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2014 Berkshire Hathaway Acquisitions You Didn’t Hear About

(BRK.A), (BRK.B)

2014 was a busy year for Berkshire Hathaway, with over $5 billion in acquisitions both directly by Berkshire Hathaway and through its companies. I’m sure you heard about the purchase of Procter & Gamble’s Duracell battery division, but did you know that other acquisitions made Berkshire the leader in beverage dispensing, and got Berkshire into automobile retailing for the first time? Here is a list of some of the other lesser-known acquisitions. Did you miss any of them?

Marmon Retail & End User Technologies Acquires Cornelius, Inc.
Date: January 2014
What it is: Cornelius, Inc. is the world’s leading supplier of beverage dispensing and cooling equipment. They manufacture and market a broad line of beverage dispense solutions for soft drink, beer, ice, juice, tea, and frozen as well as a complete line of accessories.

Berkshire Hathaway Specialty Insurance Acquires MyAssist, Inc. from Noel Group
Date: January 2014
What it is: MyAssist is a technology-driven, cloud-based personal assistance solution that leverages advanced technologies to give customers a customized, personal experience. MyAssist provides Mercedes-Benz and Ford with live-agent personal-assistance and telematics service using “location-aware technology” from Verizon Communications Inc.

MiTek Acquires Ellis & Watts Global Industries
Date: April 2014
What it is: Ellis & Watts is the recognized leader in the engineering, design, and fabrication of highly customized HVAC and other products sold into the nuclear, military, and other industrial end markets.

EXSIF Worldwide, Inc. Buy’s OCS
Date: April 2014
What it is: OCS Limited is a tank rental and chemical supply company based in Aberdeen, United Kingdom. OCS operates in the offshore oil and gas sector, serving clients in the North Sea.

Berkshire Hathaway Acquires Van Tuyl Group
Date: April 2014
What it is: Van Tuyl Group is the nation’s largest privately-owned auto dealership group, which ranks fifth among all U.S. auto dealership groups.

Berkshire Hathaway Energy Acquires AltaLink
Date: May 2014
What it is: AltaLink owns 12,000 kilometers of transmission lines and 280 substations that bring electricity to 3 million customers in Alberta, Canada.

Berkadia Acquires Keystone Commercial Capital
Date: May 2014
What it is: Keystone Capital is a full-service commercial mortgage banking company headquartered in Phoenix that services more than $2 billion in commercial real estate loans.

BH Media Acquires Catamaran Group
Date: September 2014
What it is: Catamaran Group publishes 12 weekly papers, with circulations ranging from 7,000 up to 15,000, serving the southern New Jersey shore area. While the individual circulations are small, the combined circulations exceed 111,000.

Lubrizol Acquires Warwick Chemicals
Date: November 2014
What it is: Warwick Chemicals is a leading global developer, producer and supplier of stain removal technology with hygiene benefits. Headquartered in Mostyn, North Wales, Warwick Chemicals has strong positions with global and regional detergent producers. Their products are an essential element in laundry detergent powders and automatic dishwashing products used across five continents and in more than 50 countries.

Lubrizol Acquires Engineered Chemistry and Integrity Industries
Date: December 2014
What it is: Engineered Chemistry supplies additives and fluids for a range of oilfield activities, including cementing, drilling, flow assurance and fracturing. It offers chemistry expertise to solve problems throughout the oil and gas drilling process. The business consists of a core manufacturing and research organization which supports a global field distribution network. Engineered Chemistry was built through a series of acquisitions over the past 12 years and is headquartered in Houston, TX. It operates 10 sites located predominantly in North America. Integrity Industries manufactures drilling fluid systems, including diesel, mineral oil and synthetic oil based fluids. The company supplies these drilling fluid systems to retail drilling fluid companies along with technical support.

Berkshire Hathaway Acquires Charter Brokerage
Date: December 2014
What it is: Charter Brokerage is a leading global trade services company providing complete customs, import, export, drawback and related services.

There you have it!

Bolt-On Acquisitions Continue to Power Berkshire’s Growth

© 2015 David Mazor

Disclosure: David Mazor is a freelance writer focusing on Berkshire Hathaway. The author is long in Berkshire Hathaway, and this article is not a recommendation on whether to buy or sell the stock. The information contained in this article should not be construed as personalized or individualized investment advice. Past performance is no guarantee of future results.

Categories
Acquisitions BH Media

BH Media targets Jersey Shore

(BRK.A), (BRK.B)

Move over Snooki! The Jersey Shore is the latest target for Berkshire Hathaway’s growing newspaper empire.

BH Media Group is continuing its expansion in small and medium-sized markets with the acquisition of the newspapers and publications of the Catamaran Media Group.

Catamaran publishes 12 weekly papers, with circulations ranging from 7,000 up to 15,000, serving the southern New Jersey shore area. While the individual circulations are small, the combined circulations exceed 111,000.

Also, acquired from Catamaran by BH Media Group are the SandPaper and Free-Time publications, which are weeklies covering Cape May, Ocean City and the greater area during the summer tourist seasons. The two publications have a combined circulation of 60,000.

In 2013, BH Media Group acquired a 50% interest in Catamaran when it purchased 100% of The Press of Atlantic City, a daily paper serving Atlantic City, New Jersey. The newspaper has a daily print and online readership of 273,000.

Mark Blum, The Press of Atlantic City’s publisher, will add the duties of publisher of the Catamaran publications to his duties.

Growth Strategy

BH Media Group continues to look aggressively for additional print media properties. It shuns the major markets, with Buffett having shown no interest in bidding for the Washington Post, which went to Amazon’s Jeff Bezos for $250 million in the fall of 2013. Instead, BH Media prefers to pick off the smaller markets that collectively having millions of readers and millions in revenues.

In addition to the publications acquired from Catamaran, BH Media Group owns 69 newspapers and publications located in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, Florida, Texas, Iowa, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and New Jersey.

To read a Special Report on BH Media Group’s revenues and acquisition strategies see BH Media Finds Multiples Success.

© 2014 David Mazor

Disclosure: David Mazor is a freelance writer focusing on Berkshire Hathaway. The author is long in Berkshire Hathaway, and this article is not a recommendation on whether to buy or sell the stock. The information contained in this article should not be construed as personalized or individualized investment advice. Past performance is no guarantee of future results.

Categories
BH Media Special Report

Special Report: Berkshire Hathaway’s BH Media Finds Multiples Success

(BRK.A), (BRK.B)

Before the dawn of the Internet, newspapers were media cash-cows that produced strong, reliable revenue streams from display advertising and classified advertising. They became hot items, and throughout the 1990s they sold at high multiples. For example, the 1993 sale of the Boston Globe to the New York Times Company went for $1.1 billion.

In more recent years, newspapers have been known for declining readerships, and being burdened with high levels of debt.

When the cash-strapped New York Times decided to unload the Boston Globe, it sold for only $70 million–a 93% loss.

Going in the Exit

While everyone has been declaring the death of the American newspaper and running for the exits, one company, Berkshire Hathaway, has been running in the door.

Berkshire’s BH Media Group has assembled a growing empire of 69 newspapers and other publications located in the states of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, Florida, Texas, Iowa, Nebraska, Oklahoma and New Jersey.

Warren Buffett has long been a fan of newspapers, all the way back to his 1977 purchase of the Evening News, which serves Buffalo, New York. And, Berkshire had long owned a major share of the Washington Post.

But that was then. Are they still good business today?

EBITDA Comes Down to Earth

The magic word in the newspaper acquisition business is “multiple.” The multiple under consideration is the multiple of annual earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA).

In BH Media Group’s case, the great news is that it’s paying reasonable multiples that are within the 4-5 EBITDA range.

Just under a decade ago in 2005, Lee Enterprises bought Pulitzer Inc. for 13 times EBITDA in a deal worth $1.46 billion. In contrast, Berkshire Hathaway spent a mere $143 million in acquiring 60 newspapers from Media General. And, unlike the newspaper empires of the 1990s, BH Media Group’s papers have no debt.

BH Media Group’s Evolving Strategy

BH Media Group originally set its sights on small markets, believing they presented the opportunity for a still healthy business model presenting local interest news that is hard to get from other sources. However, it has seen that larger markets have held up well in both circulation and advertising revenue.

For example, The Richmond Times-Dispatch in Richmond, Virginia, has a daily circulation of 102,258 and serves a population in the Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) of 1,231,980. Similarly, the Tulsa World in Tulsa, Oklahoma, has a daily circulation of 88,601 and serves an MSA population of 951,880. Papers in even smaller markets like Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and Roanoke, Virginia still reach sizable populations. The Roanoke Times, for example, has a daily circulation of 64,631, and serves an MSA population of over 312,000.

While print circulation may be fading, digital platforms are playing an ever larger role. For example, the Winston-Salem Journal, which has a daily circulation of 50,090 and serves an MSA population of 647,697, has 3 million page views per month.

Capturing Digital Revenues

Digital revenues come from a combination of online subscribers and online advertising. All the BH Media Group publications use a limited free access paywall system. Readers have proven willing to pay to get unlimited access to in-depth information about their local market. Some articles are available for free, but the number of free articles available per month varies by market depending on competition. BH Media Group is able to reduce the number of free articles in markets where the publications have no competitors.

Sharing Reporting Resources

BH Media Group doesn’t have a national news gathering operation, preferring to use the Associated Press. It knows that today’s reader is gathering national and international news from myriad outlets. Instead, it focuses on in its strength–local and regional reporting–where its reporters can gather far more stories than the local TV or radio stations.

In a market such as Winston-Salem, the Winston-Salem Journal has a newsgathering staff of 50, as compared to the 9 reporters at a local TV station. It’s in regional reporting that BH Media Group finds additional synergies. For example, its 30 print media properties in Virginia all have access to articles created by the collective BH Media Group publications, and can share reportage on state government and other state-wide issues.

Eliminating Crushing Debt Pressure

Over the past decade, newspapers have spent much of their time on debt relief, much of it through cost cutting through staffing cuts that have diminished their newsgathering ability. With Berkshire Hathaway’s deep pockets, BH Media Group’s papers all operate debt free, freeing them up to concentrate on being the most effective media outlets in their markets.

Growth Strategies

As for the future, BH Media Group continues to look aggressively for additional print media properties. It shuns the major markets, with Buffett having shown no interest in bidding for the Washington Post, which went to Amazon’s Jeff Bezos for $250 million in the fall of 2013. Instead, BH Media Group prefers to pick off the smaller markets that collectively having millions of readers and millions in revenues.

Warren Buffett is known for his patience. He is also known for growing his positions over time, and it wouldn’t be surprising if in another decade BH Media Group is the king of regional print media all over the U.S.

All purchased at reasonable multiples.

© 2014 David Mazor

Disclosure: David Mazor is a freelance writer focusing on Berkshire Hathaway. The author is long in Berkshire Hathaway, and this article is not a recommendation on whether to buy or sell the stock. The information contained in this article should not be construed as personalized or individualized investment advice. Past performance is no guarantee of future results.