here’s what Buffett has to say about Combs:

Buffett described Combs as an “all-American type” who is not the least bit interested in publicity, an attitude unlikely to shield him from it. Now a resident of Darien, Conn., Combs is by birth a Floridian who graduated in 1993 from Florida State University with majors in finance and multinational business operations.

Once out of school he worked for Florida’s comptroller and later moved to Progressive Insurance, where he was involved in the all-important activity of setting automobile insurance rates. Progressive is an arch-competitor of Berkshire’s GEICO.

…Buffett describes Combs’ record through the financial crisis as “pretty good.” Combs’ hiring, in fact, clearly indicates that Combs has had a performance with which Buffett is satisfied.

Meet the leading contender to manage Berkshire’s billions (Fortune)

Performance-wise, Todd Combs looks like a sharp financials investor. According to Bloomberg Castle Point’s fund gained 6.2 percent last year, fell 5.7 percent in 2008, rose 19 percent in 2007 and climbed 13.6 percent in 2006. If you look back over the same period, most financials-focused funds have not had that level of performance. Most took a beating back in 2007 and 2008 and have returns that are closer to the S&P over the same period, if not lower (about -5%).

One of the things I wondered about, back when Li Lu was discussed as a potential CIO candidate (he has since taken his name out of the running) was whether the penchant for betting big and winning huge would be an applicable strategy for Berkshire Hathaway. It’s a practice preached by Charlie Munger, but if you look out at what Buffett has done over the last 30 years, the only big bets have come via the form of acquisitions.

Some of the best plays from Berkshire’s investment portfolio have come from the preferred deals during the financial crisis and the convertible deals back in the 1987 bear market. In both cases, the investment returns had fixed-income properties, returns were capped for the most part, even though he could convert to equity or exercise warrants. These were mostly bets on survival, not on the overall ability for companies to thrive after crisis periods. An investor could have earned a much higher rate of return by purchasing common stocks near their all time lows during either period (similar to David Tepper), but it’s a strategy that Buffett did not pursue. I think that’s pretty telling.

Looking back at Todd Combs’ portfolio, we can see that he was not trying to bet big on any particular direction for financials. He was not doing a Michael Burry/Steve Eisman short the market and make 500% play. I think that is a quality that Buffett was looking for, someone who would perform well but not bet big. Maybe that’s due to the unpredictable nature of financial markets or maybe it’s because he wants the investment side of Berkshire to take a back seat to the operating businesses when he’s no longer around.

Some people have questioned whether investing in Todd Combs, someone with a short track record, makes any sense. To me, the fact that Combs performed so well during a period when most financials investors have gotten crushed is pretty telling. It’s not like we were looking at 5 years of performance during a bull market. So even though 5 years is typically too short of a short timespan, in this case I believe it’s enough to discern whether or not someone is a good investor.

You can view Todd Combs’ top 10 portfolio positions here:

For a full look at his Castle Point Capital portfolio, click this link, to view a google docs spreadsheet with his entire list of positions as of the latest 13F-HR.

Or, view his portfolio embedded in the iFrame below:

I thought the following charts from East Coast Asset Management’s 3Q 2010 letter demonstrate the power of compound interest quite well:

And this:

And of course, opportunity costs:

Full article:
East Coast Asset Management 3Q2010 Letter

Right now though, Robin Raina at Ebix is someone to watch. I believe what he’s done there is remarkable. He took a company that was on the cusp of bankruptcy and turned it around. Now it’s in growth mode and is expanding internationally. The folks at Motley Fool have a wonderful interview with Robin Raina, be sure to read it. Here is an excerpt:

Sun: So Robin, you have obviously had some really extraordinary achievements. I am curious, as a younger person, how did you become you? Not only on your philanthropic side, but also from a business perspective. You joined Ebix when you were 30, I think, right? Then you were quickly promoted and …

Raina: Thirty-two.

Sun: And you have obviously taken Ebix to incredible heights in just the past decade, and yet you also harbor this strong desire to do right by humankind and the underprivileged. How does that develop? Was this something that came from a family background, or did this just come independently? I would love to hear about that.

Raina: Well, thank you. I think what I did gain from my father and my mom was … I think from my father I gained a lot of integrity. My father always taught us the value of sincerity and integrity and that hard work has no substitute. My family was extremely secular, my parents were Hindus, but I was given a Christian name on day one. I didn’t change my name in the U.S. I have studied in a convent in school. The names in my own family, my son has a Muslim name, my daughter has a Russian name, and so on.

My mom transferred a lot of her courage to me. I could see she was a housewife, but I saw the courage she had, that intense courage always that I grew up with. I will tell you an interesting story. When I was 23 years old, I had finished my engineering degree, and I was starting to work for Dell. Dell had a joint venture in India, and I was brought in as a management trainee. I was considered one of the top guys in sales in the country at that time. And my picture came up in the largest IT magazine as the top sales guy in the country. In those days, the numbers used to be different, but I was considered to have done well.

I got three promotions in one year, meaning I was young and I lived on it. At the age of I think 24 or so, Compaq asked me to be a managing director and go to Ho Chi Minh City and head Vietnam for Compaq, because I was quite well-known at that time … as a troubleshooter. People thought, “He will solve it; he will do some good stuff.” I rejected it, and most people at that time thought he is either too arrogant or he is absolutely nuts.

People used to say, what do you want to be when you grow up? And I used to say I want to be famous. And that was a standard line I used to say, and I just felt that when I was a kid, I had this yearning that I can do bigger stuff. I always felt if I walked into that Compaq job, I will be lost in that company and I will never be on my own. At that time I was a young kid who virtually didn’t know what I was doing, but there was an internal fire, and I think what has probably helped me to whatever little success I have had, has been that I go by my convictions. I have always believed that if you want to do anything in life, you should be able to match eyeball to eyeball and do it. Because you can only do it if you have integrity. You can only do it if you are a straight talker. You can only do it if you don’t have anything to hide.

Also, I have always believed that the simple way to success in business is hard work, sincerity, perseverance, and transparency. You have to be transparent with your clients. If you have a problem, don’t hide it; pass it on. Tell the client sooner rather than later. That client will respect you more. Let’s say you are trying to hide it and then the problem becomes a bigger problem. I have always felt that if you can be open with your clients, committed to your clients, sincere to your clients, and you believe in what you do, and lead from the front, everything will happen for you.

I, to some extent, feel that some of those values have gone through Ebix. That is probably my biggest achievement, forgetting all the numbers. I think my biggest achievement there has been that I have been able to hold my entire senior management team. My senior management team has stayed 10 years now. Secondly, I also have had the customer attention. Why don’t we lose any clients versus others? We have 300,000-plus users; we might be losing some retail brokers somewhere. But anybody who even accounts for $50,000 of revenue for us annually? In seven years, we haven’t lost that client.

So why haven’t we done that? I think it is the attitude of our employees, that they are absolutely transparent to their customers. I think that helps.

Interview With Ebix CEO Robin Raina (Fool)

]]> http://streetcapitalist.com/2010/10/04/robin-rania-of-ebix/feed/ 0 http://streetcapitalist.com/2010/10/01/john-malone-of-liberty-media/ http://streetcapitalist.com/2010/10/01/john-malone-of-liberty-media/#comments Fri, 01 Oct 2010 19:32:20 +0000 Tariq http://streetcapitalist.com/?p=1241 John Malone, Liberty Media’s chairman is one dealmaker I’ve been studying more closely these days. He’s really a master at figuring out tax efficient ways of doing deals that create value for shareholders. What I like about him is that in general, investors have made money investing alongside Malone. That’s not always the case when you try to follow other star capital allocators..

Today is Liberty Media’s investor day and you can register for the webcast here. For those interested in the company and some of their business units, these webcasts are very helpful.

For now though, if you look at Liberty Media’s 8-K from the middle of September, you can get some great insights from Malone:

Jessica Reif Cohen – Bank of America Merrill Lynch – Analyst

What is your favorite tracker currently and why?

John Malone – Liberty Media Corporation – Chairman

Well, I love all my children and currently, I think that there are buybacks in two of the three that the company is engaged in, or is authorized to do. The third is really — LINTA, we really are not or have not been buying stock back pending a decision on whether or the separation of LINTA into a separate asset-backed company is going to be okay with the bondholders, but I would say each one is sort of different.

Starz on a multiple basis seems cheap to me. We now have strong operating management. Chris [Albrecht] came over from HBO. We’ve had good success with the first couple of major series that we’ve added to the programming lineup. Obviously, the Netflix deal with Epix kind of demonstrates the kind of economics that might be available for that component of the programming right, fairly big numbers. So I think in the short run, Starz is pretty cheap. [LCAPA] is — a sum of the parts analysis, it’s cheap, particularly if you are as enthusiastic about SIRIUS, SIRIUS XM, as we are and I’m quite enthusiastic about it.

And then QVC just continues to grind out massive amounts of free cash flow, that you’re talking there about a leveraged free cash flow asset with cheap leverage and good tax attributes. So that one looks to me like it’s pretty cheap. So I was explaining to somebody a little while ago that in 37 years in the business, we have never issued equity except twice. Once was in September of ‘87 and we bought it back in November of ‘87 after we issued it at about $0.[60] on the dollar and that was when we bought Heritage Communications.

So generally speaking, we’ve always believed that our company was trading cheap on the public market and we’ve been a net acquirer of shares, redeemer of shares, consistently. We’ve never paid dividends because we think shareholders should have the right to decide whether they want to take capital back or not. So buybacks have always been our preferred method for — and we’ve done tax-free distributions which are involuntary, but don’t involve a decision by the shareholders, so those are kind of our ways of returning capital. So I don’t know which one would be my favorite. . .

Audience Participant

Speaking of Starz, can you talk maybe about how the Epix Networks transaction has maybe changed some of the possibilities (inaudible) what you were just saying there as it relates to a higher value [of some of the entities] as it stands? What’s the thought process in terms of a billion dollar balance sheet, etc.?

John Malone – Liberty Media Corporation – Chairman

Well, of course, Starz is unlevered. It sits with a billion of cash within the Liberty Starz tracking stock entity and we are not well noted for under-levered enterprises. So it’s unlikely that we’re going to sit with Starz paying a full statutory tax load for very long, so we’ve got to do something. Exactly what we’re going to do, I think, is in deliberation right now.

And clearly, the number one question for us is the issue of the bondholders in Liberty at large relative to the question of substantially all in the creation of the QVC-LINTA separation. That is kind of — as Yogi Berra said, “That’s the fork in the road that we gotta take.” So until we know the answer to that, we’re a little bit frozen in terms of what we do relative to realization on Starz, but as I say, it’s highly unlikely we’re going to let Starz sit there unlevered and sit with zero yield on the cash.

I mean, that’s not — that’s no good. So we’ll do something. We probably won’t really be in a position to do something until probably the first quarter of next year to actually execute something, but we’ll definitely do something. And of course, I’m very high on Chris and the kind of energy he’s bringing to that business, so we’ll see, but obviously, that whole industry is going through a lot of transition. Those digital rights that Starz sits on are clearly worth a lot and I don’t think it’s likely that we’ll sit there and be a passive player in the streaming over-the-top world for very long.

Starz is one I’ve posted about before back in July, so far I’ve been pretty happy with it. At the time, it traded at $53 which I thought was pretty cheap considering the potential up side from their plan to break into original programming now that Chris Albrecht (from HBO) is running the show. In August though, we got a bit of a bonus from the fact that Netflix signed their deal with Epix at a much higher multiple than what they currently pay Starz. If you adjust for that, LSTZA is probably trading around 5x 2012 EV/EBITDA which is not a bad multiple for a company that still has potential to grow and is totally unlevered.

At a more recent conference, Liberty Media CEO Greg Maffei discussed the cash on LSTZA’s balance sheet:

Jason Kim — Goldman Sachs – Analyst

Okay. And as a follow-up, as of the second quarter, Starz had about almost $1 billion of cash on the balance sheet and virtually unlevered at this point paying cash taxes. So what do you think the appropriate use of the cash is right now? Would you consider levering up Starz going forward? And if so, what do you think would be the appropriate leverage for a business like Starz?

Greg Maffei — Liberty Media Corporation – President and CEO

Well, I think you know that Liberty’s history is probably to put more leverage on companies than zero and so it is likely over time that we will add leverage to that company. One of the questions we have had is what is the right configuration for Starz both in terms of the capital side. Obviously the right-hand side of the balance sheet and looking at leverage but also what other assets, what other kind of partnerships do we want to be in? And we have been contemplating and looking at a variety of those.

We have a relatively new CEO as I mentioned in Chris, and led by him but in conjunction with Liberty. We have been looking at ideas about how that asset, how that service would be best positioned for the future and would that require more capital?

And that is why if we have had a hesitation in purchasing stock, in levering up Starz, and those kind of structurally balance sheet questions, that has been in part because looking at the left-hand side, what other assets, what other kind of partnerships did we want?

In addition, we have noted there have been certain milestones along the way to give us confidence in the business, some of which we have hit. The reattribution of Starz Media, the signing of our biggest distribution partner, biggest by number of subs in Comcast. Completion of other partnerships is still out there. Those were all probably important milestones that will give us confidence in the business and a better sense of what the long-term leverage ought to be.

Some people speculated that maybe Netflix would not renegotiate the contract, but I doubt it. They are in the process of dramatically expanding their margins with the shift towards instant streaming and are planning to use the cost savings to acquire digital content rights. Malone’s planned hard spinoff of LSTZA (rather than the current convoluted tracking stock structure) should help clarify the story a bit and get market participants to take notice.

There are some other businesses under Malone’s control that are worth looking at. QVC within LINTA with its free cash flow is pretty impressive when you consider the fact that only 10% or so of audience members are actual customers. If they can figure out a way to increase their conversions, the company could generate a ton of FCF. Then there’s Liberty’s stake in Sirius. Here’s what Maffei has to say:

Unidentified Audience Member

Question regarding the rationale for splitting Liberty into two companies. Isn’t at least over time most of the taxable income generated by the LINTA entity that will be separated from the other two tracker stocks, at least in a corporate form?

Greg Maffei — Liberty Media Corporation – President and CEO

Yes.

Unidentified Audience Member

And if that is the case, isn’t splitting the Company into two taking away part of the future potential benefit of if you were to buy enough — have enough of a serious stake that you could accelerate the use of Sirius’s NOLs?

Greg Maffei — Liberty Media Corporation – President and CEO

That is a great question. It is one of those ones you can look at and say if you were to own tomorrow 100% of Sirius, $9 billion of NOLs, wouldn’t that be a benefit and wouldn’t you want to keep the whole company together? That is a great question.

It is one of those ones probably that is more theoretical than realistic. Just if you look at the structure of our contract with Sirius, if you look at the Sirius earning capabilities, you look at the issues around making them go [solely], these NOLs. It is just probably a thicket too hard to get to imagine that we would get there. And if you ever did consolidate it, which who knows, there is probably enough other kinds of income at LCAPA that we could potentially shield like our shore against the box and some of the other things that when you look at that combined with the earnings of Sirius, it is just a bridge too far.

You are asking to hold that and say I won’t do a split we believe is beneficial and it is also by the way another issue is who is getting these tax benefits, which group of shareholders? There is just a lot of moving parts there to think about. But it is a great theoretical question.

For those of you that don’t remember, When XM Sirius was teetering towards bankruptcy, John Malone came in and infused the company with $530M of much needed capital via convertible debt, which also gave him a 40% stake in the business. That stake is now worth about $1.89B. Not a bad return in only 1.5 years. Liberty cannot accumulate more than 49.9% of Sirius until the second anniversary of their deal (Feb 2011). I’ve seen some speculation that the company could try to make an offer for the rest of Sirius in 2011 and then use it for a hard spin of LCAPA because it would give the company real operating earnings. Maffei seems to be arguing against such speculation though.

I think that going back and looking at some of Malone’s moves are worthwhile for investors, especially ones that are looking to get better at identifying potential special situations. Looking back at the complicated tracking stock structure that Liberty currently uses, it’s easy to see that an actual hard spinoff would probably unlock some value. And I think if you start thinking about potential balance sheet events, before they happen, when analyzing companies — you’re in a good spot.

Finally, I wanted to include this hour long interview Malone did with CNBC. It’s awesome.

Sorry for the light posting lately. I’ve been tied up with a couple of projects and have had to travel a bit. I should have a regular stream of posts coming up soon.

]]> http://streetcapitalist.com/2010/10/01/john-malone-of-liberty-media/feed/ 0