{"id":1985,"date":"2018-02-10T17:11:43","date_gmt":"2018-02-10T15:11:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.blog.asmus-puhl.com\/?p=1985"},"modified":"2018-02-10T17:11:43","modified_gmt":"2018-02-10T15:11:43","slug":"markel-finishes-2017-in-excellent-shape","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.blog.asmus-puhl.com\/?p=1985","title":{"rendered":"Markel finishes 2017 in excellent shape!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Markel Corp. (NYSE:MKL) released <a href=\"https:\/\/finance.yahoo.com\/news\/markel-reports-2017-financial-results-214500286.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">FY and Q4 2017 earnings <\/a>demonstrating that the\u00a0speciality insurer\u00a0finished FY 2017 in excellent shape!<\/p>\n<p>Book value per share the most important ratio in the insurance business rose 12.7% from $606.30 at year-end 2016 to $683.55 as of Dec 31, 2017.<\/p>\n<p>The combined ratio in the 4th quarter was 95% improving rapidly from the 134% in Q3 2017 due to the losses from the hurricanes.<\/p>\n<p>The equity portfolio of Markel in 2017 contributed to the success in a remarkable way:<\/p>\n<p>The portfolio climbed 25.5% outperforming the S&amp;P500 not only this year but already for 3 decades.<\/p>\n<p>Good news also came from Markel Ventures :<\/p>\n<p>Operating revenue climbed 29.5% to $400 million in 2017, already including Markel&#8217;s majority stake acquisition in Costa Farms in August and net income jumped to $65.2 million from $6.7 million in the 4th quarter 2016.<\/p>\n<p>In the 4th quarter Markel also completed the acquisition of property and casualty insurance services company State National, which adds a premier fronting platform and collateral protection coverages to their insurance operations.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>At yesterday&#8217;s closing price of $1084.97 Markel&#8217;s stock is valued at a price\/book ratio of 1.6<\/p>\n<p>Not cheap but certainly a buy at any dips in this volatile market.<\/p>\n<p>And do not forget that insurances and banks in general will once again be able to earn interest income when rates are continuing to climb.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Markel Corp. (NYSE:MKL) released FY and Q4 2017 earnings demonstrating that the\u00a0speciality insurer\u00a0finished FY 2017 in excellent shape! Book value per share the most important ratio in the insurance business rose 12.7% from $606.30 at year-end 2016 to $683.55 as of Dec 31, 2017. The combined ratio in the 4th quarter was 95% improving rapidly [&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\/1985"}],"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=1985"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.blog.asmus-puhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1985\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1990,"href":"http:\/\/www.blog.asmus-puhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1985\/revisions\/1990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.blog.asmus-puhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.blog.asmus-puhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.blog.asmus-puhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}