A reader, the Great Sandesh, alerted me to this. By the way, I am not a fan of Prof. Greenwald’s book, Value Investing — From Graham to Buffett and Beyond written by Bruce C.N. Greenwald, Judd Kahn, Paul D. Sonkin and Michael van Biema. But I do highly recommend his book, Competition Demystified, to learn strategic analysis.
Whitman discusses the book in his 2001 TAVF Shareholder Letter
http://www.thirdavenuefunds.com/ta/documents/reports/aboutus-reports-01Q4.pdf
There seems to be a general misunderstanding about wealth creation companies in the financial community and in academic circles. First, there is scant recognition of the fact that outside of Wall Street, where one deals with privately owned businesses, the vast majority of economic endeavor involves striving to create wealth in the most tax effective manner. Where control persons have choices, they would rather create wealth by some means other than having ordinary income from operations simply because striving for cash flows or earnings from operations tends to be highly inefficient tax-wise.
Second, in their new book, Value Investing — From Graham to Buffett and Beyond written by Bruce C.N. Greenwald, Judd Kahn, Paul D. Sonkin and Michael van Biema (Greenwald and van Biema are faculty members at Columbia Business School), the authors seem to have trouble identifying, and valuing, net assets. They state, “in the contemporary investment world net-nets are, only with the rarest exceptions, a distant memory.” In fact, though, each of the nine wealth-creation common stocks Third Avenue acquired during the quarter is a net-net by any economic, non-accounting convention, definition of net-nets.
Greenwald, et al define net-nets only by looking at accounting convention, not economic reality. They define net-nets as a common stock available at a price that represents a discount from a company’s current assets after deducting all book liabilities, both short-term and long-term. The problem with this measurement is that for going concerns, much of their current assets are not current assets at all, but rather fixed assets of the most dubious value. For example, Sears Roebuck, like any other retailer, could not stay in business if it did not maintain inventories continually, which in Sears’ case have a carrying value of over $5 billion. In the aggregate, these inventories are a fixed asset for the going concern, not a current asset. Individual inventory items do turn to cash within 12 months and thus are, for accounting purposes, called current assets. In fact, though, Sears’ aggregate $5 billion investment in inventory is a permanent investment, particularly vulnerable to seasonal mark-downs, theft, obsolescence and mislocations.
Contrast this with Forest City’s developed real estate projects. While Forest City’s developed real estate is called a fixed asset, a substantial portion of these assets is really quite current, a source of almost immediate cash through sale or refinancing, without interfering with Forest City as a going-concern. Forest City Common is a true net-net. The same is true for other wealth creation common stocks acquired during the quarter at substantial discounts from readily ascertainable net asset values; — including the probable real estate values in Alexander & Baldwin and Catellus; the probable securities values in Brascan (including real estate), Phoenix Companies, MONY and Toyota Industries; and the probable values of Assets Under Management (AUM) for BKF and Legg Mason.
VALUE INVESTING AT THIRD AVENUE
The back of the Greenwald book describes the investment approaches of a number of highly competent value investors:
— Warren Buffett; Mario Gabelli; Glen Greenberg; Robert H. Heilbrum; Seth Klarman; Michael Price; Walter and Edwin Schloss and Paul D. Sonkin. It’s a worthwhile read. Third Avenue, in its practices, seems to have much in common with these investors. The front of the Greenwald book, though, describes underlying theories about value investing.
These theories seem to have nothing to do with the basic assumptions under which Third Avenue operates. Contrasting the Third Avenue approach with the Greenwald approach ought to be helpful in getting investors to understand the Third Avenue modus operandi.
A major difference between the Greenwald approach and the Third Avenue approach revolves around valuing a company and valuing a security. Greenwald, et al state, “There is general agreement that the value of a company is the sum of the cash flows it will produce for investors over the life of the company, discounted back to the present.” The Greenwald approach is far too general to be useful for Third Avenue. For TAVF, there exist four factors which contribute to corporate value and three factors which determine the theoretical value of a security.
The four elements of corporate value:
1. Free cash flow from operations available for the security holder: Very few companies ever actually achieve such free cash flows on a reasonably regular basis. While for any individual project to make sense it has to return a cash positive net profit over its life, this is not true for most companies (as distinct from stand-alone projects), especially expanding companies. Most businesses consume cash. TAVF likes to invest in the common stocks of those few companies in a position to create cash flows on a regular basis. The principal area where this takes place in the Fund’s portfolio is in money management companies: — BKF, John Nuveen, Liberty Financial and Legg Mason.
2. Earnings: Most prosperous going concerns create earnings, not free cash flows. Earnings exist where a company creates intrinsic wealth from operations while consuming cash. Since most going concerns consume cash, their earnings streams may be of limited value unless such flows are also combined with access to capital markets, either credit markets or equity markets or both. TAVF, in acquiring the common stocks of earnings companies, limits its acquisitions to businesses with exceptionally strong financial positions. This means, most of time, that the companies have far less need to have access to capital markets during any given period than run-of-the mill, less well capitalized, going concerns. More importantly, though, the companies whose issues the Fund acquires have rather complete control over the timing as to when they want to access debt markets or equity markets. Capital markets are notoriously capricious in terms of both pricing and availability. TAVF tries to avoid investing in the common stocks of less well capitalized companies, in part because such issuers frequently are forced to raise outside capital at the most disadvantageous times. Well-capitalized earnings companies whose common stocks were acquired by TAVF during the quarter include Energizer, Trammell Crow, American Power, Applied Materials, AVX, Credence, Electro Scientific, KEMET, MBIA, Nabors, and Vishay.
Most Wall Streeters and most academics, including Greenwald, et al, subscribe to a primacy of the income account point of view and believe that the dominant, and sometimes even the sole, sources of corporate value are flows from operations: — both cash flows and earnings flows. At TAVF, we have a balanced approach. Indeed, we think more corporate wealth is created in the U.S. by the two factors discussed below than by flows, even though frequently there tends to be a close, symbiotic relationship between flows, whether cash or earnings, on the one hand; and asset values and access to capital markets on the other.
3. Resource conversion activities encompass repositioning assets to higher uses, other ownership or control, or all three; the financing of asset acquisitions, the refinancing of liabilities or both; and the creation of tax advantages. These activities take the form of mergers and acquisitions, contests for control, leveraged buyouts, restructuring troubled companies, spin-offs, liquidations, massive securities repurchases, and acquiring securities in bulk through cash tender offers or exchange offers. Within the Third Avenue portfolio, it appears as if some 3% to 5% of the common stocks held are subject to takeover bids of some sort by control investors every quarter. Common stock issues acquired during the quarter which may very well be involved in getting taken over in the years ahead include Energizer, Phoenix, Alexander & Baldwin, BKF, Catellus and MONY, albeit Fund management has never been really good at identifying which companies will be “in play” at any given time in the future.
4. Access to capital markets at super-attractive prices: There seems little question that far more corporate wealth has been created in this country by taking advantage of attractive access to outside capital than by any other single source. The Greenwald book, and indeed virtually all economic literature, ignores this factor as a source of wealth, or a source of franchise. Unfortunately, as a passive value investor, the Fund does not often get to benefit from super-crazy prices that exist in equity markets from time to time. To benefit from these super-crazy prices as a price conscious value investor, TAVF would have to become a venture capital investor seeking IPO bailouts; something that seems to be outside Fund management’s sphere of competence. Fortunately though, many of the companies in whose common stocks Third Avenue has invested have super attractive access to credit markets where they are able to obtain low interest, long-term, non-recourse financing for major portions of the projects which they build, or in which they invest. Companies whose common stocks the Fund invested in during the quarter, with such attractive access to capital markets, include Alexander & Baldwin, Brascan, Catellus and Forest City.
The language used by all academics, including Greenwald, et al, that securities values are a function of the present worth of “cash flows” is unfortunate. From the point of view of any security holder, that holder is seeking a “cash bailout”, not a “cash flow”. One really cannot understand securities’ values unless one is also aware of the three sources of cash bailouts.
A security (with the minor exception of hybrids such as convertibles) has to represent either a promise by the issuer to pay a holder cash, sooner or later; or ownership. A legally enforceable promise to pay is a credit instrument. Ownership is mostly represented by common stock.
There are three sources from which a security holder can get a cash bailout. The first mostly involves holding performing loans; the second and third mostly involve owners as well as holders of distressed credits.
1. Payments by the company in the form of interest or dividends, repayment of principal (or share repurchases), or payment of a premium. Insofar as TAVF seeks income exclusively, it restricts its investments to corporate AAA’s, or U.S. Treasuries and other U.S. government guaranteed debt issues.
2. Sale to a market. There are myriad markets, not just the New York Stock Exchange or NASDAQ. There are takeover markets, Merger and Acquisition (“M&A”) markets, Leveraged Buyout (“LBO”) markets and reorganization of distressed companies markets. Historically, most of TAVF’s exits from investments have been to these other markets, especially LBO, takeover and M&A markets.
3. Control. TAVF is an outside passive minority investor that does not seek control of companies, even though we try to be highly influential in the reorganization process when dealing with the credit instruments of troubled companies.
It is likely that a majority of funds involved in value investing are in the hands of control investors such as Warren Buffett at Berkshire Hathaway, the various LBO firms and many venture capitalists. Unlike TAVF, many control investors do not need a market-out because they obtain cash bailouts, at least in part, from home office charges, tax treaties, salaries, fees and perks.
I am continually amazed by how little appreciation there is by government authorities in both the U.S. and Japan that non-control ownership of securities which do not pay cash dividends is of little or no value to an owner unless that owner obtains opportunities to sell to a market. Indeed, I have been convinced for many years now that Japan will be unable to solve the problem of bad loans held by banks unless a substantial portion of these loans are converted to ownership, and the banks are given opportunities for cash bailouts by sales of these ownership positions to a market.
Greenwald, et al have a monolithic approach to analysis using three tools to analyze all companies — replacement cost of assets, earnings power, and franchise value. TAVF, on the other hand, analyzes different businesses differently, ranging from analyzing strict going concerns by giving heavy weight to earnings power, as for example AVX or Nabors; to analyzing businesses which are really investment companies masquerading as something else. Here, heavy weight is assigned to readily measurable asset values as well as an appraisal of managements’ abilities to increase these net asset values over the long-term. Catellus, Forest City, Hutchison Whampoa, Investor AB, and Toyota Industries are examples of such situations.
Greenwald, et al, like almost all academics, consciously or unconsciously, look at companies as substantively consolidated with shareholders. This tends to be a non-productive approach almost all the time. At the Fund, companies are analyzed as stand-alones or parent-subsidiary. The common stock for TAVF is a different constituency from the company, or its management — separate and apart.
Most academics pay much attention to an artificial calculation: — the Weighted Average Cost of Capital (“WACC”). WACC measures the cost of outside capital to a company as a blend of after-tax interest rates and capitalization values for common stocks based on references to current common stock prices in public markets. Interest is, of course, a cash cost, while capitalization rates for publicly traded common stocks have nothing to do with most companies since they do the bulk of their equity financing by retaining earnings rather than by selling new issues of common stock to the public. More importantly, though, WACC is not very meaningful for companies who have rather complete control of the timing as to when, or if, to access capital markets. Such companies will access outside sources of capital at the time WACC type pricing is most attractive to them. These are the companies in whose common stocks TAVF invests. A contemporaneous calculation of WACC for these companies tends to be not meaningful.
Greenwald, et al discuss risk in general but do admit that relative price volatility in the securities market may not be an adequate measure of risk. For TAVF, the word risk cannot be used without putting an adjective in front of it. There is no general risk. There is market risk, investment risk, currency risk, terrorism risk, inflation risk, failure to match maturities risk, commodity risk, etc. The Fund tries to avoid investment risk; i.e., that the companies in whose securities we have invested will suffer permanent impairments. The Fund ignores market risk; i.e. that the trading prices of the securities held will fluctuate.
Greenwald, et al assume, quite properly, that an overpriced common stock will attract new competition. Greenwald, et al, however, ignore something that may be much more important. An overpriced common stock, in the hands of a reasonably competent management, is frequently a most important corporate asset. Much of the small-cap high-tech investments of the Fund are in companies which were able to build up huge cash positions by taking advantage of the crazy prices that existed in IPO markets in the late 1990’s.
—
I suggest readers heed Mr. Whitman’s comments since he is a practitioner rather than an academic. Also, his comments make sense.
Readers Discuss charlie479
Thanks to contributions from two readers, Chai and “TC”, who analyzed charlie479–the author of these case studies:http://wp.me/p1PgpH-cg, http://wp.me/p1PgpH-dc and http://wp.me/p1PgpH-cT we can learn what they gained from the cases.
Please excuse the light editing. Chai says,
Three key distinct lessons stand out. First, the key to long-term wealth creation is to invest in compounders i.e., stocks that can grow profitably and preferably with high pricing power and operating leverage and hold on as long as possible. Time would do the compounding magic. While investing in short-term oriented special situations may give you a return uplift you will still face capital reinvestment risk to find another good investment for redeployment of capital.
Secondly, great performance results come from investing in compounders at a valuation as low as possible. Compounders are rare but not cheap, true compounders are even rarer. This means you have to be willing to look at ugly situations (e.g., European stocks now?) or try to identify and recognize the sources of competitive advantage of the companies before anyone else (sometimes maybe even before the management themselves recognize the potential).
Thirdly, it’s crucial to always go to primary sources: 10k, Merger Proxy etc. and not to rely on secondary sources media to gain true informational advantage.
Questions
Separately while I am still trying to catch up on the material on Value Vault and your site, a few questions while reading this interview came out are:
(1) How concentrated should a portfolio be i.e., how should you size your portfolio? I know ultimately it would have to be dependent on your risk appetite / temperament (and perhaps if you are a fund manager, your investors expectation) etc. but would be keen to learn your perspective on this. If you use a 5-stock or 10 stocks approach, how do you rank various investment opportunities to take into consideration of non-quantitative consideration such as business quality aside from pure risk-reward /upside-downside ratio?
My reply: Prof. Greenblatt uses the example of the man who inherits $1 million and he has to invest it within 50 miles of where he lives. He wouldn’t put $1,000 in 1,000 businesses. He would walk around looking to put $100,000 to $200,000 in 5 to 10 businesses–the best businesses at the lowest prices he could find. If you can find great businesses at attractive prices then 6 to 8 positions diversify out 83% to 88% of the market specific risk. If you have only 6 positions then each position is 16.67% of your portfolio. If you get the following results over two years:
$16.67
$0.00
$16.67
$5.00
$16.67
$8.00
$16.67
$25.00
$16.67
$34.00
$16.67
$66.68
$100.02
$138.68
$136.89
Most could not stomach the volatility in each stock but overall the portfolio does well. You really have to be unlucky/bad to get a goose egg or lose more than 50%, but your winners are what drive the returns. Buying these compounders that can redeploy capital at high rates is nirvana, but exceedingly difficult and rare to do.
All investing involves context. But you have to choose a philosophy and method that fits you. And you also must know the nuances with the approach. Charlie479 is buying companies that can compound their capital by both being very profitable and by redeploying their capital at high rates. Since these are difficult to find and buy he owns few of them and holds them to allow the compounding to work. For example, I believe Morningstar (Morn) is one example, but the price is too high for my understanding. But I do want to invest as much as possible in these—even no more than 4 or 5 if they have all the signs of a good investment.
But if I was buying net/nets then I might own 5 to 10 companies in a sector—playing a numbers game. If I am buying stable franchises I might by 20 to 25 names because I have no edge other than price. Also, I have to be quick to sell if the price closes my estimate of intrinsic value because then my return is only the return on equity over time. I am taking a long record of stability as my benchmark rather than my edge in understanding of how long the company can maintain its competitive advantage. I assume the company will hold onto it while I am an owner (the odds favor the strong) but I will be wrong occasionally, of course, as franchises (Nokia, Newspapers, radio) get breached or destroyed.
(2) The issue of price vs. business risk. What should one do when share price drops by 25%, 50% of 75%? What if you re-examine the investment thesis and the business risk seems to stay intact, do you double up your stake – given it’s a better bargain now? Do you sell out- perhaps partially as prudent measure just in case your analysis is wrong? Or to stay put?
Reply: All answers rely on context. Are you right or wrong? If you are wrong then you go down with the ship. What specific areas do you have to understand to know that you are wrong? Certain businesses are much riskier operationally then others (selling steel vs. soap). If the assets are solid and the company has no debt and the reason the price is dropping is due to mismanagement (earnings power value below asset value) and you know a strong activist value fund taking a large position, then perhaps you can double up. But, again, what are your choices? Perhaps while this is happening there are even better opportunities elsewhere? Or the tax loss is a good asset to have against an equivalent gain in another new position. There are so many variables, a precise answer is impossible.
Charlie Munger would tell you, “The importance of knowing what you know and don’t know. There is a lot of wisdom in this remark from Eitan Wertheimer: “I had a big lesson from Warren: the use of the word discipline…We learned very quickly that our most important asset is our limitations… the second thing we understand is that when we respect our limitations we don’t suffer from them anymore.”
(3) Cash portion of portfolio. What shall be the cash % a portfolio should have? I see that both charlie479 and Seth Klarman routinely set aside 25 – 30% cash. I would have thought instead of letting the cash sitting idle, it could be better deployed by upsizing into existing positions given these positions are well researched?
Cash allows them future optionality. Also, they allow for being wrong. You never know. Cash can build up because you sell one position or part of it and you can’t redeploy the capital at the prior discount to intrinsic value thus you wait until an opportunity arises and you don’t do anything stupid with cash burning a hole in your pocket.
I will ask Confucius, Buffett and Dwight Schrute (the Office) to help with your question.
In no particular order of wisdom:
I wish I could give you easy rules to follow, but investing is an art more than a science and the biggest part of your investing success is YOU. Spend time thinking about your inherent flaws as well as the next 10-K.
“TC” comments on the charlie479 interview
Prior to even being interested in the stock market, charlie479 developed two excellent traits for successful investing – he was confident in his ability to solve problems, and he questioned conventional wisdom.
Charlie learned early on that investing in high quality, undervalued equities and allowing them to compound over many years was far superior (both in terms of excess return and the required effort) to the analysis and investing he was doing in his day job).
Charlie resonated with Buffet’s twenty punches philosophy. He realized (separately) that finding high quality companies at low valuations did not occur often, and portfolio concentration allowed him to take full advantage of his best ideas while acting a filter on those that did not make the cut. Buffet’s quote was reassuring to him, that yes, taking a 25% position in your best idea does not make you crazy, it makes you intelligent!
Charlie focuses much of his effort on the qualitative side of his analysis – knowing the industry well and a deep dive on the competitive advantages and their sustainability at the company level. I get the impression he would first identify a high quality company by its quantitative factors – high ROIC relative to peers, high margins, etc. but would then thoroughly explore the qualitative causes of this advantage. A critical component of his best ideas was that they could reinvest their cash flows and earn similar high levels of return on large amounts of capital – i.e., a long and wide runway.
What I learned:
It is nice to see someone investing successfully with a model of extreme concentration. Buffet and Greenblatt preach it, but Charlie proves once again it can be done.
In my opinion, the best part of a concentrated portfolio is that, with fewer investment decisions, I can devote more time to finding more ideas, or doing non-investment related things. A common complaint I hear from fellow investors is they don’t have enough time to find good ideas. Portfolio concentration fixes this problem.
I love his analogy of investors jumping from fire to fire, trying to determine if the stock is worthy of investment, while he seems to do his preparation well ahead of making a buying decision. This sounds like what people do who are following the 52-week low list. Right out of Buffet’s playbook, he follows many high quality companies on a regular basis and reads 10-ks consistently – two of his investment examples showed this (7-10 years of following I believe). I can picture him thumbing through a 10-k asking himself “is the competitive advantage still present? Does the company still have a long runway for reinvestment?”
If Charlie is able to find these type of companies at low prices, it means the market does not always see the true competitive advantages underlying a company – even if you can know their presence from a quantitative standpoint. Having an absolute understanding of a company’s competitive advantages is an edge over the market, and the confidence to load up when the price is right.
I hope you found my report satisfactory!
My reply: Yes, excellent insights and thanks for sharing your thoughts. You noticed charlie’s inquisitive, skeptical mind and his disciplined habit to read original documents like 10-ks not broker reports. Also, this investor thinks deeply about what creates and sustains an excellent business. Well done.
I will post a few more case studies of charlie479 as good examples of an investment thesis.
5 Comments
Posted in Competitive Analysis
Tagged charlie479, Readers comments, wisdom