Opinions
David Baskin
Fairfax Financial
FFH-T
DON'T BUY
Jun 12, 2018
Stock price when the opinion was issued
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FFH is in his Canadian dividend strategy. BRK.B is in his global strategy.
Both are insurance-driven companies that are partly holding companies. Diversified businesses. Breakup NAV (not that they'd ever be broken up) is significantly higher than current share price. And that makes both of these a buy. Both are in the lower-risk category of companies.
Doing everything right. Combined ratios are improving. P&C insurer, big exposure to reinsurance, global & NA. Serial acquirer. Great management team. Advantaged by rising property values. Extreme weather means the risk goes up, and so do the premiums. Earns a lot of investment income on its growing float. Undemanding multiple.
Good operational management long term. Stock's more than doubled in the last year and a half, and he'd have to dig to find out why. Value, instead of growth, has been in favour for the last 6 months or so. Its counterpart, BRK.B, has also done well (but not doubled).
If he finds an answer, he'll be sure to post it on social media.
Everyone was shorting it in the 2000s, and now it's one of the most favoured stocks on the TSX. Up 13% YTD. He owns it in TFSAs. Helped by global acquisitions. Combined ratio ~94%. Underwriting has improved, costs kept in line. Almost every operation it has is showing profitability.
Estimated PE for this year is about 10x, normal for insurance industry. Has hit a high, but it's one you want to own for the long term. He continues to buy for clients.
Premium contentFFH will keep chugging along under fine management, improving combined ratios and pure momentum. Bay Street is flashing buy signals and an 11% price target to $2,600. The main drawback with Fairfax is its share price, currently above $2,300. Don't expect a stock split anytime soon. However, if your pockets are deep and your horizon is long, then FFH is right for you.
A bit of a black box. Stock price has done very well the last few years, after having gone nowhere before that. Insurance at the core, and Prem Watsa's done a great job allocating those premiums. Higher rates favours insurers, lower rates the opposite, and he has no control over what the future holds.
If you own it, hold. You may want to investigate succession plans.
Prem Watsa is often described as the Warren Buffett of Canada. He is opportunistic, not afraid of taking risk. Some of his bets have not worked so well but many have. Insurance companies make money in two ways: core earnings from underwriting, and the investment returns from premiums. Warren Buffett initiated a different approach for investing insurance premiums. Rather than putting it into very safe, but low-yielding, bonds, he invested in stocks. Watsa follows this model and Fairfax has benefitted. The recent rises in interest rates are also very positive for all insurance companies because all of them still buy long-term assets. Fairfax has done nothing for investors for a long while, but he is proposing a top pick in the insurance industry today, and believes that the category has promise.