{"id":1112,"date":"2013-02-06T12:56:56","date_gmt":"2013-02-06T10:56:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.blog.asmus-puhl.com\/?p=1112"},"modified":"2013-02-06T12:56:56","modified_gmt":"2013-02-06T10:56:56","slug":"3-points-from-markels-conference-call","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.blog.asmus-puhl.com\/?p=1112","title":{"rendered":"3 points from Markel&#8217;s conference call"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">After having read the <a href=\"http:\/\/seekingalpha.com\/article\/1158131-markel-corporation-s-ceo-discusses-q4-2012-results-earnings-call-transcript?source=yahoo\" target=\"_blank\">Conference Call transcript <\/a>I just want to highlight 3 points here:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong><em>1. &#8211; Markel Ventures<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Markel&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">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<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">These strong numbers reflect the rapidly growing importance of their non-insurance operations \u201eMarkel Ventures&#8221;!<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">&#8230; Watch out: Mini-Berkshire at work!<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong><em>2. &#8211; The Alterra deal:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">They just gave some information about the next steps:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The shareholders&#8217; votes are scheduled for February 26th.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">They are in the process of obtaining regulatory approvals and they believe that this transaction could close as early as April 2013.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong><em>3. &#8211; Markel&#8217;s long term strategy once again plays out in their investment results:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">As in 2012 \u201ethe total investment return of the portfolio was 9% whereas 19.6% the equity investment and 5.1% on their fixed income portfolio&#8221;, this is only an example of their long term strategy:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Over the last 23 years, they have earned nearly 200 basis points of excess return per year compared to the S&amp;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&#8217;s Aggregate Fixed Income Index.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Markel&#8217;s share price yesterday closed at $ 488.69 which translates into a price\/book ratio of just 1.2 !<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">You should consider to join insiders buying shares at this rather cheap price!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After having read the Conference Call transcript I just want to highlight 3 points here: 1. &#8211; Markel Ventures Markel&#8217;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 [&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\/1112"}],"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=1112"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.blog.asmus-puhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1121,"href":"http:\/\/www.blog.asmus-puhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1112\/revisions\/1121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.blog.asmus-puhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.blog.asmus-puhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.blog.asmus-puhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}