{"id":1096,"date":"2013-01-21T15:15:57","date_gmt":"2013-01-21T13:15:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.blog.asmus-puhl.com\/?p=1096"},"modified":"2013-01-21T15:15:57","modified_gmt":"2013-01-21T13:15:57","slug":"markel-is-a-buy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.blog.asmus-puhl.com\/?p=1096","title":{"rendered":"Markel is a &#8220;buy&#8221;!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Markel&#8217;s stock (NYSE: MKL) is already rebouncing after its negative reaction to the announced Markel-Alterra merger!<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">When Markel announced its merger plans late December (see post below including a link to the press release) the market reaction was surprisingly negative and the 17% year-to-date performance of Markel&#8217;s stock has been erased in a few days down to a mere 2012 performance of 4.5%<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">But have a look at the stock in January 2013: It is already gaining lost ground and finished at $463.03 last Friday, already up 6.8% this year.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Certainly the merger plan is not without risks, but Markel pays only a slight premium to Alterra&#8217;s book value and in addition they pay the purchase price with their own cheap stock.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">We think there is reason for optimism:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Both insurance companies are working with consistent underwriting profits, synergies of the merger should be meaningful and CIO Thomas Gayner will invest Alterra&#8217;s cash with better returns then they did until now.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Markel&#8217;s stock is selling for a p\/book value of 1.2 &#8211; no question, this is a \u201ebuy&#8221;!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Markel&#8217;s stock (NYSE: MKL) is already rebouncing after its negative reaction to the announced Markel-Alterra merger! When Markel announced its merger plans late December (see post below including a link to the press release) the market reaction was surprisingly negative and the 17% year-to-date performance of Markel&#8217;s stock has been erased in a few days [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.blog.asmus-puhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1096"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.blog.asmus-puhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.blog.asmus-puhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.blog.asmus-puhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.blog.asmus-puhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1096"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.blog.asmus-puhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1096\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1100,"href":"http:\/\/www.blog.asmus-puhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1096\/revisions\/1100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.blog.asmus-puhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.blog.asmus-puhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.blog.asmus-puhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}