{"id":899,"date":"2012-05-15T17:37:54","date_gmt":"2012-05-15T15:37:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.blog.asmus-puhl.com\/?p=899"},"modified":"2012-05-15T17:37:54","modified_gmt":"2012-05-15T15:37:54","slug":"markel-in-2012-is-off-to-a-good-start","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.blog.asmus-puhl.com\/?p=899","title":{"rendered":"Markel in 2012 is off to a good start!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Markel Corp. (NYSE: MKL),  the so called \u201eMini Berkshire&#8221; <a href=\"http:\/\/finance.yahoo.com\/news\/markel-reports-first-quarter-2012-204200251.html\" target=\"_blank\">released its Q1 2012 results.<\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The <a href=\"http:\/\/seekingalpha.com\/article\/578501-markel-s-management-discusses-q1-2012-results-earnings-call-transcript?source=yahoo\" target=\"_blank\">transcript of the Conference Call you&#8217;ll find here on Seeking Alpha.<\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Markel in 2012 is \u201eoff to a good start&#8221; as CFO Anne Waleski puts it!<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Total operating revenues grew 18% to $733 million in 2012, up from $622 million in 2011. The increase is due to a 15% increase in revenues from insurance operations and a 43% increase in revenues from Markel Ventures, their non-insurance operations.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The combined ratio was 100% for 2012, compared to 112% in 2011, a significant improvement even if influenced positively by an GAAP accounting standard change.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The interesting news is certainly that the condition of the insurance market is finally improving. Markel &#8216;s  premium volume is up and there is less aggressive pricing by other insurers.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Markel&#8217;s book value\/share increased 6% to $ 373.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">On the investment side Markel is \u201ebalance sheet oriented&#8221; as President Thomas Gayner points out: \u201eWe continue to believe that interest rates are unnaturally low and given that belief we continue to choose to protect the balance sheet by maintaining our bond portfolio at a lower duration than what we would naturally like.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">On the equity side, they earned a total return of 11.5% for the quarter and they continue to steadily increase their equity investment commitment which now stands at 59% of shareholders equity, up from 54% at year-end 2011.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Markel&#8217;s stock normally trades at 1.5 &#8211; 2 times book value\/share as company executives pointed out at their traditional investor&#8217;s brunch just before the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting in Omaha, Nebraska.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Today at $ 442 it trades at only 1.2 book value\/share and the insurance market is finally improving!\u00a0 Think twice about this discount!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Markel Corp. (NYSE: MKL), the so called \u201eMini Berkshire&#8221; released its Q1 2012 results. The transcript of the Conference Call you&#8217;ll find here on Seeking Alpha. Markel in 2012 is \u201eoff to a good start&#8221; as CFO Anne Waleski puts it! Total operating revenues grew 18% to $733 million in 2012, up from $622 million [&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\/899"}],"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=899"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"http:\/\/www.blog.asmus-puhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":914,"href":"http:\/\/www.blog.asmus-puhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899\/revisions\/914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.blog.asmus-puhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.blog.asmus-puhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.blog.asmus-puhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}