{"id":1785,"date":"2016-05-06T15:08:40","date_gmt":"2016-05-06T13:08:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.blog.asmus-puhl.com\/?p=1785"},"modified":"2016-05-06T15:08:40","modified_gmt":"2016-05-06T13:08:40","slug":"markel-is-off-to-a-strong-start-in-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.blog.asmus-puhl.com\/?p=1785","title":{"rendered":"Markel is off to a strong start in 2016!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Markel Corp. (NYSE: MKL) <a href=\"http:\/\/finance.yahoo.com\/news\/markel-reports-first-quarter-2016-211200070.html\" target=\"_blank\">released its Q1 2016 earnings<\/a> and is &#8220;off to a strong start&#8221; as pointed out Executive Chairman Alan I. Kirshner.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Book value per common share outstanding came in at $589.86 at March 31, 2016, up 5% from $561.23 at December 31, 2015.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Comprehensive income to shareholders was $397.0 million for the first quarter of 2016 up 41% compared to $281.8 million for the first quarter of 2015.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The combined ratio was 88% for the first quarter of 2016 slightly up compared to 83% for the first quarter of 2015, due to a\u00a05 points less favorable development in the prior accident year loss ratio in 2016 compared to 2015.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The <a href=\"http:\/\/finance.yahoo.com\/news\/edited-transcript-mkl-earnings-conference-180740905.html\" target=\"_blank\">transcript of the conference call has been published by Thompson Reuters.<\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">&#8220;Our first quarter results were very strong and are in many ways a continuation of the trend that we saw in 2015 with our investing, underwriting, and Markel Ventures operations all contributing to our success&#8221; pointed out CFO Anne Waleski on the call.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Total operating revenues grew 6% to just under $1.4 billion in 2016 from $1.3 billion in 2015. The increase is driven by a roughly 18% increase in revenue from Markel Ventures.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">&#8220;On the investment side, Markel earned 3.6% on the equity investments and 2.4% on the fixed income holdings with a total return from the portfolio of 3.1%&#8221;, explained CIO Tom Gayner.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Equities represented 52% of shareholders&#8217; equity at the end of the first quarter.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">No wonder that investors liked what they saw and Markel&#8217;s stock briefly jumped up to $950.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">At yesterday&#8217;s close of $937 Markel&#8217;s stock is valued at a book value\/share of 1.6 which can be considered as fairly valued.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">But Markel&#8217;s stock is a buy at any weakness considering their strong ability to create shareholder value powered by &#8220;three engines&#8221;, the insurance operations, the investment activities, and Markel Ventures!<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Markel Corp. (NYSE: MKL) released its Q1 2016 earnings and is &#8220;off to a strong start&#8221; as pointed out Executive Chairman Alan I. Kirshner. Book value per common share outstanding came in at $589.86 at March 31, 2016, up 5% from $561.23 at December 31, 2015. Comprehensive income to shareholders was $397.0 million for the [&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\/1785"}],"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=1785"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"http:\/\/www.blog.asmus-puhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1785\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1802,"href":"http:\/\/www.blog.asmus-puhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1785\/revisions\/1802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.blog.asmus-puhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.blog.asmus-puhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.blog.asmus-puhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}