Irwin Michael, B.Com, MBAWestaim CorpWED.VTOP PICKSep 09, 2011

WED is a Canadian investment company, specializing in providing long-term capital to businesses operating primarily within the global financial services industry. WED has performed strongly this year, up 44.87% year-to-date and 50.6% over 52-weeks. Q3 results were solid with net profit at $23M, growing from a net loss in the year prior at ($16.7M). EPS beat analysts’ expectations of $0.14, coming in at $1.05. Earnings growth was driven by gains on its investment in Skyward Specialty. Revenue also beat forecasts of $21.17M, coming in at $24.8M. WED has been actively buying back shares, and so far, has acquired approximately 2.85M in common shares at a cost of $7.6M. AUM was $3.3B, slipping from $3.5B in the same period of the prior year. WED put together a solid Q3, showing resilience to economic and size risks. It is a small cap, and there is no dividend, but it is cheap and we would be OK buying it for more aggressive small cap accounts. 
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(A Top Pick June 19/17. Down 5%.) The stock hasn’t done much. It is a really interesting company. They have a property/casualty insurance business and an asset management business. Both sides are in good shape and the outlook looks really good. If we get a hard insurance market, the returns on that side of the business will be quite good. On the asset management side, they’ve done a good job of growing their AUM. This is going to be a long-term position for him.

A bit of an under the radar company. They have two profitable and growing businesses. FFH-T just invested in them. They will have a large amount of cash to make acquisitions with. He would not be surprised if they split the two companies once they get big enough. (Analysts’ target: $4.50).

Hasn’t checked this one out recently. This is just the stub that is left after the disposition of insurance assets. This stub was then down listed on to the Venture exchange. It is kind of empty except for a bit of cash which is probably equal to or better than the trading price. Have very interesting major shareholders.

(A Top Pick Jan 27/12. Up 22.22%.)

Sold their holdings of Jevco Insurance and will eventually be trading on the Venture exchange. His question is “why would they bother, having sold off the operation, to list the stub on the Venture unless they were going to try to pump some new operation into it”. If they do this, you’ll see a couple of pennies rise again.

(Top Pick Sept. 9/11, Up 54.00%)