{"id":459,"date":"2010-02-15T18:17:56","date_gmt":"2010-02-15T16:17:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.blog.asmus-puhl.com\/?p=459"},"modified":"2010-02-15T18:19:42","modified_gmt":"2010-02-15T16:19:42","slug":"markel-corp-increases-book-value-to-an-all-time-high-in-fy-2009","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.blog.asmus-puhl.com\/?p=459","title":{"rendered":"Markel Corp. increases book value to an all time high in FY 2009!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0cm;\"><!-- \t \t --><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Last week Markel Corporation (NYSE: MKL), one of the two companies this blog follows intensely, reported its earnings of FY and Q4 2009.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">As we all know, 2009 was a challenging year:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">With the American economy still in recession mode, the insurance market was crowded and very price competitive.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">But Markel is a very disciplined insurance company: they try to serve well their clients but their primary goal always remains profitability!<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">In this challenging environment Markel was able to increase book value \/ share to an astonishing all time high of $282.55 !<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The combined ratio fell from 99% in FY 2008 to 95%, another sign of strength of this well managed company.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The compounded average growth rate of their equity investment return of the last five years was 11%!<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Not bad in these difficult times, isn&#8217;t it?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Last Friday the stock traded at $ 342.95 . This translates into a price\/book ratio of 1.2<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Seems rather cheap historically: in the past Markel normally traded at a price\/book ratio of 2.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Do your own due diligence but perhaps it&#8217;s a good idea to snap up some shares: Markel is widely seen as the &#8220;next Berkshire Hathaway&#8221;!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week Markel Corporation (NYSE: MKL), one of the two companies this blog follows intensely, reported its earnings of FY and Q4 2009. As we all know, 2009 was a challenging year: With the American economy still in recession mode, the insurance market was crowded and very price competitive. But Markel is a very disciplined [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[23,22,15],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.blog.asmus-puhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459"}],"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=459"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"http:\/\/www.blog.asmus-puhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":475,"href":"http:\/\/www.blog.asmus-puhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459\/revisions\/475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.blog.asmus-puhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.blog.asmus-puhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.blog.asmus-puhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}