Street Capitalist: Event Driven Value Investments

Over the last few weeks, I have spent a lot of time trying to find certain industries that appear undervalued. One area is insurance, where many insurers with good combined ratios and past performance are trading below book. I was happy to see Wilbur Ross agree in this Q&A with Fortune:

Where do you think the biggest opportunities are now?

There are deep value opportunities in insurance stocks, which were beaten down because of their exposure to the subprime crisis, annuities, and commercial real estate. I won’t name names, but some well-managed life insurance and fire and casualty companies will come through this stronger. They used to trade at one or two times book value but now trade at three-quarters book…

Mr. Distress is ready to buy (Fortune)

A quick look at Google shows us how the sector is looking for reinsurance players:

Most appear pretty cheap on the basis of book value. For the moment, it seems as if these companies are trading at discounts mainly due to market conditions. Most insurance companies are reporting that they are still in a soft market. I know that the folks at W.R. Berkley are expecting that things will start to turn. One indicator of that, to me, seems to be with the uptick in M&A activity. We saw Fairfax Financial acquire Zenith, and recently Perry Capital urged Endurance Services to find a merger partner:

PEMBROKE, Bermuda—One of the largest shareholders of Endurance Specialty Holdings Ltd. has urged the Pembroke, Bermuda-based insurer to find a merger partner.

New York-based hedge fund manager Perry Corp.—which owns 12.6% of Endurance and whose president, Richard C. Perry, is a member of its board of directors—said in a regulatory filing Monday that it expects consolidation in the Bermuda reinsurance market to accelerate in the near term.

Endurance “should undertake an evaluation of its strategic alternatives and pursue a possible merger or other strategic transaction in order to create a stronger company with a defined growth strategy,” Perry, which does business as Perry Capital L.L.C., wrote in the filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

In addition, Perry said recent executive appointments at Endurance will “not position the insurer to capitalize on consolidation opportunities.”

Endurance Shareholder Urges Merger (Business Insurance)

Richard Perry might also see the reinsurance sector as undervalued, which is why he thinks opportunities are ripe for Endurance Services. If that is not enough, we also saw Warren Buffett purchase stakes in Munich Re and Swiss Re. Smart, value savvy investors appear to be really interested in these companies and I think they are worth a look.

To me, the key will be to find insurance companies that are trading at low multiples with the capacity to increase policy volumes as the market improves.

(Click for full size)

I still like Fairfax given its book value growth, great management team, and current price. However, I see plenty of other opportunities worth analyzing, especially with P&C insurers. I plan on posting some work that I have been doing on insurance companies sometime this week, so be sure to look for that.

My friend Miguel Barbosa has an excellent interview with James Montier (of GMO and author of: Value Investing: Tools and Techniques for Intelligent Investment). I thought I would give you a couple of excerpts, I believe the whole interview is worth reading and suggest you do so. Miguel tells me that he should have his second part up soon.

A few days ago, when discussing value investing, a friend asked me why value investing does not stop working. Value investing thrives because of certain inefficiencies in the market and it has been written about for more than 70 years now. So why doesn’t the market catch on? Montier provides us with an answer:

Miguel: Tell us about the price = quality heuristic? Why do investors overpay for beauty and underpay for toads…after all they are one step away from becoming princes are they not? This heuristic complements the Anginer et all study where ugly defendants are more likely to be found guilty and receive longer sentences than attractive defendants.

James Montier: We humans have a bizarre bias against a bargain. For instance, my friend Dan Ariely has done some great experiments in this field showing some pretty odd findings. Imagine you taste two glasses of wine one you are told comes from a $10 bottle, the other comes from a $90 bottle. You will almost certainly say that the $90 wine tastes much better. The only snag is that the two wines are exactly the same. So never come to dinner at my house, because I’ll give $10 wine, and tell you it costs $90!

The same thing happens with pain killers. It is why branded pain killers exist alongside generic equivalents. They both have exactly the same active ingredient, but people report the branded version works better.

I suspect that something similar happens with stocks. Stocks are the one thing we don’t like to see on sale. So a ‘cheap’ stock must have something wrong with it, and an ‘expensive’ stock must be a sign of quality – at least that’s the way we tend to view things.

The Anginer et al study shows some similar findings in the legal context. Ugly defendants get far worse sentences, than attractive defendants. We have a hard time believing that attractive people could have been bad – a kind of halo effect, if you will.

If you haven’t already, I really suggest you read Dan Ariely’s book Predictably Irrational, it is one of my favorites. Montier gets at why I think markets wont figure out value investing — the participants are too irrational. Usually, what you will see are investors who claim to practice value investing, only to abandon it when things get tough. It is a style of investing that requires levelheadedness, courage, and patience, which many investors lack.

One of the topics Montier touches on is short selling, which I thought was pretty interesting. Most value investors don’t short, so it is always nice to take a look at the ones who do:

Miguel: Tell us about the folly of using price to sales as a proxy for value.

James Montier: Price to sales is fine if you are looking for short candidates, but as a long side value criteria it makes no sense to be at all. After all as long as you promise to value me on price to sales, I’ll set up a business selling $20 bills for $19…I’ll never make a profit, but if you are looking at price to sales you won’t care.

Price to sales is typical of the drift up the income statement when the bottom line gets too demanding. If your PE starts to look expensive, get everyone to look at a less demanding metric, enter stage left price to sales. If that starts to look tough, abandon the income statement and look at the value based on eyeballs and clicks!

Miguel: What I enjoy about your writing is that you aren’t afraid to talk about “controversial topics” – yes I’m talking about your work on short selling. Can you quickly tell us what you have learned about short sellers (their characteristics, screens, etc).

James Montier: Short sellers are everyone’s favorite scapegoats. They make money when things go ‘wrong’. Of course, what the authorities forget is that simply because a short seller sells a stock, doesn’t mean it goes down – if only it were that easy we’d all be short sellers. As David Einhorn observed, I’m not critical because I’m short, I’m short because I‘m critical.

In my experience, short sellers are amongst the most fundamental investors you’ll come across. They understand the ins and outs of a business better than just about everyone else. They are highly skilled at figuring out poor economics when they see if. They act as acting police, helping to uncover fraud – something that the regulators used to do (a very long time ago).

My own work on short selling has focused on a number of areas. In general, shorts tend to come into a couple of categories: bad businesses (i.e. poor economics), bad accounting (obvious), bad management (the guys at the top haven’t got a clue). In addition I often look for several traits, such as expensive, unrealistic growth expectations, too much debt, and poor capital discipline (i.e. needless and tangential M&A).

I also created a measure called the C-score (C is for cheating or cooking the books). It aims to look for the quantitative red flags which often accompany bad accounting.

Excerpt: Details of the C score Page 263 of Value Investing Tools & Techniques for Intelligent Investment

1. A growing difference between net income and cash flow from operations.
2. Day sales outstanding is increasing.
3. Growing days sales of inventory
4. Increasing other current assets to revenues.
5. Declines in depreciation relative to gross property plant and equipment.
6. High total asset growth.

Miguel Barbosa interviews James Montier (Simoleon Sense)

Those are just two questions that Montier answered. There are many more over at Simoleon Sense and I highly recommend the interview.

(Photo: Peter J. Thompson/National Post)

A friend recently attended an talk with Prem Watsa of Fairfax Financial (PINK:FRFHF / TSE:FFH). I know there are a lot of Fairfax followers on here, it is a company I’ve been bullish on for a while. Here are some of their notes. Keep in mind, these are just notes, they could be totally wrong:

The Soft P&C Market:
If you look at the insurance sector, a number of businesses are trading at low multiples because of the current pressures of the soft market. Some, like the management over at W.R. Berkely believe that the market is poised to turn around.

-Fairfax has wide reach. Active in over 100 countries, 25% premiums outside of N. America
-Fairfax faces declining volumes because of soft market but Fairfax has power to write more business if they see things improved.
-Globally, P&C markets remain soft. Signs of improvement in certain regions: Northbridge managed to raise rates in Canada.
-Fairfax could easily double underwriting volumes in the face of hard market, boosting earnings and investment float

The Investment Environment:
As some of you may know, Watsa’s Hamblin-Watsa Investment Counsel takes Fairfax’s float and uses it to make investments in all sorts of securities. They have an excellent track record of beating the market over the years.

-Watsa sees the possibility that growth will be flat as we may encounter deflationary pressures on the economy.
-Fairfax has structured their investment portfolio so that it can withstand a 50% drop in equity markets in addition to major CAT losses.
-Fairfax continues to be conservative about the markets and has 30% of the equity portfolio hedged with index swaps.
-2/3 of their muni bonds are insured by Berkshire Hathaway. Most were purchased near bottom prices. This boosts their yield on the portfolio which has an extra kicker of being tax exempt securities with a 5.75% average yield
-Some opportunities for value investors but they are becoming fewer.
-Target holding at least $1B in cash at holdco level in case of negative events.

Zenith Acquisition:
Fairfax recently acquired Zenith National Insurance Group. The company specialized in workers comp insurance and ran a conservatively managed investment portfolio.

-Fairfax has known Zenith management for over 20 years. Zenith has an excellent underwriting record and the company scaled back volumes because of soft market
-Zenith has a vanilla investment portfolio, Fairfax intends to have Hamblin-Watsa take over and try to boost performance
-Crum & Forster may be able to sell products through Zenith’s network of brokers and agents.

Michael Lewis has a new book coming out called The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine and like everything else Lewis writes, it is sure to be awesome. Vanity Fair has an excerpt of the book and I suggest you all read it whenever you get a chance. It is a great read about investor Michael Burry:

To his swelling audience, it didn’t seem to matter whether the stock market rose or fell; Mike Burry found places to invest money shrewdly. He used no leverage and avoided shorting stocks. He was doing nothing more promising than buying common stocks and nothing more complicated than sitting in a room reading financial statements. Scion Capital’s decision-making apparatus consisted of one guy in a room, with the door closed and the shades down, poring over publicly available information and data on 10-K Wizard. He went looking for court rulings, deal completions, and government regulatory changes—anything that might change the value of a company.

As often as not, he turned up what he called “ick” investments. In October 2001 he explained the concept in his letter to investors: “Ick investing means taking a special analytical interest in stocks that inspire a first reaction of ‘ick.’” A court had accepted a plea from a software company called the Avanti Corporation. Avanti had been accused of stealing from a competitor the software code that was the whole foundation of Avanti’s business. The company had $100 million in cash in the bank, was still generating $100 million a year in free cash flow—and had a market value of only $250 million! Michael Burry started digging; by the time he was done, he knew more about the Avanti Corporation than any man on earth. He was able to see that even if the executives went to jail (as five of them did) and the fines were paid (as they were), Avanti would be worth a lot more than the market then assumed. To make money on Avanti’s stock, however, he’d probably have to stomach short-term losses, as investors puked up shares in horrified response to negative publicity.

“That was a classic Mike Burry trade,” says one of his investors. “It goes up by 10 times, but first it goes down by half.” This isn’t the sort of ride most investors enjoy, but it was, Burry thought, the essence of value investing. His job was to disagree loudly with popular sentiment. He couldn’t do this if he was at the mercy of very short-term market moves, and so he didn’t give his investors the ability to remove their money on short notice, as most hedge funds did. If you gave Scion your money to invest, you were stuck for at least a year.

Betting on the Blind Side (Vanity Fair)

Today, CNBC had Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK-A / BRK-B) on for a few hours, answering questions on everything from Coca-Cola to Greece’s financial crisis. There were some interesting exchanges and you can pore over the entire transcript at CNBC, but I would like to highlight a bit of it.

On Coca-Cola

I’ve blogged in the past on Coca-Cola’s (NYSE:KO) decision to purchase its bottling unit Coca-Cola Enterprises (NYSE:CCE). To me the strategic rationale was that Coke wanted to get control over distribution so that they could more agilely deploy new products to the market place. Buffett seems to agree here, and does note that the bottling business is in general worse than the concentrate business. I thought it was interesting that Indra Nooyi was brought onto the call, she provided some good insight on why Pepsi did their deal:

QUICK: Well, we do want to ask you about another one of your companies, Warren. Coca-Cola came out and surprised a lot of people with this news that it’s going to be buying the North American bottling operations. This is different than what they’d been talking about in the past.

BUFFETT: Right.

QUICK: And it follows what Pepsi did about a year ago; in fact, follows very closely what they’d been doing. What do you think about this deal?

BUFFETT: Well, I think on balance I like it. I mean, Muhtar Kent has done a fabulous job with Coke, and there’s a lot of execution problems in doing anything like that. Pepsi will have them and we’ll have them at Coke. But with Muhtar, I feel confident in the fact that it will get carried off right now. The bottling business is very different than what they call the concentrate business, which is making the Cola-Cola concentrate, gets turned into syrup, gets turned into Cola-Cola. The bottling business is very capital intensive and has low margins. The concentrate business is not capital intensive and has very wide margins. Literally, Coca-Cola with 5 billion of capital could make 8 or 9 billion pre-tax just from the concentrate business. But the bottling business is an entirely different business. So long-term, I like being in the concentrate business much more than the bottling business. But the bottling business, Coca-Cola has what they call a fountain division that sells direct. They have the bottlers. Any time they get a new product there’s a question of how it comes under this contract that originally goes back to 1899. It needed rationalization and this move is a big, big step toward rationalizing it, make it so it’s more–it’s more friendly to the big box retailers of Walmart or some–Costco or somebody like that. And it–but it will–there will be some real execution time involved in it and over time, you would hope that Coca-Cola would have less money involved in the bottling business, because it’s a less attractive business.

QUICK: Obviously, you’re a long-term shareholder, but when you say that there are very likely to be come execution steps, some difficulties along the way, maybe some stumbles, how much patience do you have as an investor? You talking about year or two?

BUFFETT: I–well, no, I just say that–whenever you’re doing anything this big you better–you have to have a lot of confidence in the management and I have confidence in Muhtar to carry this off…

KERNEN: All right. I kind of understand a lot of that, how, you know, you don’t want the two companies competing. But there was a rationale at one point to do it that way, and Mr. Buffett had pointed out the different–you know, it’s a low margin bottling business vs. a high margin syrup business. What exactly changed? Why–you are going to deploy more capital–or you have deployed more to own the bottlers. Why not leave them owned by someone else with a lower margin business? What’s changed? You say something’s changed to make it make more sense.

NOOYI: Yeah, that’s a great question, Joe. So 10, 20 years ago, the market–the beverage market in North America was essentially carbonated soft drinks, and there were a few megabrands that controlled the business, and the market was growing 6, 7 percent in terms of volume. Fast-forward to today. Carbonated soft drinks are now less than 50 percent of the total market, and that’s a very highly profitable part of the whole market. And the overall liquid refreshment beverage business is growing in volume about minus 2 percent and in value about 1 percent positive. So this is not a huge growth business. It’s a big market, it’s about $100 billion category. But it’s not growing in leaps and bounds like it used to a couple of decades ago. When you have one or two publicly listed companies positioned as growth companies trying to fight over a profit pool, that’s not a very good situation, especially if the profit pool is not growing enough to feed the appetites of two or three publicly listed companies. So the only way to compete and stay ahead of competition in this environment is to bring the profit pools back together and figure out how to operate more efficiently.

KERNEN: Warren, you were going to talk about the Coke strategy abroad, right, with their–I guess they’re not buying in those assets, right?

BUFFETT: Well, the–no. The franchise operation works extremely well around the–around the world. And, I mean, you take somebody like Coca-Cola FEMSA in Mexico, I mean, the per capitas there are incredible. I think they’re up close to 500 or thereabouts. And so the franchise system in just country after country, 200 countries around the world, has developed the market in a way that’s been very good for the bottlers and very good for Coca-Cola. And actually, in many countries the bottling operation has been considerably more profitable than it has been in the United States, partly because of the growth aspect that Indra mentioned. So it’s not a system that needs fixing at all around the world. There can be an occasional spot where the bottler isn’t doing the job and the Coca-Cola company will buy it and then–and put it back on its feet and then resell it to somebody in that country. But having local bottlers really works pretty darn well around the globe.

QUINTANILLA: Warren, some people…

QUICK: Warren, there–right.

QUINTANILLA: Some people have been saying that you–people historically bought Coke as an international growth play. Now all the sudden North America’s an awfully bigger piece of the pie. Does it dilute some of the reasons that people got into the stock in the first place?

BUFFETT: No. In terms of where the money is being made, you know, Coke makes, I don’t know exact percentage, but 80 percent of its money around the globe, and it’s growing and just in country after country. Coke has been gaining share really quarter after quarter around the world. And add–none of that volume’s going away, or none of that growth is going away because they’re integrating the bottling system in the United States. It does–it means a concentration more of assets in the United States, but it does not take away from the profit growth that is occurring around the–around the world. I think Coke earned like 9 billion pretax last year, and I think well over 7 billion of that was from outside of North America. And that 7 billion is going to have the same kind of growth rate, which has been substantial, whether or not–you know, wherever the bottling system in the United States is owned.

On Currencies
This is a pretty interesting question because in the past, Berkshire has done some currency trading, particularly with the Brazilian Real.

QUICK: You said, though, that a bet either for or against a currency is a bet for or against that government. If you were worried, and let’s say you’re worry level and let’s just measure a couple of things against each other, euro vs. the dollar, which worries you more?

BUFFETT: That’s a tough–that’s a tough call. I mean, both the euro, European Union countries and the United States are running very large deficits. I mean, they–both of those currencies in terms of purchasing power will decline in value over time in my judgment.

QUICK: British pound vs. the dollar. Is that the same story?

BUFFETT: Same way. I–there are all–they are all following policies that will cause their currencies to lose value. Which one will lose more value than the other, it’s so hard to tell.

QUICK: Yen vs. the dollar? Same story?

BUFFETT: The yen is–Japan is the great mystery of all time. I mean, in terms of the policies they follow, what happens, you know, low interest rates, huge deficits and all of that sort of thing. That one is a mystery I don’t even try to think about solving.

Private Equity:

Private equity gets a lot of criticism for acquiring companies and then piling them up with debt to juice their returns. Usually, the companies that can survive that kind of treatment end up performing quite well when IPOed, but many fail in the process. I am expecting that if we see a big bankruptcy wave, these companies will do pretty well. A lot are great businesses that are just overburdened with debt. I would imagine distressed debt guys like Baupost, Third Avenue, and others will make a killing on these plays. After all, Buffett himself said that he would love to buy TXU at bargain prices if it went into bankruptcy.

KERNEN: One of the reasons I brought up that TXU situation was because in the piece it said there’s a lot of really great companies that–in the private equity universe that have really lousy balance sheets based on the bubble that was around in 2007. So there’s going to be some problems. But is that somewhere where you can look to try to help work out some of the situations? There must be some real gems in there that just, for whatever reason, I look at the fees that the PE firms take, and I look at the dividends that they pay out, and it used to work, but now they actually got to manage some of these things. I mean, couldn’t you find some nuggets in there?

BUFFETT: It’s possible, Joe, but on balance, if you notice, the private equity firms are very reluctant, it seems to me, to come forth with anything that involves big losses. I mean, they–what they usually try and do is get bond holders to make concessions or something. But I’ve not seen them wanting to sell the businesses at large losses. Now, you know, if they go into bankruptcy, then you buy them for the bankruptcy process. I mean, if the old TXU gets to 2,014 and they can’t meet the maturities that they have at that time or they haven’t done it earlier, you know, we may buy–we might think about buying the whole place, you know. But we’ll–we might buy it cheaper after a bond default than we would buy it from a private equity place.

KERNEN: Well, you know how to run utilities, and you might get the chance with, I forget how much is coming due.

BUFFETT: We might get the chance.

KERNEN: Yeah, 20 billion or something.

BUFFETT: Yeah, we might get the chance.

Health Insurance:

Unfortunately, I don’t see his ideas here happening. Although it is interesting to hear about how much Buffett and Munger admire Gawande, whose works are popular among value investors.

KERNEN: But you’re saying start over and do it on a bar–bipartisan basis is what you just said.

BUFFETT: I would–I would call in the smartest people in the health care field. I mean, you know, people like the fellow out of Kaiser Permanente or Mayos or this fellow the…

KERNEN: Mayo, Cleveland Clinic, Safeway…

BUFFETT: Or Gawande, the doctor–yeah, yeah. Cosgrove at…

KERNEN: Whole Foods.

BUFFETT: …Cleveland Clinic and…

KERNEN: There’s a bunch of smart–there’s a bunch of people that have some great private market–or free market ideas. And to do it…

BUFFETT: I’d lock them–I’d lock them in a room, Joe, and I’d tell them, you know, come out when you figure out how–some way to get this going in the other direction toward 13 or 14 percent. And it can be done. It can be done…

QUICK: Right. Warren, very quickly, so a viewer wrote in, Greg Robinson from Portland, Oregon, on this subject, said, “Wouldn’t a better fix for health care be a system similar to auto insurance? Could you give a specific–a simple scenario of how Geico would insure a large portion–population of people, perhaps having them pay a portion of the bill themselves so they will police the doctors? I’m a big believer in catastrophic care, but paying for your own maintenance.” Does that sound like a feasible idea?

BUFFETT: Yeah, it probably does. But the truth is, I would get people that know a lot more about it than I do. And, I mean, it–if you get the fellow that’s written on health care recently in the New Yorker, Gawande. I mean, he had–he had an article last summer that was absolutely magnificent (THE COST CONUNDRUM – Atul Gawande). My partner Charlie Munger sat down and wrote out a check for $20,000 to him and he’s never met him, never had any correspondence with it, he just mailed it to the New Yorker and he said, `This article is so useful socially.’ He says, `Just give this as a gift to the–to Dr. Gawande.’ It compared medical costs in McAllen, Texas, to El Paso, and it just showed how, with no better results, that in McAllen they were, you know, they were spending close to twice as much per person. And you have these enormous variances around the country. And, you know, if you had some really smart people running it that knew a lot about medicine, they’re going to–they could do a lot about it.

Using Stock as Currency:

I think this is a case where over simplification causes people to get the wrong idea. I believe that while Buffett was pretty opposed to issuing stock for deals, he can act rationally and do it when the terms make sense. In Kraft’s case, making sure you are not using stock that is greatly undervalued to purchase something that is less than a bargain– especially when you have to sell off key pieces of your business at ultra low prices, like the pizza business.

KERNEN: Welcome back to SQUAWK BOX. Still to come in the next hour, PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi, that’s coming up at 8:10. Let’s get back to Omaha, that’s where we find our very own Becky Quick with Warren Buffett. Beck, I was thinking about Matt Rose and Burlington and using stock and Warren with Kraft and Cadbury and I love to get him talking about that, to try to figure out why stock was a good idea for Burlington, that it wasn’t a good idea for Kraft and I love it when you say you don’t like that deal, even though you love management. Go into that again. What was the difference between Kraft using stock and you using stock, other than maybe valuation on the company being acquired?

BUFFETT: Yeah, well, we hate using stock. No question about it, Joe. And because we already owned some Burlington beforehand, it turned it we had to use about 30 percent stock and as I put in the annual report, even though the Burlington holders were getting $100 a share, we felt it cost us more than that because we thought our stock at the time we made the deal was somewhat underpriced. We’d have done all cash if I’d felt comfortable in terms of our balance sheet, using all cash. But I never want to put us in a position where we’ve–we’re stretched in the least. So to make the deal, I had to do it. And I came to the conclusion that using 30 percent stock, which was about 6 percent of all the shares we had outstanding, still left us with a deal that made sense. But if it had to have been all stock or 50 percent stock, we couldn’t have done it and if I’d had enough cash around to do it, so I could’ve done it all cash, I would’ve liked it better.

KERNEN: How about Kraft? You warming up to that finally? Or are you still–you still don’t like it. You don’t get to vote, I guess, do you?

BUFFETT: No, we didn’t get to vote. And it wasn’t just–it wasn’t just the stock that was being used, although that was a terrible currency to use, just as our own stock is a terrible currency to use. But it wasn’t just the stock, it was the price being paid and it was the fact that the pizza business was sold in a very tax inefficient manner to partly fund the purchase. And it just–in the end, I felt poor after the deal was made. But I, you know, I wish Irene the best on executing well on it and I hope it works out. We’ll be a lot better off financially if it does, but I wouldn’t have done it.

QUICK: Warren, that question that Joe raised is one that we got from a lot of viewers, too. In fact, Todd in Parker, Colorado, wrote in and said, “In your annual report, you say that you’ll consider issuing stock when we receive as much in intrinsic business value as we give up. When exchanging Berkshire shares for Burlington Northern, did Berkshire shareholders receive less, equal or more in intrinsic value?”

BUFFETT: Well, we felt, Charlie and I, felt that we received as much or a tiny bit more in intrinsic value as we gave up. But we factored into that some other things I mentioned in the annual report. Namely, that putting $22 billion of cash to work made good sense for us in this business and that the opportunities over the next 40 or 50 years to keep putting more and more cash at reasonable returns in, just like we do in our utility business, also was an attractive opportunity. We’re going to generate lots of cash over the years and we don’t always have great places to put that. This offers one vehicle where we can put it at decent rates of return. Not great rates of return, but decent rates of return.

Animal Spirits and Acquisitions:

QUINTANILLA: Warren, you go–we know this is–you’re passionate about this from the letter, you go into a long hypothetical about company A buying company B whose stock is undervalued. You say that CEOs long on confidence and short on smarts, wants to buy company B for the prestige and maybe the compensation. Is that a–is that a veiled slight at Rosenfeld?

BUFFETT: No, it’s 50 years of being in board rooms and just seeing what happens. And you know, Keynes talked about–probably the best–the best chapters written on investing were chapters eight and 20 in “The Intelligent Investor” for individual investing. The best chapter ever written in sort of describing how the world works in markets is chapter 12 of “The General Theory” written by Keynes and in it he talks about animal spirits and what causes people to do the deals and all of that. It’s a marvelous chapter. And I’m not sure that he had Kraft in mind, but he had a lot of the companies that I’ve experienced over the years in mind. It’s a very normal thing. I mean, you know, everything looks–everything looks rosy, you know, when you first are looking at a deal. You don’t see the downsides. You don’t see the execution problems, you don’t see the people who are going to leave. You don’t see–you don’t see all kinds of things. And I’m guilty of that, too, incidentally. I’ve made some dumb deals in my life and I’ll make some more dumb deals and animal spirits will enter into those dumb deals. I guarantee you that. I just try to keep them under control and if I don’t, I count on Charlie to keep me under control.

Debt Problems in the US

QUICK: All right. Let’s get to some more questions that came in from shareholders. There’s one guy’s–number 184 for the control room. This came from Scott Deller in New York. He says, “How much debt would sink the United States? If the answer’s unknown, isn’t it risky to race at top speed toward that line?” There were a lot of questions like this that came in.

BUFFETT: Yeah. Well, we are doing things that are causing the debt to rise at a very rapid rate, I mean, when you’re running, you know, a fiscal deficit like we are. As long as you issue debt in your own currency, debt doesn’t sink you. Now it–what it does is it destroys the value of money over time. So you can make–you can make it so that the person who lent you money, 10 years from now or 20 years from now gets back dollars that aren’t worth very much. But you can–as long as you’ve got a printing press, you can–you can issue any amount of debt in your own currency. It’s when the world says to you, `We don’t want debt in your currency any more, issue it in something that’s more solid,’ and that’s what they do–they’ve done to various developing countries. That’s what they used to do to South American countries and so on. And then the music stops. The IMF comes in and whatever they take. We have this great reputation for 200 years, and people will accept dollars for a long time. But if the printing presses would run at a sufficient rate, people after a while would say, `Wait a second. We’re going to get stuck.’ You know, it’s interesting, when we talk about what’s happened in the last year or two how the taxpayers paid for this or the taxpayers paid for that, taxpayer hasn’t paid for any of it. We haven’t raised taxes on anybody. What we’ve done is the lenders have paid for it. So it’s…

QUICK: Well don’t those–don’t those costs eventually get passed onto the consumer too, though?

BUFFETT: Not–the costs really get passed on–generally speaking, they get passed onto the saver. They just–inflation steals from savers, and inflation is the logical consequences of printing too much money.

QUICK: And seniors who are living on fixed incomes.

BUFFETT: Anybody that’s living on any kind of fixed income. I mean, you know…

QUICK: And small businesses that are maybe hoping to get a loan from a bank that can’t give it at this point.

BUFFETT: …anybody that has their money–anybody that has their money in a money market fund or anything like that, you know, if we issue enough–if we keep printing enough–if we keep a large enough fiscal deficits we will eventually print a lot of money and money will be worthless. And incidentally, if the United States runs up trillions and trillions and trillions of debt to the rest of the world, you know, I will guarantee you that the politicians of 10 or 20 years ago will not want to pay that back in hard money. It just doesn’t–it doesn’t make any sense.

The Financial Crisis in Greece
Buffett’s advocates swift action in dealing with the problem in Greece. I think that this is pretty appropriate. What we saw in the financial crisis here was that companies which did not deal with their problems fast enough wound up dead. When you are in a situation where you depend on borrowed money, you don’t have the luxury to sit and twiddle your thumbs. You’ve got to act before your credit lines dry up.

QUICK: When you look at the situation in Greece right now and what’s happening with the trouble they’ve gotten into, do you believe that contagion spreads to not only other EU nations, but potentially other states here in the United States? Is that a huge worry for you?

BUFFETT: There’s a huge incentive for the EU to handle something like Greece and, of course, that’s what you’re seeing now. I mean, it isn’t–it isn’t because the rest of–the other 15 countries in the EU have suddenly developed this great affinity for Greeks. They just–they know the consequences of, you know, if A is going to lead to B and you can’t stand B, solve A. And that is essentially the situation. That’s what we went through a year and a half ago, you know, after–when we stepped in and guaranteed money market funds and commercial paper and all of those things. We saw a run on the country developing, and, believe me, it was developing. And no one has to lend money to country A or country B or country C. And if they lose money with country A they’re going to get more worried about country B and country C just like the same experience we had with financial institutions in the fall of 2008. The time to stop runs is early on.

QUICK: But do you think that this is something that could happen here in the United States, if you look at California or New York, if you start looking at some of the states that have very large financial problems?

BUFFETT: Yeah, and they can’t print money.

QUICK: They can’t.

BUFFETT: No, no. What they can do is one of three things. They can cut expenses, they can raise income, or they can go to Washington eventually.

QUICK: And you think Washington would cover all of those problems?

BUFFETT: It would be very tough if you’re in Congress and they say, `Well, you bailed out General Motors, and you did this and that. And are you going to say, “People in the largest state in the union or whatever it is, that we’re not going to take care of you? I mean, the political problem would be huge. But there’s no question that states and municipalities the fiscal–the financial situation for them has deteriorated dramatically. We did not write any municipal insurance to speak of in 2009. The risk got higher and the premiums got lower and that just–it made it a dumb sort of thing to do in our view.

QUICK: Tying this back to Europe and if Europe and Germany do step in and provide for Greece, as it looks like they very–may very well do at this point…

BUFFETT: Almost have to, yeah.

QUICK: …does that make you think that all these hedge funds that are betting against the Euro are on the wrong side of this fence?

BUFFETT: Well, I don’t know what happens to the euro exactly, but I mean, there are–I’m sure there are hedge funds that are betting against the euro that are hoping that for one reason the Germans gets mad at the Greeks, or whatever it may be, you know, they are–let’s say there are two banks in town. You own a bank and I own a bank. Now, if I want to put you out of business what do I do? I go out and hire 50 bums on the street and get them to stand in line in front of your bank. You know, that’s all I have to do. You know, and those 50 will become 100. And after a while, I can let the 50 bums and go, and it will create its own dynamic. You do not want that to happen with countries. So you better stop it, you know, right off the bat. And everybody realizes that. The only question is whether it gets it gets bogged down in something or other.

I woke up at 7AM yesterday to have a chance to read Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway 2009 letter to shareholders (PDF). This year’s letter did not disappoint. I would like to highlight a few key ideas from the letter.

Intrinsic Value

At the beginning of each letter, you will see a table of how Berkshire Hathaway’s growth in book value fared versus the S&P 500’s. Now, as Buffett states below, book value does not precisely peg intrinsic value but it comes close:

The ideal standard for measuring our yearly progress would be the change in Berkshire’s per-share intrinsic value. Alas, that value cannot be calculated with anything close to precision, so we instead use a crude proxy for it: per-share book value. Relying on this yardstick has its shortcomings, which we discuss on pages 92 and 93. Additionally, book value at most companies understates intrinsic value, and that is certainly the case at Berkshire. In aggregate, our businesses are worth considerably more than the values at which they are carried on our books. In our all-important insurance business, moreover, the difference is huge. Even so, Charlie and I believe that our book value – understated though it is – supplies the most useful tracking device for changes in intrinsic value. By this measurement, as the opening paragraph of this letter states, our book value since the start of fiscal 1965 has grown at a rate of 20.3% compounded annually.

Whitney Tilson takes a different approach for figuring out the company’s intrinsic value: you take the company’s per share investments and add them to pretax earnings per share with a multiple attached. This is closer to what Warren Buffett has recommended for pegging Berkshire’s intrinsic value, but it is also more difficult to determine. For most people, the book value approach should be sufficient enough.

Float

Most people don’t understand float, but it is probably the key factor in Berkshire Hathaway’s growth over the last 40 years. Let’s say you are a value investor and you manage to take control of a company. In general, your opportunities range from reinvesting in the business you have acquired, to looking at outside opportunities. These can be acquisitions of other businesses or simple investments in securities. Normally, such investments must be paid for using free cash flow or debt. But if you were to acquire an insurance company, you would have one more weapon in your arsenal, float:

Insurers receive premiums upfront and pay claims later. In extreme cases, such as those arising from certain workers’ compensation accidents, payments can stretch over decades. This collect-now, pay-later model leaves us holding large sums – money we call “float” – that will eventually go to others. Meanwhile, we get to invest this float for Berkshire’s benefit. Though individual policies and claims come and go, the amount of float we hold remains remarkably stable in relation to premium volume. Consequently, as our business grows, so does our float.

If premiums exceed the total of expenses and eventual losses, we register an underwriting profit that adds to the investment income produced from the float. This combination allows us to enjoy the use of free money – and, better yet, get paid for holding it. Alas, the hope of this happy result attracts intense competition, so vigorous in most years as to cause the P/C industry as a whole to operate at a significant underwriting loss. This loss, in effect, is what the industry pays to hold its float. Usually this cost is fairly low, but in some catastrophe-ridden years the cost from underwriting losses more than eats up the income derived from use of float…

Our float has grown from $16 million in 1967, when we entered the business, to $62 billion at the end of 2009. Moreover, we have now operated at an underwriting profit for seven consecutive years. I believe it likely that we will continue to underwrite profitably in most – though certainly not all – future years. If we do so, our float will be cost-free, much as if someone deposited $62 billion with us that we could invest for our own benefit without the payment of interest.

Let me emphasize again that cost-free float is not a result to be expected for the P/C industry as a whole: In most years, premiums have been inadequate to cover claims plus expenses. Consequently, the industry’s overall return on tangible equity has for many decades fallen far short of that achieved by the S&P 500. Outstanding economics exist at Berkshire only because we have some outstanding managers running some unusual businesses. Our insurance CEOs deserve your thanks, having added many billions of dollars to Berkshire’s value. It’s a pleasure for me to tell you about these all-stars.

Bolded for emphasis. The $16M to $62B figure is absolutely amazing and speaks to the power of a disciplined insurance operation. Not to detract from the 2009 letter, but I think the following discussion on National Indemnity from the 2004 is quite insightful here. Indeed, in Buffett’s 2004 letter, he said that without the acquisition of National Indemnity, Berkshire would be nowhere close to its size today:

So, you may ask, how do Berkshire’s insurance operations overcome the dismal economics of the industry and achieve some measure of enduring competitive advantage? We’ve attacked that problem in several ways. Let’s look first at NICO’s strategy.

When we purchased the company – a specialist in commercial auto and general liability insurance – it did not appear to have any attributes that would overcome the industry’s chronic troubles. It was not well-known, had no informational advantage (the company has never had an actuary), was not a low-cost operator, and sold through general agents, a method many people thought outdated. Nevertheless, for almost all of the past 38 years, NICO has been a star performer. Indeed, had we not made this acquisition, Berkshire would be lucky to be worth half of what it is today.

What we’ve had going for us is a managerial mindset that most insurers find impossible to replicate. Take a look at the facing page. Can you imagine any public company embracing a business model that would lead to the decline in revenue that we experienced from 1986 through 1999? That colossal slide, it should be emphasized, did not occur because business was unobtainable. Many billions of premium dollars were readily available to NICO had we only been willing to cut prices. But we instead consistently priced to make a profit, not to match our most optimistic competitor. We never left customers – but they left us.

Many insurance companies end up chasing premiums without adequate risk management and blow up. They never have the time to really endure and grow, the way that Berkshire has done with National Indemnity and its other operations. Now, back to the 2009 letter.

Buffett uses the rest of the insurance section of the letter to praise Ajit Jain’s activities at Berkshire Reinsurance and mentions that GEICO has gone from the country’s 6th largest auto insurer to the third largest in just 15 years. One of the best things about Buffett is he always owns up to his mistakes. It seems as if a foray into the credit card business did not work out so well for GEICO:

And now a painful confession: Last year your chairman closed the book on a very expensive business fiasco entirely of his own making.

For many years I had struggled to think of side products that we could offer our millions of loyal GEICO customers. Unfortunately, I finally succeeded, coming up with a brilliant insight that we should market our own credit card. I reasoned that GEICO policyholders were likely to be good credit risks and, assuming we offered an attractive card, would likely favor us with their business. We got business all right – but of the wrong type.

Our pre-tax losses from credit-card operations came to about $6.3 million before I finally woke up. We then sold our $98 million portfolio of troubled receivables for 55¢ on the dollar, losing an additional $44 million.

GEICO’s managers, it should be emphasized, were never enthusiastic about my idea. They warned me that instead of getting the cream of GEICO’s customers we would get the – – – – – well, let’s call it the non-cream. I subtly indicated that I was older and wiser.

I was just older.

That kind of honesty is unparalleled in shareholder letters, which usually read more like corporate propaganda than honest assessments of the business.

Burlington Northern Santa Fe

(Flickr: SP8254)

The regulated utilities section of the letter provides some insights on why the Buffett chose to acquire Burlington Northern. I think that for the most part, guys like Bruce Berkowitz were right in their assessment on Burlington Northern:

CONSUELO MACK: Let me ask you about the Burlington Northern acquisition, the largest acquisition that Berkshire Hathaway has ever made. The Wall Street Journal coverage of it saidWarren Buffett is turning Berkshire Hathaway into a big industrial operator and it’s no longer thenimble investment firm that it was once. What’s your view of what Warren is doing in buying thesebig industrial companies?

BRUCE BERKOWITZ: Berkshire has a tremendous amount of flow from the premiums received from long-term insurance policies. That flow has to be invested in very secure, sound financial instruments such as: electric utilities cost plus or a railroad business which has the stability unlikemany businesses. So here he’s taking money that’s actually got a zero cost to it and then investing itat a reasonable, not at an egregious yield, but at a reasonable investment yield. But when the cost iszero, the returns are phenomenal. He’s brilliant. Warren Buffett is being Warren Buffett in that he’smarried another great big business to Berkshire Hathaway that’s going to make a sizeable difference overtime

Buffett believes that BNSF should be looked at as a utility as well:

Our BNSF operation, it should be noted, has certain important economic characteristics that resemble those of our electric utilities. In both cases we provide fundamental services that are, and will remain, essential to the economic well-being of our customers, the communities we serve, and indeed the nation. Both will require heavy investment that greatly exceeds depreciation allowances for decades to come. Both must also plan far ahead to satisfy demand that is expected to outstrip the needs of the past. Finally, both require wise regulators who will provide certainty about allowable returns so that we can confidently make the huge investments required to maintain, replace and expand the plant…

In the future, BNSF results will be included in this “regulated utility” section. Aside from the two businesses having similar underlying economic characteristics, both are logical users of substantial amounts of debt that is not guaranteed by Berkshire. Both will retain most of their earnings. Both will earn and invest large sums in good times or bad, though the railroad will display the greater cyclicality. Overall, we expect this regulated sector to deliver significantly increased earnings over time, albeit at the cost of our investing many tens – yes, tens – of billions of dollars of incremental equity capital.

Buffett does not say explicitly what he thinks the returns on invested capital will be for the railroad business but that it should increase over time. Burlington Northern should definitely have the kind of pricing power it needs to ward off the frictional forces of inflation, should regulators act properly.

NetJets

(Course Correction: NetJets)

When David Sokol took the reigns at NetJets, I think people looked at the situation in two ways. 1. This would be a test for Sokol, to see if he has what it takes to be the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. 2. Berkshire’s businesses aren’t infallible and may need guidance from time to time. Here is what Buffett said of the situation:

We tend to let our many subsidiaries operate on their own, without our supervising and monitoring them to any degree. That means we are sometimes late in spotting management problems and that both operating and capital decisions are occasionally made with which Charlie and I would have disagreed had we been consulted…

The major problem for Berkshire last year was NetJets, an aviation operation that offers fractional ownership of jets. Over the years, it has been enormously successful in establishing itself as the premier company in its industry, with the value of its fleet far exceeding that of its three major competitors combined. Overall, our dominance in the field remains unchallenged.

NetJets’ business operation, however, has been another story. In the eleven years that we have owned the company, it has recorded an aggregate pre-tax loss of $157 million. Moreover, the company’s debt has soared from $102 million at the time of purchase to $1.9 billion in April of last year. Without Berkshire’s guarantee of this debt, NetJets would have been out of business. It’s clear that I failed you in letting NetJets descend into this condition. But, luckily, I have been bailed out.

Dave Sokol, the enormously talented builder and operator of MidAmerican Energy, became CEO of NetJets in August. His leadership has been transforming: Debt has already been reduced to $1.4 billion, and, after suffering a staggering loss of $711 million in 2009, the company is now solidly profitable.

Most important, none of the changes wrought by Dave have in any way undercut the top-of-the-line standards for safety and service that Rich Santulli, NetJets’ previous CEO and the father of the fractional- ownership industry, insisted upon.

With the debt reduced to $1.4B and the company profitable, David Sokol looks as if he has passed the test. Sokol has gradually had the opportunity to get more face time with the media. We saw this with his activities at NetJets and the investment in BYD. I think he is poised to be the right operations guy at Berkshire, with Ajit Jain handling the insurance operations and the still unnamed CIO handling investments.

Financial Products and Derivatives

On occasion, Buffett has criticized the government’s lending policies with good reason. Berkshire is unable to get the kinds of lending rates that TARP recipients received in the past, which put the company at a decided disadvantage when it came to bidding on parts of companies such as AIG. But in this year’s letter, Buffett sheds light on another problem:

The residential mortgage market is shaped by government rules that are expressed by FHA, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Their lending standards are all-powerful because the mortgages they insure can typically be securitized and turned into what, in effect, is an obligation of the U.S. government. Currently buyers of conventional site-built homes who qualify for these guarantees can obtain a 30-year loan at about 51⁄4%. In addition, these are mortgages that have recently been purchased in massive amounts by the Federal Reserve, an action that also helped to keep rates at bargain-basement levels.

In contrast, very few factory-built homes qualify for agency-insured mortgages. Therefore, a meritorious buyer of a factory-built home must pay about 9% on his loan. For the all-cash buyer, Clayton’s homes offer terrific value. If the buyer needs mortgage financing, however – and, of course, most buyers do – the difference in financing costs too often negates the attractive price of a factory-built home…

Our product is first-class, inexpensive and constantly being improved. Moreover, we will continue to use Berkshire’s credit to support Clayton’s mortgage program, convinced as we are of its soundness. Even so, Berkshire can’t borrow at a rate approaching that available to government agencies. This handicap will limit sales, hurting both Clayton and a multitude of worthy families who long for a low-cost home.

These kinds of double standards hurt buyers of Clayton’s homes, especially considering that Clayton’s buyers are not speculators. Most are simply people looking to buy a home and live in it. They aren’t the gluttonous home flippers that helped fuel the excess supply in the housing market.

One of the problems with the media and Warren Buffett is that they often try to over simplify what he says, boiling things down into sound bytes that don’t give the full picture. This is definitely the case with derivatives.

A number of commentators have criticized Buffett for investing in derivatives contracts after calling derivatives weapons of mass destruction. The thing is, Buffett was criticizing how most financial institutions were using derivatives. For the most part, companies like AIG were writing billions upon billions of dollars worth of CDS contracts using faulty math behind defaults. They were totally unrealistic. We see now that Greece tried to use contracts to fudge their budgetary accounting and make their deficits appear artificially lower. These kinds of uses of derivatives are pretty stupid and can cause the mass destruction that Buffett described. Actually, if you look at AIG and the state of Greece, you could argue that they have already caused that destruction.

The Berkshire approach to derivatives is different. For the most part, Buffett looks at these like he does insurance. He is trying to find mispricings where the risk is limited and the duration from now till when money must be exchanged is sufficiently long enough to earn enough from the float to limit any kind of damage that would occur if Berkshire is on the losing side of these contracts:

We have long invested in derivatives contracts that Charlie and I think are mispriced, just as we try to invest in mispriced stocks and bonds. Indeed, we first reported to you that we held such contracts in early 1998. The dangers that derivatives pose for both participants and society – dangers of which we’ve long warned, and that can be dynamite – arise when these contracts lead to leverage and/or counterparty risk that is extreme. At Berkshire nothing like that has occurred – nor will it.

It’s my job to keep Berkshire far away from such problems. Charlie and I believe that a CEO must not delegate risk control. It’s simply too important. At Berkshire, I both initiate and monitor every derivatives contract on our books, with the exception of operations-related contracts at a few of our subsidiaries, such as MidAmerican, and the minor runoff contracts at General Re. If Berkshire ever gets in trouble, it will be my fault. It will not be because of misjudgments made by a Risk Committee or Chief Risk Officer.

Most people incorrectly assume that value investing means just investing in well run large cap stocks. It doesn’t. Value investing is buying a dollar for 50 cents. Where that dollar exists should not matter. A good investor should be willing to travel across asset classes in search of these bargains, and that is what great investors like Seth Klarman, Prem Watsa, and Warren Buffett have done in the past.

The entire letter is worth reading, especially for getting a more detailed insight into some of Berkshire Hathaway’s lesser known subsidiaries and overall performance for 2009.

Eddie Lampert has released his 2010 Sears Holdings (NASDAQ:SHLD) chairman’s letter and I thought I’d highlight a few points that I thought were interesting. Over the last few years, Lampert has been hit harsh criticism from the business press, mostly because they perceived that he was failing in his turnaround at Sears. Mostly, I think a turnaround has happened, but its evidence is more visible on a financial level.

I visited Sears stores a couple times last summer and was not impressed, the stores aren’t as nice as competitors Walmart and Target, the employees did not seem as knowledgeable, and there wasn’t a great selection of inventory available. These kinds of observations may cloud an analyst’s judgement when looking at Sears objectively. Indeed, the results over the last year have been pretty good:

Today we announced our financial results for our 2009 fiscal year. I am pleased to report that we delivered both stability and progress, resulting in roughly $1.8 billion of Adjusted EBITDA, an improvement of more than $200 million over 2008. While this may be surprising to some, it isn’t to me. The dedication of our associates and leadership team led by Bruce Johnson and the diversity of the Sears Holdings business portfolio—Sears Full Line stores, Kmart stores, our Home Services business, Sears Auto Centers, Outlet Stores, Hometown Stores, the Kenmore, Craftsman, DieHard and Lands’ End brands, our majority interest in Sears Canada, and our online business properties including sears.com—have allowed us to successfully manage through the economic and financial crisis of the past two years.

Edward Lampert: Sears Holdings 2010 Chairman’s Letter

If you look back at Sears over the last few years versus competitors, you will see that Lampert decisively cut capital expenditures and investments in store expansion while most others gluttonously spent their way into the crisis. Competitors were forced to abruptly change their course and slash spending, inventory, or restructure/file for bankruptcy. Sears was nimble enough to evade most of the fallout from the financial crisis:

In 2009, we kept expenses under control and stayed focused on our vision and strategic, operational, and financial goals. We were both prudent and opportunistic in spending money and in allocating capital at a time when many others had to make major adjustments.

Early in the year we amended and extended our revolving credit facility through June 2012. In one of the most difficult financing markets in recent memory, we found significant support from numerous financial partners led by Bank of America, Wells Fargo and General Electric, and we executed one of the largest revolving credit facilities in the past couple of years. Our substantial asset base and our strong cash flow management were important factors in this successful deal. When people take a close and objective look at our company, our strengths are not difficult to see.

Sears was not totally unscathed by the crisis though. Store closures in retail are a reality, especially during downturns:

On a less positive note, we regret the closing of roughly 60 stores in 2009. Most of those stores have underperformed for some time and, despite focused efforts to improve them, we felt that we could no longer afford to wait for those stores to turn around. With expiring leases, we have been able to reduce our money-losing stores while at the same time generating cash from the liquidation of inventory and the monetization of some of the stores that we closed. We continue to evaluate our store portfolio, over 2,200 Kmart and Sears Full Line stores combined, and experiment with new and different ways to serve our customers and avoid additional store closings. Like any retailer, we would expect that our store portfolio will require continuous evaluation and transformation as we strive to have every store contribute to the creation of future value.

In the middle of last year, I responded to an errant published story that repeated unfounded claims from a Wall Street analyst regarding the cash impact of our store closings. As I explained, in most cases, when we close stores we generate cash, net of any cash required for severance and other store closing expenses. The GAAP accounting losses arise from the markdown of inventory, write-off of fixed asset balances, associate severance and any remaining payments on leases that expire in the future. Our ability to close stores is in no way hampered by any cash requirements. Instead, our preference is to operate stores profitably and to transform unprofitable or marginally profitable stores into money makers by evolving our formats to better meet the needs of the communities in which we operate. We know that when we operate our stores well, we have the ability to serve our customers well and to make money.

What’s important to note here is the fact that Lampert looks at stores as investments. Every store requires some level of capital investment and so they need to be judged from a perspective of how much return on cash they generate. Some stores will be posting good numbers, others may post negative ones. Lampert appears to take an experimental approach to store investment, where capital expenditures vary by store and concept. By doing this, in theory, he should be able to see what works and then adopt that more widely.

The biggest problem for an investor looking at retailers is properly gauging management. Management teams sometimes become consumed by their own egos that they engage on ruinous store expansion campaigns, financed by debt, at the top of the market. We know that Lampert isn’t like that, so the key is to discern whether he is deploying capital in the right ways. Given his share buybacks into the crisis, it looks like he has been doing well. That same type of capital allocation is not happening at competitors:

While we continued to repurchase shares during the economic crisis because the value was attractive and because we had significantly lower leverage than others in our industry, many of our competitors suspended their repurchase programs to appease credit rating agencies only to resume them again after their share prices recovered significantly.

We can understand rating agency caution surrounding economic events, the retail environment, and the potential for things to get worse. In our case, it turns out that our performance far exceeded many observers’ expectations and we hope to receive credit for this performance in the form of higher credit ratings and more balanced analysis.

Rating agencies play an important role in how investors allocate capital by “qualifying” debt for certain investors. By overrating companies and securities, rating agencies can lead to systemic issues and investor losses. Similarly, by underrating companies they can lead to lower growth, less risk taking, and less job creation. Simplistic analyses, which automatically prefer capital investment to share repurchases as a use of cash that “benefits“ bondholders, ignore the fact that negative or below market returns on invested capital are as harmful to creditors as to shareholders.

When we inquire why our ratings are not higher than some competitors with credit metrics that are weaker than ours, one factor cited is that some analysts prefer their business models. Meanwhile, we have a higher market capitalization and less debt than many of these competitors. We increased our earnings, while many others have seen their earnings decline. We have a diversified business portfolio and a significant revenue base and scale. Obviously, we don’t agree with all of the critical qualitative conclusions and the quantitative metrics speak for themselves.

We do some things differently than others, and we have certain beliefs that differ from theirs. Our culture is owner-oriented, because we have owners who serve on the board that governs the company. We believe that ownership makes a difference, especially when owners have significant financial interests in the company and a long-term perspective. Instead of this raising concern, rating agencies should welcome and value owners with a demonstrated track record of long-term value creation and conservative capital policies, even when some of the capital allocation preferences differ from those that others believe lead to higher long-term credit performance.

The criticism Lampert lodges at ratings agencies is pretty valid. Ratings agencies largely do not reward sharp capital allocation skills. They will view it as a positive when a company suspends its share buyback program as its stock price crashes, even though (as we learned from John Singleton) that is precisely the best time to buy. Such behavior reinforces bad practices among executives and ultimately destroys shareholder wealth.

Lampert goes on to talk about growth strategies for Sears. He plans to expand the already successful Land’s End brand, domestically and internationally. Others include Sears’ online initiatives like the Sears My Gofer plan. One I found interesting was their plan for franchising auto centers:

Sears Holdings Corp. today announced the launch of a new strategic initiative for the Sears Automotive business. The Independent Sears Auto Center franchise program offers automobile dealers the opportunity to operate licensed Sears Auto Centers, bringing the Sears brand, buying power, distribution network, systems and corporate support to automotive aftermarket businesses. Coleman Auto Group of East Windsor, New Jersey, is the first dealership to take advantage of this opportunity and will open a Sears Auto Center in March 2010.

Sears Auto Centers Introduce Franchise Business (PR Newswire)

The franchise business is often a good one, because of the high returns on capital. It is easy to see from the numbers given:

Franchises must pay an initial fee of $30,000 for the franchise and $3,000 a month in brand license fees for the first year and $2,000 monthly thereafter. A service license fee of 2% of prior year revenue is charged after the first year, and franchisees contribute 3% of net revenue to a marketing fund to support national advertising and activities.

Several thousand auto dealerships in the U.S. have lost their franchises as auto makers have consolidated amid efforts to become profitable.

“There is a lot of very good talent in rejected Jeep, Chrysler, Dodge, Saturn, Pontiac and Saab dealers that already have the facilities in place, the manpower and years of experience to help Sears sell their products,” said Bruce Coleman, president of the Coleman Auto Group dealership in East Windsor, N.J., and a partner in what will be the first Sears Auto Center franchise.

UPDATE: Sears Begins Franchising Of Its Auto Centers (Dow Jones)

At the end of his letter, Lampert recommends Thomas Sowell’s book Intellectuals and Society, here is the Amazon description:

The influence of intellectuals is not only greater than in previous eras but also takes a very different form from that envisioned by those like Machiavelli and others who have wanted to directly influence rulers. It has not been by shaping the opinions or directing the actions of the holders of power that modern intellectuals have most influenced the course of events, but by shaping public opinion in ways that affect the actions of power holders in democratic societies, whether or not those power holders accept the general vision or the particular policies favored by intellectuals. Even government leaders with disdain or contempt for intellectuals have had to bend to the climate of opinion shaped by those intellectuals.

Intellectuals and Society not only examines the track record of intellectuals in the things they have advocated but also analyzes the incentives and constraints under which their views and visions have emerged. One of the most surprising aspects of this study is how often intellectuals have been proved not only wrong, but grossly and disastrously wrong in their prescriptions for the ills of society—and how little their views have changed in response to empirical evidence of the disasters entailed by those views.

He reflects on the government intervention in financial markets over the last year or so, questioning its logic and contrasting it with his own conservative leaning views on business and regulation. Those ideas fit in line with his book recommendation last year, The Road to Serfdom by F. A. Hayek:

An unimpeachable classic work in political philosophy, intellectual and cultural history, and economics, The Road to Serfdom has inspired and infuriated politicians, scholars, and general readers for half a century. Originally published in 1944—when Eleanor Roosevelt supported the efforts of Stalin, and Albert Einstein subscribed lock, stock, and barrel to the socialist program—The Road to Serfdom was seen as heretical for its passionate warning against the dangers of state control over the means of production. For F. A. Hayek, the collectivist idea of empowering government with increasing economic control would lead not to a utopia but to the horrors of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.

Now the question is, does Lampert’s letter change my mind on Sears? At current levels, no. The company is held by many savvy investors and has a great capital allocator at its helm, but still resides in a cutthroat sector where I’d rather look for a larger margin of safety that isn’t so dependent on its chairman. Still, I like to watch the company and study its turnaround for insights when examining the larger universe of investment opportunities.

When I saw the 13F for Fairfax Financial Holdings (TSE:FFH) come out, one of the things I wondered was when Prem Watsa would do another acquisition. With Fairfax’s success over the last few years and good financial shape, I thought the company would be poised for an acquisition. Watsa has publicly said that they are not interested in straying too far out of the insurance business when it comes to acquisitions. They don’t want to build another Berkshire Hathaway.

So, I’m pretty happy to see this acquisition of Zenith National Insurance (NYSE:ZNT). Zenith is in the workers’ compensation insurance business, which means that policies are generally long tail, meaning that payouts happen over longer periods of time. To contrast, short-tail insurance usually has payouts over shorter periods of time and more frequently. This is typical when you look at the likelihood that a person will get into an accident in their car versus an injury at the workplace.

So why is acquiring long-tail insurance operations so beneficial to a company like Fairfax? For one, Zenith is well operated. Moreover, the long-tail policies enable Fairfax to increase the size of its float — which is the amount of Zenith receives in premiums that it does not have to be paid out immediately or held in reserves. That capital is often invested in securities, in Zenith’s case mostly bonds, which could potentially be redeployed into more attractive securities by smart capital allocators like the people at Fairfax. Fairfax is not the only smart investor to have acquired workers’ compensation insurance companies, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway owns National Indemnity which has workers’ compensation operations in California.

The one stickler for the Zenith deal is the fact that Fairfax will have to issue a little equity to complete the deal but will still have about $1 billion in cash on hand after the acquisition.

Via Bloomberg:

Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd., the Canadian insurer run by Prem Watsa, agreed to buy Zenith National Insurance Corp. for about $1.3 billion in cash, adding sales in California.

Fairfax will pay $38 a share, the Toronto-based company said today in a statement. That’s 31 percent more than Woodland Hills, California-based Zenith’s $28.91 closing price on the New York Stock Exchange yesterday. The deal is expected to be completed in the second quarter.

Watsa, 59, is betting on a rebound in a workers’ compensation market pressured by rising medical costs and falling payrolls. Like Warren Buffett at Berkshire Hathaway Inc. and Loews Corp.’s Tisch family, Watsa built his company by investing the assets of insurance operations, often in out-of- favor securities.

“Workers’ compensation is probably the softest of all lines right now,” Bob Hartwig, president of the Insurance Information Institute, said at a conference in November, using industry parlance for a market where rates are falling. “Rate accounts for the vast majority of premium reduction we have seen in workers’ compensation.”

…Zenith, run by Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Stanley Zax since 1978, said in its 2009 annual report that it has “a long-term record of outperforming the industry.” Zenith’s workers’ compensation loss ratio, a measure of how much of each dollar of premium is paid in claims, was lower than the industry average every year from 2002 to 2008, according to Zenith’s annual report.

“There will be no changes in Zenith’s strategic or operating philosophy,” Watsa said in the statement.

Watsa’s Fairfax Agrees to Buy Insurer Zenith for $1.3 Billion