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.

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)

My friend Miguel Barbosa of Simoleon Sense has an interview with Schroeder and it’s worth a read, especially for people who are interested in insurance. Also, Schroeder is featured in The Confidence Game which details Bill Ackman’s short selling campaign against MBIA.

Miguel: This reminds me of James Grant indicating a great way to make a name is to follow unpopular paths and recommend shorts.

Alice: In a normal market, it is tough to be the naysayer, but the past few years have been a heyday for shortsellers. With so much hedged money, there’s also far more demand for diverse opinions today. In general, though, the human race is biased towards the positive. You have to be optimistic to go through life.

There’s also some interesting research that shows that people who speak out critically are viewed as smarter than those who give only uncritical applause, even though they are less liked. In the long run, the price of popularity is paid in respect.

Miguel: Two things I wanted to go back to; first your experience as a regulator and how this taught you how games are played; and second, you mention the importance of being skeptical. Is this an inborn trait or can analysts, investors, and others develop this trait (if so how)?

Alice: We may have a natural bent one way or another, but it is very strongly shaped by experience. As just one small example, when I worked on the E&Y transition team, it was fascinating to see first-hand the amount of friction, wasted time, and lost energy that inevitably occurs in a merger integration. And this was quite a successful merger. So you can imagine how skeptical the experience made me of projected “acquisition synergies” in deals I later covered or took part in on Wall Street.

My experience in regulation was also immensely useful in this respect. It exposed me to dozens of people lobbying for an outcome. This is a side of human behavior that we see much less often as an analyst or investor. Try as they might, people aren’t putting their best foot forward when they’re lobbying you; they’re putting their greedy foot forward. Also – and I have never said this before in an interview — being in the presence of a blonde has an interesting effect on some people. It can get tedious to be underestimated, but has its advantages. Certainly, it raises one’s skepticism.

The Forging Of A Skeptic- From Accountant To Buffett’s Voice On Wall Street

I thought the bit about getting exposed to regulation was really interesting. I feel as if investors who come from a regulatory background have a good edge for analyzing financial stocks. Todd Combs, Buffett’s latest hire has that kind of a background and he has done quite well for himself.

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

(Flickr:IzaD)

Recently, Ben Stein had a chance to interview Warren Buffett and got his thoughts on gold:

My first question, as I sit there on the couch in his office, is: “What about gold? Is this a classic bubble or what?”

“Look,” he says, with his usual confident laugh. “You could take all the gold that’s ever been mined, and it would fill a cube 67 feet in each direction. For what that’s worth at current gold prices, you could buy all — not some — all of the farmland in the United States. Plus, you could buy 10 Exxon Mobils, plus have $1 trillion of walking-around money. Or you could have a big cube of metal. Which would you take? Which is going to produce more value?”

Okay, so gold is not a screaming buy to Buffett. What should a typical upper-middle-class person in the U.S. buy to prepare for retirement?

“Equities,” Buffett answers without a moment’s hesitation.

Warren Buffett: Forget gold, buy stocks (Fortune)

My problem with gold is that I think an investment in it requires you to accurately gauge the anxieties and fears of the investors who are buying it. I don’t think I have any talent for doing that. I’ve read a bit on George Soros because his theory of reflexivity seems applicable to playing gold — and Soros has indeed said he intends to keep buying gold, but it’s not a concept I’ve mastered. Maybe mere mortals like us can’t master it. He goes into his theory of reflexivity in detail with his book The Alchemy of Finance which I’ve read. While I wouldn’t make an investment decision with his theory, I can see why it works for him.

But, I think the dollar is facing real problems. So finding investments that will protect your purchasing power makes sense.

A lot of people complain that gold is not a productive asset and that’s true. Owning gold is not like owning a business, it probably wont make you rich. I think that beyond supply and demand issues, an investment in gold is really an act of speculation. Gold investors tend to have these specific fears about the economy and see gold as this one commodity that keeps on rising. Inevitably, they must expect that when the time comes they’ll sell to another person at a higher price. That’s momentum investing and it’s a pretty tough game.

However, for some people buying might make sense. A friend, upon hearing what Buffett said that even though all the world’s gold would fill a cube 67 feet in each direction, with its high density it can easily be formed in coins. Plus, with its high value-to-weight ratio, gold can be easily moved. Now contrast that with owning an oil company. You can’t move an oil field and even if you own it, countries can come in and nationalize it or take away your permits. The same goes for farmland. I think it’s for these reasons that gold has remained a store value for so long, even if productively, it’s not very useful.

If you are ultra-wealthy and worth $100M, putting $1M-$5M in gold might make sense as some kind of disaster insurance. If things get really bad, you might be able to flee the country and use your gold holdings to start a new life. From an asset allocation stand point it might make sense. At the same time though, I wonder. If things got so bad that you needed to flee the US, maybe you would be better off investing in guns, ammo, survival training, and canned food.

So would I ever buy gold? Probably not. While I do think the US will face some difficulties such as an elevated level of inflation going forward, I have a hard time wrapping my head around the idea that we’ll be in such bad shape that fleeing the country will be the only option. I’ve seen investors such as Seth Klarman use gold as a disaster hedge without actually owning it. Instead, he used out of the money options which inexpensively gave him exposure to sharp movements in its price. I’m a fan of cheap insurance like that.

I respect the macro though and lately have devoted most of my time recently to finding special situations and event driven value investments. These tend to be more market neutral and have defined catalysts in place, making them easy to test. Right now, to me, that’s a much more appealing strategy than simply buying and holding.

OMAHA (AP) — Berkshire Hathaway partly rebuilt the stake in Johnson & Johnson it had reduced in the last two years to raise cash for other investments, and increased its investment in Wal-Mart Stores in the second quarter.

Berkshire, the holding company run by Warren E. Buffett, detailed its $46.4 billion stock holdings Monday in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The document revealed several changes in the company’s portfolio from March 31 to June 30, including decreases in Kraft Foods, ConocoPhillips, Procter & Gamble and M&T Bank. Berkshire also increased its stakes in Becton Dickinson & Company, the Nalco Holding Company and Sanofi-Aventis. The biggest change was in its Johnson & Johnson stake, which grew to 41.3 million shares at the end of June, from 23.9 million shares in March. In 2008 and 2009, Mr. Buffett sold some of its stock in the company to help pay for other investments.

Berkshire held 64.3 million shares of Johnson & Johnson at the end of 2007.

Buffett Filing Shows Details of Holdings (AP)

Over the last few quarters I saw Buffett reducing his exposure to JNJ. I figured this was because he needed to raise his cash balance in his portfolio due to the preferred share deals he struck during the crisis and the Burlington Northern Santa Fe acquisition.

With most of that over, I think he is rebuilding his JNJ stake for a few reasons. One, JNJ is large enough to provide the kind of liquidity that is necessary for Buffett to increase his stake without distorting the stock price. Two, JNJ pays a heavy dividend yield that creates cash flow for Buffett to redeploy elsewhere. It’s much better than cash or most of his fixed income options. Finally, JNJ has the kind of long term prospects that Buffett likes in a business. They make products that people will need for a long time. This is a company that managed to survive even the Great Depression. There aren’t a whole lot of companies still around that can boast that fact. That does not mean JNJ or any other large cap blue chip is impervious to sharp market draw downs. Typically, these stocks will fall just like everything else. Sometimes the fall is a little less pronounced because capital flees riskier stocks and enters into some of these more defensive names.

On the credit side of things, JNJ seems to be doing well. The company just placed 10 year bonds at historically low rates:

Johnson & Johnson sold $1.1 billion of bonds at the lowest interest rates on record for 10-year and 30-year securities amid surging investor demand for the highest- rated corporate debt.

The drugmaker, in the first offering by a nonfinancial AAA rated company in 15 months, sold $550 million of 2.95 percent, 10-year notes and the same amount of 4.5 percent, 30-year bonds, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That’s the lowest coupons for those maturities on record, according to Citigroup Inc. data going back to 1981.

“Even though some faith in the rating agencies has been blown, the triple-A is still sacred,” said Guy LeBas, chief fixed-income strategist and economist at Janney Montgomery Scott LLC in Philadelphia.

…In J&J’s most recent debt sale, it sold $900 million of 5.15 percent, 10-year notes that paid 103 basis points more than similar-maturity Treasuries and $700 million of 5.85 percent, 30-year bonds at a 113 basis-point spread in June 2008, Bloomberg data show.

J&J Sells $1.1 Billion Of Debt At Record-Low Rates (Bloomberg)

So why might JNJ be undervalued? I think that with all the analyst attention JNJ garners, a sort of short term mindset comes into play. JNJ had a few recalls which reduced sales and in turn forced analysts to lower their estimates. I see these as short term problems, the company has dealt with product recalls in the past. If the company can prove that they can resume their sales growth or simply boost their dividend, I could see the stock begin to trade back up towards its highs from the last few years.

In the first post, I speculated as to whether Li might emerge as one of the Berkshire CIO candidates:

This past weekend was the Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK.A / BRK.B) annual shareholder meeting. At one point during the Q&A, a questioner asked Warren Buffett about the status of Berkshire’s CIO candidates. Charlie Munger remarked that one candidate who he is particular close with was up 200% in 2009 with 0 leverage. Some people think that the person Munger is referring to is Li Lu, a fund manager who turned Munger and Buffett onto BYD.

Li personally owns at least 2% of BYD, which rose 400% in 2009. I don’t know anything about his investments beyond that one position, but I know he is a huge believer in taking concentrated, high conviction positions. If that is the case here, BYD’s spectacular results must have contributed a lot to his returns for 2009 which may make a 200% for the year possible.

Li Lu: Berkshire Hathaway CIO Candidate? (Street Capitalist)

(From left to right: David Sokol of MidAmerican, Warren Buffett, Wang Chuan-Fu of BYD and Li Lu. Photo: David Yellen)

Today, Susan Pulliam has a great article in the WSJ which sheds light on Li Lu, speculating that he might be a CIO candidate. Pulliam managed to interview Charlie Munger and get some of his thoughts on Li Lu:

One of Mr. Li’s human-rights contacts was Jane Olson, the wife of Ronald Olson, a Berkshire director and early partner at a Los Angeles law firm Mr. Munger helped found. Mr. Li began spending time at the Olsons’ weekend home in Santa Barbara, Calif., and on Thanksgiving 2003 met Mr. Munger, whose home is nearby.

Mr. Munger says Mr. Li made an immediate impression. The two shared a “suspicion of reported earnings of finance companies,” Mr. Munger says. “We don’t like the bull—.”

Mr. Munger gave Mr. Li some of his family’s nest egg to invest to open a “value” fund betting on beaten-down stocks.

Two weeks later, Mr. Li says he met again with Mr. Munger to make certain he had heard right. In early 2004, Mr. Li opened a fund, putting in $4 million of his own money and raising an additional $50 million from other investors. Mr. Munger’s family put in $50 million, followed by another $38 million. Part of Mr. Li’s agreement with Mr. Munger was that the fund would be closed to new investors.

Chinese Investor Emerges as Possible Buffett Successor (WSJ)

The company that got people talking about Li Lu, as a potential successor to Buffett is BYD. Most people thought it was strange that Buffett would be investing in an automaker, based out of China of all places. But, I think that one of the allures for early investors in BYD was the fact that it is known as one of the best manufacturers of batteries in the world. Wang Chuan-Fu, BYD’s founder and CEO had to work hard to build his company with limited access to capital and technology. As a result, he fostered a corporate culture that thrived on thriftiness and ingenuity. That’s the kind of corporate culture Berkshire likes to invest in. Pulliam gives us details on Li Lu’s timing on BYD:

Mr. Li’s big hit began in 2002 when he first invested in BYD, then a fledgling Chinese battery company. Its founder came from humble beginnings and started the company in 1995 with $300,000 of borrowed money.

Mr. Li made an initial investment in BYD soon after its initial public offering on the Hong Kong stock exchange. (BYD trades in the U.S. on the Pink Sheets and was recently quoted at $6.90 a share.)

When he opened the fund, he loaded up again on BYD shares, eventually investing a significant share of the $150 million fund with Mr. Munger in BYD, which already was growing quickly and had bought a bankrupt Chinese automaker. “He bought a little early and more later when the stock fell, which is his nature,” Mr. Munger says.

In 2008, Mr. Munger persuaded Mr. Sokol to investigate BYD for Berkshire as well. Mr. Sokol went to China and when he returned, he and Mr. Munger convinced Mr. Buffett to load up on BYD. In September, Berkshire invested $230 million in BYD for a 10% stake in the company.

BYD’s business has been on fire. It now has close to one-third of the global market for lithium-ion batteries, used in cell phones. Its bigger plans involve the electric and hybrid-vehicle business.

One of the interesting aspects of having Li as a CIO candidate is that because of his international focus, particularly on China, he might be able to find the next great wave of global businesses. In his 2010 lecture, Li talks about analyzing BYD by looking at the early history of GM:

Q: I read that when you look at an industry, you look at the most miserable failures of that industry to see whether you will invest in it. Can you talk a bit about that?

Li Lu: It goes back to understanding the business. Once you have that understanding you can extend it to understanding an industry. A certain industry might have characteristics that make it different than others. In certain industries you might have better prospects than others. Find the best of the players in the industry and the worst players. And see how they perform over time. And if the worst players perform reasonably well relative to the great players — that tells you something about the characteristics about the industry. That is not always the case but it is often the case. Certain industries are better than others.

So if you can understand a business inside out you can then eventually extend that to understanding an industry. If you can get that insight, it is enormously beneficial. If you can then concentrate that on a business with superior economics in an industry with superior economics with good management and you get them at the right price — the chances are that you can stay for a very long time.

Q: Did you have any specific example?

Li Lu: I have studied many over the years. As I have said, don’t copy other people’s insights because it doesn’t work. Automobiles are amazing. If you look at the early days it started with several players and concentrated with just a few players that became enormously profitable. Then they became miserable. You then see how the life cycle turns with new automakers in China and India. Everything has a reason. If you want a good idea — look at General Motors from the early days, look every 5 years and see how the performance metrics change. The Graham and Dodd Center should collect all the data and perform some kind of commentary on it…

If you have that data, the amount of insight that would yield would be astonishing. So instead of just accepting the conventional wisdom that the auto business is bad — that is just not true. Or if you say well those guys just unbelievable money machines — that is not true either. So if you can really examine those statistics and understand it that will give you an advantage for analyzing new situations like in China and India. That is really what turns me on. Understanding this gives you a tremendous leg up.

This to me, is one of the advantages in having a CIO candidate that is focused on international opportunities. As nations like China and India develop, they’re bound to naturally mimic the development of Western countries in certain ways. They might actually start to have great businesses that arise out of necessity, “repeating” what’s gone on in America. This is particularly true in areas such as logistics and transportation which become more and more essential as countries develop. In a few years there might be domestic versions of FedEx or Sysco in China and India — if there aren’t already.

Just how much did Li and Buffett make off of BYD?

BYD is a big roll of the dice for Mr. Li. He is an informal adviser to the company and owns about 2.5% of the company.

Mr. Li’s fund’s $40 million investment in BYD is now worth about $400 million. Berkshire’s $230 million investment in 2008 now is worth about $1.5 billion. Messrs. Buffett, Munger, Sokol, Li and Microsoft founder and Berkshire Director Bill Gates plan to visit China and BYD in September.

Pulliam ends the article with Li’s analogy between investing and soccer:

Mr. Li declined to name his fund’s other holdings. Despite this year’s losses, the $600 million fund is up 338% since its late 2004 launch, an annualized return of around 30%, compared to less than 1% for the S&P 500 index.

Mr. Li told investors he took a lesson from watching the World Cup, comparing his investment style to soccer. “You may very well work extremely hard and seldom score,” he says. “But occasionally—very occasionally—you get one or two great chances and you make decisive strikes that really matter.”

Li’s approach to investing is really similar to Buffett’s own advice to wait for the market to give you fat pitches. I think most investors mess up by lacking that kind of patience.

In environments where there aren’t a whole lot of bargains, some value investors will begin to relax their standards in order to participate more in the market’s rallies. This almost always ends in disaster. If you are not disciplined with value investing you can get yourself into tight spots. It’s a strategy that often encourages taking high conviction, concentrated approaches to investing. An investor without discipline might end up with a portfolio of only 8 stocks at really expensive valuations. When the bubble bursts, their portfolio will take a massive hit and usually perform worse than the market indices because of that level concentration.

In his 2010 lecture, Li emphasized the need to know what you don’t know when investing. That might sound a bit like a riddle, but it’s really about acknowledging that you can’t know everything and there are going to be risks that you cannot anticipate. If you accept that idea, you’re always going to be looking for businesses with strong competitive advantages and seek to buy at a discount to intrinsic value. That way you have some protection against those unknown risks. With that intellectual framework and a willingness to employ rigorous analysis, you should be able to identify good investments and profit immensely.

Warren would tell you, playing bridge is like running a business. It’s about hunting, chasing, nuance, deception, reward, danger, cooperation and, on a good day, victory.

Bring Bridge Back to the Table (NYTimes)

Here is an excerpt from Thorp’s paper:

“Bridge players know that bridge is what mathematicians call a game of imperfect information. The bidding, which precedes the play of the cards, conveys information about the four concealed hands held by the two pairs of players that are opposing each other. Once play begins, players use information from the bidding and from the cards as they are played to deduce who holds the remaining as yet unseen cards. The stock market also is a game of imperfect information and even resembles bridge in that they
both have their deceptions and swindles. Like bridge, you do better in the market if you get more information, sooner, and put it to better use. It’s no surprise then that Buffett, arguably the greatest investor in history, is a bridge addict.”

The full paper is below:

Bridge With Buffet

You don’t really get popular by being bullish on large cap stocks – most people actually look down upon it, especially as a value investor. We are supposed to find these hidden gems that nobody knows about. Everybody and their mother knows about Johnson and Johnson. Still, it and a number of other large caps are trading at valuations that are really attractive right now.

Value investing can go either two ways:

1. Buy an undervalued stock with some kind of catalyst and sell once it reaches your target price.

That approach is much more akin to Benjamin Graham and Warren Buffett from his partnership days.

2. Find a great business with excellent growth potential that is trading at an absurdly low price.

This is the approach Warren Buffett honed in his later years.

To me, either approach works. And for my own portfolio, if I can crank out an annualized return of around 15% over an extended period of time, I’ll be pretty happy. The way I look at undervalued large caps is you can sometimes find them trading at levels that are low enough to make it so your potential for capital loss is minimal. Worst case – you lose nothing. Best case – you have bought into a large cap that still has great overseas growth prospects and a healthy dividend. An investment like that can enable you to buy and hold for years.

So what are some names that have been interesting to me?

Johnson and Johnson

AR’s comment about treasury yields versus the yield on Johnson and Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) reminded me of a chart I saw over at Value Investors Club:

I have updated the original chart to compare the past data with JNJ’s current price and the price it hit during the bottom of the financial crisis. As you can see, the company looks amazingly undervalued — especially when compared to the past. Whenever its forward earnings yield and dividend hit levels like this, it is usually an amazing opportunity for investors.

JNJ is getting some heat right now about a recall from their consumer products division, but the company has a history of being around since the Great Depression. With a minuscule amount of net debt ($6B) and almost $20B in EBITDA, the company is at a really sweet spot. Margins are still healthy at above 25% and a return on equity of around 27.5%.

Yes, sales did decrease for 2009, but it was also during a crisis period described as the worst since the Great Depression. In the longer term, I think there are demographic trends that make the company appealing. With our population expected to grow older, JNJ products should be more in demand. In addition, a substantial amount of revenues come from abroad which means that there will be tailwinds for growth outside of the US.

Walmart

Another one I’ve been looking at is Walmart (NYSE:WMT). A while back after hearing Warren Buffett recommend it, I read Sam Walton’s biography Made in America which details how he started Walmart. I came away for a much higher regard for the company, particularly after learning about their humble beginnings. It is truly amazing that Walmart has been able to grow from its humble beginnings as a rural discount retailer to a global corporation. Along the way, they still have not forgotten their ethos of making sure they bring customers the lowest prices.

Some investors have been skeptical about Walmart, especially after the recent decision to let the Chinese yuan rise. Since Walmart sources most of its goods from Chinese manufacturers, a rising yuan will eat into Walmart’s bottom line as they convert from dollars. Since Walmart buys such a massive amount of goods from China, this could impact margins. I think that this is possible, but I am not too worried.

The fact is, capital is mobile and the folks at Walmart are bright enough to realize that if one country becomes too expensive, they can move elsewhere. That kind of mobility is going to pressure the Chinese to keep their currency down because if they don’t, the prices may hurt their exporters. So far, China does not quite have the kind of domestic demand that is necessary to offset a major reduction in American consumption of their goods.

Walmart has a lot going for it. It is by far, the lowest cost distributor and retailer of basic goods. Part of this comes from its amazing supply chain/distribution system. Walmart was one of the first retailers to figure out that a company-wide computerized inventory system would allow them to stock exactly what people want, when they want them. This translates into better inventory turnover numbers.

Vinod Palika has a report on Walmart (PDF) with plenty of data points that show Walmart’s strength relative to peers. In 2001 Walmart inventory was 51 days, in 2010 it decreased to 40 days. For comparison, at Target inventory was at 58 days in 2001 and is now 56 days in 2010. Walmart’s economies of scale help maintain margins. Take advertising, in 2010 Walmart’s ad budget was only 0.6% of sales, comparatively Target spends 2.15% of sales on their ad budget. The best part? Even though Walmart spends less as a percent, they are still spending more overall – $2.4B versus $1.4B. That means Walmart can outspend Target but keep its margins in tact.

Walmart initially had some hurdles breaking into overseas markets, but so far they have corrected that and if you look you can see some impressive growth there. I think for a business as huge as Walmart, which generates large benefits from its size (bargaining power with suppliers) the company should at least get a forward P/E multiple that is greater than 11x. A 15x multiple on 2011′s EPS would result in a share price of about $66 compared to $49 today.

Kraft

If you study Warren Buffett, you’ll see that some of his best investments occur at a time before a business is about to embark on an upward trend in margin expansion. Basically, what he does is find great businesses that are down in the dumps.

When Roberto Goizueta came to Coca-Cola, the business lagged behind Pepsi. Goizueta applied his background as a chemical engineer to the company, in order to standardize certain processes and add efficiency to the Coca-Cola’s operations. These actions reduced expenses. Then, he he culled low return on invested capital operating units from the business to boost overall profitability. These actions dramatically increased margins and magnified shareholder value: Coca-Cola’s market capitalization increased from $4.3B in 1981 to $152B in 1997. To learn more about how Goizueta did it, be sure to read I’d Like the World to Buy a Coke, his biography.

You might be wondering why I am mentioning Coca-Cola when I’m supposed to be talking about Kraft (NYSE:KFT). Back when Irene Rosenfeld announced the merger with Cadbury, Pershing Square’s Bill Ackman released a report which detailed the potential for margin expansion at Kraft:

Ackman’s thesis appears sound. A merger between Kraft and Cadbury, means there is less competition in the marketplace and the combined company may have the ability to raise prices. That might help increase EBIT margins in 2011 to Ackman’s projected 15%. Plus, I think you really cannot ignore the gains in Kraft’s supply chains that will come from this deal. Most people underestimate just how difficult it is to get consumer goods to shops in developing nations where there might be no paved roads. It’s the kind of investment that takes years to refine, but will pay dividends in the future as we increasingly rely on the developing world for growth.

With leading consumer brands from chocolates to macaroni and cheese, combined with 25% of revenues from developing markets (more than any other North American peer) Ackman’s 15x 2012 EPS ($2.70) multiple appears possible. Ackman provides an upper range of 17x 2012 EPS ($2.90). That gives us a share valuation of $41 to $49 versus today’s $28.30. Plus, you get a 4% dividend.

Kraft is obviously not going to have the same kind of dramatic growth that you saw from Coca-Cola during Goizueta’s time as CEO, but it is an illustrative example of how changes in the business can increase its valuation.

Anheuser-Busch InBev

Another interesting large cap that looks undervalued is Anheuser-Busch InBev (NYSE:BUD). The company, formed by the merger of Anheuser-Busch and Brazil’s InBev looks like another case where through a merger there is a potential for substantial cost savings. Anheuser-Busch is a powerhouse in the beer market. The merger effectively created the largest brewer by market cap, at $77.4B. The company boasts 200 different brands, 13 of which have over $1B in sales. Moreover, BUD occupies the #1 or #2 rank in 25 of its top 31 markets.

BUD trades at basically a 9.6% FCF yield which is great given its side. Free cash flow is expected to increase over the next two years, as Anheuser-Busch InBev is able to reduce costs as the two companies integrate. In contrast, Diageo, a market leader in the beer and spirits area has a FCF yield of 6.2% — even though it is less than half ABInBev’s size. I could see BUD trading at about a 6% yield which would be about $77 per share, 60% higher than today’s prices.

So far BUD seems to be making the right inroads in trying to break into the Chinese market. I think that beer and spirits companies are increasingly going to look at Asia for growth. It wont be an overnight process and so if there is some lag between that Asia growth and US sales growth, you might see some pessimism. One thing I particularly like about BUD is because of its size, it should be able to have better margins because of its size. As in the Walmart case, BUD looks poised to spend more on advertising than its peers at a lower percent of sales. This company should be a bargain as long as the management at BUD are willing to take FCF and use it intelligently by paying down debt and pursuing buybacks.

For anyone interested in learning more about the industry, I suggest checking out Beer Wars, a documentary about the beer business. It contrasts small craft breweries with the majors like Budweiser and Molson Coors. You get to learn a lot about how the major breweries have been able to take advantage of our fragmented legal structure to erect huge barriers to entry in the beer business.

Killing a Large Cap

I’ve outlined short reasons why I would be bullish on these companies. The question you have to ask is why these great companies are trading at such low prices. I think there are a few factors. More broadly, into and during the financial crisis, money poured into these stocks as they were seen as safe havens. Some held up and others only had slight price declines relative to the market. When things started to turn, money exited and went into the stocks that got clobbered. So there might be less money in some of these large cap blue chip stocks than others.

Secondly, when you start hearing worries about global growth some of these stocks get affected. Many of them are large enough to provide the liquidity necessary to allow large macro funds to exit in and out. So they might be more susceptible to day-to-day volatility than smaller, less noticed stocks.

Then there is sell side pessimism. Large cap stocks are particularly vulnerable to sell side pessimism. They tend to attract the masses who sell whenever they hear an analyst downgrade a company. Most sell side calls are for the medium term, so whenever there there is some temporary panic the sell side erupts. Such reports tend to discount the longer term potential earnings power behind some of these businesses.

During the financial crisis some analysts claimed people would stop drinking Coca-Cola because of the deteriorating economic situation. Or with Kraft, some analysts feared that private labels made by supermarkets would undercut Kraft’s products. But, the fact is, you can make a bear case for almost any investment. Most people I know kept chugging cans of Coke, even during the March 2009 bottom. People still ate Kraft Mac ‘n Cheese. But none of these companies are a perfect hedge, they almost all hit 52 week lows during the crisis. At the same time, their longer term prospects were much better than the broader market. If you are willing to wait years I’d expect these companies to do quite well. They should at least be able to preserve your capital — especially at the P/Es we see today. That is a critical factor you need to look for in equities given the concerns about inflation.

More Depth

Now, I’ve outlined reasons for why some of the above companies look undervalued and have sustainable competitive advantages. That’s not enough to warrant an investment though — more research needs to be done. Over the next coming weeks I plan to look at a few of them in more depth in terms of analyzing financials and putting together models. If I get some indication of what company readers would be interested in (either by comments or e-mail) I’ll start there first. They can even be large caps not explored in this post. I’ve also started looking at: MasterCard (NYSE:MA) – at 17x EPS for basically an oligopoly, it looks really appealing, Monsanto (NYSE:MON) – their seeds and pesticides are going to be needed by the rest of the world’s farmers, and even some foreign telecoms.

For those of you happy to do your own reading, one of the neat things I noticed is certain big companies have very generous annual report policies. I was able to get 5 years worth of 10Ks mailed to me within a couple days from JNJ and McDonalds.

Some people fret about whether or not they can get an edge when looking at companies that are so large. I think with these blue chip companies, you’re edge is going to come from your discipline. Being willing to ignore downgrade calls and buy when most people are selling. If you can do that, you might be able to own part of a growing business at a price that is low enough to provide you with a satisfactory margin of safety.