{"id":801,"date":"2011-11-11T15:45:11","date_gmt":"2011-11-11T13:45:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.blog.asmus-puhl.com\/?p=801"},"modified":"2011-11-11T15:45:11","modified_gmt":"2011-11-11T13:45:11","slug":"why-not-grab-some-shares-of-markel-top-quality-at-a-low-price","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.blog.asmus-puhl.com\/?p=801","title":{"rendered":"Why not grab some shares of Markel? Top quality at a low price!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Markel Corporation (NYSE: MKL), a high quality insurance company many people compare to Berkshire Hathaway, <a href=\"http:\/\/phx.corporate-ir.net\/phoenix.zhtml?c=104364&amp;p=irol-irhome\" target=\"_blank\">released its Q3 and 9 months 2011 earnings these days.<\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">They reported net earnings of $ 5.48 \/share, lower than the $ 6.48 they earned same quarter last year.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The combined ratio jumped to 100% from 93% in Q3 2010 due to higher losses related to natural catastrophes and due to 2 programs \u201enow in run-off that were exposed to losses associated with the adverse conditions in the residential mortgage market&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Book value per outstanding common share increased only 2% from $ 326.36 to $ 333.11 this year.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">But gross written premium volume was just under $ 1.8 billion, up 16% for the 9 months compared to last year.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/seekingalpha.com\/article\/306273-markel-corporation-ceo-discusses-q3-2011-results-earnings-call-transcript?source=yahoo\" target=\"_blank\">The Earnings Call Transcript you can find here on Seeking Alpha.<\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Their investment results were impacted by the market conditions we all know but they managed to reach an overall investment return of their portfolio of 2.8 % so far this year.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">As Markel becomes more and more a diversified holding company and is build for long term return we have to keep an eye not only on their public investment portfolio but also on \u201eMarkel Ventures&#8221;, where they acquire control interest in non-publically traded companies:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Through the first nine-months, other revenues at Markel, which are largely those of the Markel venture company, were $260 million versus 125 million in the prior year, an increase of more than 100% as Chief Investment Officer Tom Gayner explained on the Earnings Call.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Markel&#8217;s stock yesterday closed at $ 389.85<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">It trades at a book value \/ share of just 1.2 which historically is a very low valuation for this top quality company.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">So why not grab some shares ?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Markel Corporation (NYSE: MKL), a high quality insurance company many people compare to Berkshire Hathaway, released its Q3 and 9 months 2011 earnings these days. They reported net earnings of $ 5.48 \/share, lower than the $ 6.48 they earned same quarter last year. The combined ratio jumped to 100% from 93% in Q3 2010 [&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":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.blog.asmus-puhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801"}],"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=801"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"http:\/\/www.blog.asmus-puhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":816,"href":"http:\/\/www.blog.asmus-puhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801\/revisions\/816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.blog.asmus-puhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.blog.asmus-puhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.blog.asmus-puhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}