A short addendum to the article with three factors that might suggest Markel has additional value:
1) Markel's "10-5-1" initiative represents a goal of having $10 billion of annual premiums within five years at a 90% or better combined ratio, which would result in $1 billion of annual underwriting profits. If realized, this is substantial…
A short addendum to the article with three factors that might suggest Markel has additional value:
1) Markel's "10-5-1" initiative represents a goal of having $10 billion of annual premiums within five years at a 90% or better combined ratio, which would result in $1 billion of annual underwriting profits. If realized, this is substantially more than the $200 million of underwriting profits that I suggested might be "normalized".
2) Markel's 23% stake in Hagerty is worth ~$784 million as of the April 14 quote for Hagerty, but the stake in Hagerty is carried at $257 million on Markel's books because it is accounted for by the equity method, not marked to market with the stock quote. The incremental ~$527 million does not appear anywhere on Markel's balance sheet.
3) I did not assign explicit value to the ILS business, which Markel has made a heavy bet on. There have been issues in this business and I am unsure of its long-term earnings power.
I am not sure that Warren Buffett would assign much value to projections of future underwriting profit or be influenced too much by the Hagerty and ILS items, but I could be wrong.
I view Markel as a very solidly run business that would be a good fit for Berkshire but the economics are challenging to say the least!
A short addendum to the article with three factors that might suggest Markel has additional value:
1) Markel's "10-5-1" initiative represents a goal of having $10 billion of annual premiums within five years at a 90% or better combined ratio, which would result in $1 billion of annual underwriting profits. If realized, this is substantially more than the $200 million of underwriting profits that I suggested might be "normalized".
2) Markel's 23% stake in Hagerty is worth ~$784 million as of the April 14 quote for Hagerty, but the stake in Hagerty is carried at $257 million on Markel's books because it is accounted for by the equity method, not marked to market with the stock quote. The incremental ~$527 million does not appear anywhere on Markel's balance sheet.
3) I did not assign explicit value to the ILS business, which Markel has made a heavy bet on. There have been issues in this business and I am unsure of its long-term earnings power.
I am not sure that Warren Buffett would assign much value to projections of future underwriting profit or be influenced too much by the Hagerty and ILS items, but I could be wrong.
I view Markel as a very solidly run business that would be a good fit for Berkshire but the economics are challenging to say the least!