This is a ChatGPT-free Zone
Alleghany (Y) announced earnings earlier this week; BPS is up +9.4% in the first six months to $451.65/share. The stock is trading at $417.70/share so is trading at around 0.92x BPS. The stock market is down 1.5% since then, so maybe less of a discount now. But it does look cheap. Interestingly, book value was…
OK, so I mentioned this book in my last post: Creativity, Inc: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration. This is written by Ed Catmull, one of the founders of Pixar. It’s always great to read something written by such an amazing person about an incredible business they…
This is going to be a wandering post, just thinking out loud about a few things that have been on my mind. I’ve been posting about “outsider” CEO’s and now about 3G Capital. They of course have a lot in common, but one thing is that these acquisitive CEO’s cut costs, and sometimes a lot….
So it’s been about a year since BRK and 3G Capital acquired Heinz (HNZ). This is old news to most of you as the 10-Q for the first quarter was posted more than a month ago. It is pretty amazing to read and you will see how incredible the 3G folks really are. To find…
OK, now that’s a silly idea. Coke (KO) is one of the most respected companies and known to be very well managed. It is an excellent company for sure. One great thing about running a blog is that I can just think out loud here and sometimes someone pulls on a thread and gets…
This morning KO’s stock price popped up on a comment by David Winters that Buffett and 3G are planning to take KO private. He said that there are indications that something is going on, including press reports in Brazil regarding something related to 3G, KO and Buffett. Now, I don’t want to speculate on mergers…
Many people seem to be worried that the market is a little toppy. This is kind of strange because the market is basically flat and hasn’t done anything. But OK, the market was up 30% last year so if you include that (and the whole rally since the 2009 low) the market has come up…
As we all hold our breath for the Alibaba IPO filing (OK, or maybe not. I am actually looking forward to it even though I have no intention of buying any shares), here’s a look at another S-1 filed by Ares Management (ARES) recently. (As I was finishing this up, it turns out that the…
So the JPMorgan Chase (JPM) annual report is out. After the Berkshire Hathaway report, this is my favorite read of the year. I say “annual report”, but I actually just mean “letter to shareholders”. Anyway, here are some comments as usual. This is not meant to be a comprehensive summary or anything close to that;…
So David Winters is upset about the “biggest transfer of wealth from shareholders to management” in history. According to Winters Coke’s (KO) new 2014 Equity Plan may cause 14.2% dilution to shareholders over the next four years. His calculation is that there are 4.4 billion shares outstanding so 14.2% of that is 625 million shares,…