3 points from Markel’s conference call
After having read the Conference Call transcript I just want to highlight 3 points here:
1. – Markel Ventures
Markel’s total year-to-date operating revenues grew 14% to $3 billion in 2012 from $2.6 billion in 2011. The increase is due to 9% increase in revenues from their insurance operations and a remarkable 54% increase in revenue from the non-insurance operations, which they call Markel Ventures.
In 2012, year-to-date revenue for Markel Ventures were $489 million compared to $318 million in 2011. Year-to-date net income for shareholders from Markel Ventures was $13.5 million in 2012 as compared to $7.7 million in 2011
These strong numbers reflect the rapidly growing importance of their non-insurance operations „Markel Ventures”!
… Watch out: Mini-Berkshire at work!
2. – The Alterra deal:
They just gave some information about the next steps:
The shareholders’ votes are scheduled for February 26th.
They are in the process of obtaining regulatory approvals and they believe that this transaction could close as early as April 2013.
3. – Markel’s long term strategy once again plays out in their investment results:
As in 2012 „the total investment return of the portfolio was 9% whereas 19.6% the equity investment and 5.1% on their fixed income portfolio”, this is only an example of their long term strategy:
Over the last 23 years, they have earned nearly 200 basis points of excess return per year compared to the S&P 500 Index on the equity investments and they earned more than 350 basis points of excess return from their equities compared to the Barclay’s Aggregate Fixed Income Index.
Markel’s share price yesterday closed at $ 488.69 which translates into a price/book ratio of just 1.2 !
You should consider to join insiders buying shares at this rather cheap price!