Fairfax Africa

[petec]

Notable that just cash and treasuries here, less all liabilities (there are virtually none), is about $2.30 per share.

At $2.90 you're paying 60c for some genuinely attractive assets in UBN, Nova Pioneer, ABC Botswana, maybe bits of CIG and AFGRI. And if they can deploy some cash in this selloff...

[elliott]

Notable that just cash and treasuries here, less all liabilities (there are virtually none), is about $2.30 per share.

At $2.90 you're paying 60c for some genuinely attractive assets in UBN, Nova Pioneer, ABC Botswana, maybe bits of CIG and AFGRI. And if they can deploy some cash in this selloff...

I would be cautious looking at cash.
its certainly possible (they said this yesterday) that some of the businesses need more cash to survive in the next months/years, and that Fairfax will provide it. so, the question comes back again to whether you think those businesses will be profitable one day, thus the extra cash well invested, or whether they will not, and thus Fairfax is just falling into the sink hole phallacy.

[elliott]

oh, regarding new acquisitions, consider that now travel is very difficult in many parts of Africa.
management said that acquisition work is certainly affected by the covid19 situation.

[petec]

Cash - yes - but it is still a lot.

Travel - yes -  but plenty of potential investments are listed and don't require cash.

They said they were hoping to have news on CIG and ATMA soon. I wondered if they are thinking of taking them private.

[petec]

Pure speculation, but if FAH consolidates ATMA at any point, and ATMA consolidates UBN, the P/BV and P/E metrics here get transformed overnight.

[Thrifty3000]

I love that the performance fee doesn’t kick in again until book value exceeds $11.69 per share. 🤣

[Thrifty3000]

Notable that just cash and treasuries here, less all liabilities (there are virtually none), is about $2.30 per share.

At $2.90 you're paying 60c for some genuinely attractive assets in UBN, Nova Pioneer, ABC Botswana, maybe bits of CIG and AFGRI. And if they can deploy some cash in this selloff...

I would be cautious looking at cash.
its certainly possible (they said this yesterday) that some of the businesses need more cash to survive in the next months/years, and that Fairfax will provide it. so, the question comes back again to whether you think those businesses will be profitable one day, thus the extra cash well invested, or whether they will not, and thus Fairfax is just falling into the sink hole phallacy.

They have restrictions limiting the amount they can invest in a single opportunity to no more than 25% of the portfolio. And, only 2 holdings are allowed to consume up to 25%. After those 2 the limit is 20% for the rest. I'm not sure whether that's good or bad. In a way it protects investors from overallocation, but it also restricts capacity to bail out troubled investees.

[hobbit]

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/atlas-mara-limited-announces-proposed-062000984.html

[Thrifty3000]

https://www.fairfaxafrica.ca/News/Press-Releases/Press-Release-Details/2020/Fairfax-Africa-Enters-Into-Automatic-Share-Purchase-Plan-and-Announces-Intention-to-Make-Normal-Course-Issuer-Bid-for-Subordinate-Voting-Shares/default.aspx

Looks like they're going to continue buying up 25% of the daily trading volume.

They repurchased 1,476,096 shares on the open market in the last 12 months for an average price of $6.18.

[peripatetic]

Painful yet amusing summary of FAH's former crown jewel: https://brucepackard.com/remorseless/