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Insurance

Berkshire Acquires Healthcare Liability Insurer PLICO, Inc.

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Berkshire Hathaway has agreed to acquire healthcare liability insurer PLICO, Inc.

The deal between Berkshire Hathaway’s MedPro Group (MedPro) and the Oklahoma State Medical Association (OSMA) will see Berkshire take over the Oklahoma City-based PLICO, which serves approximately 2200 healthcare providers in Oklahoma, and is the largest healthcare liability insurer in Oklahoma.

Founded in 1979, PLICO has annualized gross written premiums of about $30 million, and had a statutory surplus of over $60 million at year-end of 2014.

The “bolt-on” acquisition is only the second acquisition for MedPro since Berkshire Hathaway acquired it a decade ago.

“Joining Berkshire Hathaway’s MedPro Group emboldens PLICO’s expansion efforts by providing additional opportunities not available to us before,” said Carl Hook, M.D., President and CEO of PLICO. “MedPro shares our commitment to always put the insured first, and this transaction will give PLICO the unquestioned financial strength and additional product options to better serve local healthcare providers and entities without sacrificing our reputation for high-quality customer service and relational focus. Both PLICO and MedPro insureds will benefit greatly from our collaboration, which leverages the best combination of national resources with local expertise and service.”

PLICO is not currently rated by leading insurance rater, A.M. Best, but is expected to apply for financial strength ratings and be positioned to offer additional products and services.

Prior to the PLICO acquisition, Berkshire’s MedPro had $874 million in annual premiums and more than 140,000 customers.

Another Bolt-On Acquisition

Berkshire Hathaway has a two-track approach to acquisitions. One track is major acquisitions, such as the purchase of BNSF Railway, Heinz, and Van Tuyl Group, among others, which are multibillion dollar acquisitions that usually become new stand-alone companies under the Berkshire Hathaway umbrella. The other track is what Berkshire labels “bolt-on” acquisitions that add additional companies to Berkshire’s existing companies. While most of these bolt-on acquisitions are small, at least in relative terms of adding to a $360 billion company, they add up, and Berkshire does over $3 billion in total bolt-on acquisitions a year in the aggregate. These acquisitions, which have in recent years included companies such as Beveridge dispenser-maker Cornelius (added to the Marmon Group) and Meadowbrook Meat Company (added to McLane Company), as just two examples, continuously add significant market-share and new capabilities to Berkshire’s companies.

© 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.

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Benjamin Moore Kraft Heinz

Berkshire’s Hidden Ownership of Kraft Heinz Shares

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Berkshire Hathaway has come out of the Kraft Heinz merger as its biggest single shareholder with 325,442,152 shares of common stock and 80,000 shares of 9% cumulative compounding preferred stock, Series A.

Berkshire’s partner in the acquisition, 3G Capital, is the second largest shareholder with 293,536,058 shares of common stock.

Combined, Berkshire and 3G own 51% of the new consumer food giant.

Berkshire’s Additional Hidden Ownership

As they say in the TV ads, “But wait there’s more!”

Berkshire Hathaway has an additional ownership stake in Kraft Heinz through the pension fund of its subsidiary, Benjamin Moore & Co.

Benjamin Moore’s retirement plan owns 192,666 shares of common stock in its own right.

As usual with all things Berkshire Hathaway, it’s good to keep in mind that the conglomerate is like a series of nested dolls, and in its companies, or sometimes even in its companies within its companies, there are often hidden treasures.

© 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.

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BNSF

New Vs. Old Oil Tank Cars, Surcharge or Discount?

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Union Pacific Corp has followed BNSF’s Railway in having a higher price for hauling older DOT-111 tank cars. Union Pacific is charging $1,200 per DOT-111 tank car, and BNSF began adding $1,000 per tank car in January.

BNSF’s price change brought an immediate lawsuit from the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM), the trade group of the U.S.’s petroleum refiners.

Surcharge or Discount?

BNSF is disputing that they are adding a surcharge. They are calling the price change a new rate for older tank cars with a discount for tank cars that meet the new DOT-117 standards.

As common carriers, Union Pacific and BNSF can’t refuse to haul DOT-111 tank cars. The big question is whether they can have different rates for different tank cars.

Replacing the Entire Fleet

The pricing difference will go away in a few years as DOT-111s are phased out. Under the Enhanced Standards for New and Existing Tank Cars for use in an HHFT—New tank cars constructed after October 1, 2015, are required to meet the new DOT Specification 117 design or performance criteria. The standards will require replacing the entire fleet of DOT-111 tank cars for Packing Group I, which covers most crude shipped by rail, within three years and all non-jacketed CPC-1232s, in the same service, within approximately five years.

The total new DOT 117/TC-117 tank cars that will ultimately be hitting the rails will be around 160,000 units.

Millions of Dollars a Day

Currently, both Union Pacific and BNSF are collecting over $100,000 additional per oil train, and with the number of trains they run, it amounts to millions of dollars a day. The cost to the refiners is roughly an additional $1.20 per barrel of oil, and eventually a court will decide whether the railroads have to give it back.

© 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.

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BNSF

BNSF Grain Shipments Improve from 2014 Levels

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With Bakken crude oil shipments putting carload pressures on BNSF the past few years, grain producers were left griping about shipping delays and premium per car prices.

“We had a lot of grain on the ground about 18 months ago,” Tom Tunnell, the president and CEO of the Kansas Grain and Feed Association, noted in Midwest Producer. “The cost to get rail cars was extremely high, way above normal. The premiums were in the thousands of dollars per car range, but all that’s gone away. We’re back down into a more normal range.”

A Winter of Discontent

Back in the winter of 2014, grain shipments were running weeks late with the shipping time from the Midwest grain belt to the Pacific Northwest running a whopping 22 days. The delays added substantial costs to grain producers, as they paid ocean-going freight ships between $30,000-$50,000 per day to sit in port waiting for the delayed grain.

So far for 2015 BNSF grain shipments are up a solid 10.7% year-to-date over the same period in 2014. Shipments increased from 219,747 carloads in 2014 to 243,268 carloads in 2015.

“We have substantially better Ag shuttle turns per month as compared to last year,” a BNSF official said in May. “Last year we were below 2 turns per month, and now we are over 2.5 turns per month.”

The increase comes despite crude oil shipments only having minor 1.41% decrease in carloads. Despite the collapse in worldwide oil prices, oil train shipping still moved 245,356 tank cars of petroleum, as compared to 248,868 tank cars for the same period in 2014.

Adding Capacity

BNSF is working hard to eliminate grain shipping bottlenecks, including adding 900 new cover-hopper grain cars as part of the 7,800 rail cars it is purchasing in 2015. BNSF’s $6 billion in capital improvements in 2015 is a record for any railroad, and also includes 300 new locomotives.

The most critical time for grain shipments is August through October, and hopefully BNSF will be ready to meet the demand with increased capacity and fewer delays.

© 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.

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Berkshire Hathaway Energy Commentary

Commentary: If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Join ‘Em?

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Berkshire Hathaway’s Nevada Energy is in a battle for the energy consumer that could be the bellwether for utility industry. With consumers pushing legislators to expand the percentage of “net metering” that Nevada Energy must purchase, Berkshire Hathaway Energy is stuck on the side of trying to hold down consumer demand for rooftop solar so its non-solar consumers don’t see their rates rise as the utility passes on legacy costs from closing outdated coal-fired plants.

Rooftop Solar an Unstoppable Force

In Nevada, 108 companies installed 339 megawatts of solar power in 2014. Even in markets without Las Vegas’s 294 sunny days per year, the cost of rooftop solar is dropping so quickly that Bloomberg News is predicting that there will be “a 17-fold increase in installations.” They note that “By 2040, rooftop solar will be cheaper than electricity from the grid in every major economy.”

While the cost of utility scale solar is also dropping as witnessed by Berkshire’s 1,271 megawatts of solar capacity and growing. (It’s Topaz Solar Farm, a photovoltaic power station in San Luis Obispo County, California, alone is already generating 579 megawatts of power.) The question is whether Berkshire should stand on the sidelines while more and more consumers put solar panels on their roofs.

If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Join ‘Em

Nevada’s the perfect opportunity for BHE to test adding rooftop solar installation and leasing to its portfolio. The company’s got deeper pockets than the numerous but small players in the market. Other utilities are already testing rooftop solar. Georgia Power rather than fighting rooftop solar companies is joining them in the installation business through a new subsidiary.

Another Key Advantage

Berkshire Hathaway Energy already has a number of unregulated businesses, including its Berkshire Hathaway Home Services real estate empire. Rooftop solar offers another unregulated business opportunity.

So, as the saying goes, “If you can’t beat ‘em, join em.”

© 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.

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Berkshire Hathaway Specialty Insurance Insurance

New Zealand Newest Country for Berkshire Hathaway Specialty Insurance

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New Zealand is the latest country for Berkshire Hathaway Specialty Insurance Company (BHSI). The insurer has received its license from the Reserve Bank of New Zealand and is underwriting property and casualty insurance through its new office in Auckland. BHSI can also offer Marine Cargo coverage in New Zealand, with Australia-based Mark Dixon also having New Zealand responsibility.

“We are pleased to bring the financially strong capacity and customer-centric underwriting and claims handling of BHSI to New Zealand. We open our doors in Auckland with a highly experienced team, a broad appetite for property and casualty risks, and a commitment to providing responsive and enduring solutions to the marketplace,” said Peter Eastwood, Global President and Chief Executive Officer of BHSI.

In April, BHSI received its insurance license to provide all lines of General Business in Australia, and established operations in Sydney. Chris Colahan was named President of BHSI’s Australasia Region. Four executives from AIG were also brought on board. In June, the company added casualty and executive and professional lines for hospitals and medical practices and facilities.

Country Manager for New Zealand Cameron McLisky said “I am delighted to introduce BHSI to the New Zealand marketplace. We have assembled an excellent team and look forward to collaborating with our brokers and insureds to provide stable, flexible solutions along with the quality service that is a hallmark of BHSI operations everywhere.”

Cameron comes to BHSI with two decades of industry experience. He was most recently Regional Financial Lines Manager at AIG Asia Pacific. Before that he was Regional Offices Manager at AIG UK Ltd; Australian Financial Lines Manager at AIG Australia; and Financial Lines Manager at AIG in New Zealand. He was also Casualty Manager at Gen Re in Auckland. He holds a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) degree from the University of Canterbury in Christchurch.

© 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.

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BNSF UTLX

New DOT Standards Push Up Tank Car Prices

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With a backlog of tank car orders at a record 52,000 units through March 31, 2015, prices for tanks that meet the new DOT 117/TC-117 standards could rise over 23-percent.

Tank car prices are expected to increase from $130,000 to $160,000.

Benefiting from the demand will be Berkshire Hathaway’s UTLX, which is a subsidiary of Berkshire’s Marmon Group, as well as other tank car makers, including Trinity Industries Inc. and Greenbrier Co.

UTLX builds tank cars at its Sheldon manufacturing plant in Houston, Texas, and at its UTLX manufacturing plant in Alexandria, Louisiana.

Communities Demand Safety

In July of 2014, in Lynchburg, Virginia, a derailment of 16 oil tanker cars caught America’s attention, as the fiery tank cars spilled into the James River. In the wake of this and several other high profile accidents, communities along oil train routes all over the country are demanding safer oil trains.

The good news is progress is being made, and according to BNSF internal data through December 31, 2014, as crude oil and ethanol shipments have increased, the number of derailments have decreased by 78% from 2011-2014.

As a common carrier, BNSF can’t refuse to carry petroleum, and the new tank cars will reduce the risk of carrying highly flammable cargo.

Petroleum, Ethanol and LPG make up roughly 7-percent of BNSF’s freight hauling. In 2014 BNSF moved enough petroleum to fill the gas tanks of 350 million vehicles.

Replacing the Entire Fleet

Under Enhanced Standards for New and Existing Tank Cars for use in an HHFT—New tank cars constructed after October 1, 2015, are required to meet the new DOT Specification 117 design or performance criteria. The standards will require replacing the entire fleet of DOT-111 tank cars for Packing Group I, which covers most crude shipped by rail, within three years and all non-jacketed CPC-1232s, in the same service, within approximately five years.

William A. Furman, Chairman and CEO, Greenbrier Co. said in a statement in May, “Railroads are the safest way to haul large volumes of freight long distances in America, but when it comes to oil, ethanol and other hazardous liquids, more robust tank cars are needed to ensure the safety of our communities. The health, property and general well-being of our citizens shouldn’t be at risk in the event of an accident and the design for the newly designated DOT-117/TC-117 tank car will help substantially mitigate risk.”

The prescribed car has a 9/16 inch tank shell, 11 gauge jacket, 1/2 inch full-height head shield, thermal protection, and improved pressure relief valves and bottom outlet valves.

A Big Market

While older DOT-111 tank cars, which first debuted in 1964, can be temporarily refurbished to bring them up to the new standards, they must be replaced by 2018. This puts the total market for the new DOT 117/TC-117 tank cars at around 160,000 units.

UTLX will certainly be busy the next few years.

© 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.

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Charlie Munger Insurance

Charlie Munger Cools on Reinsurance Business

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Charlie Munger is less than excited about the reinsurance business these days, as Berkshire Hathaway’s reinsurance business, Gen Re, suffered an aggregate pretax underwriting losses of $14 million in the first quarter of 2015. The loss compares to a $101 million gain during the first quarter of 2014.

The company’s combined ratio deteriorated to 103.0% from 94.6%, and the total underwriting losses included $9 million in workers’ compensation.

Gen Re has $14 billion in capital and $6 billion in premiums.

More Competition Brings Lower Returns

The losses reflect increased competition for reinsurance underwriting.

“It’s a business whose prospects have turned for the worse and there’s not much we can do about it,” Warren Buffett said at the 2015 Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting.

“The reinsurance business not as good as it once was and is unlikely to get better,” Charlie Munger noted. “Money has come in, not because they want to be in reinsurance, but because it’s an uncorrelated asset class. We’re in it for the long haul.”

Uncorrelated (also called non-correlated) asset classes are assets that move in the opposite direction of a particular asset class, thus helping investors reduce risk in exchange for lower upside performance.

Munger’s words were in line with those of Ajit Jain, who is the head of Berkshire Hathaway Reinsurance. “What was a very lucrative business is no longer a very lucrative business going forward” Jain was recently quoted in the Wall Street Journal.

Meyer Shields, managing director at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods Inc., is also pessimistic about Gen Re’s near-term prospects.

“We expect Gen Re and (Berkshire Hathaway Reinsurance Group’s) premium volumes and margins to generally decline in the remainder of 2015 and beyond, reflecting enduring reinsurance price competition and some fallout from Berkshire’s increasing pursuit of primary premium volumes at the likely expense of some former cedents.”

© 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.

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Warren Buffett

China’s Stock Market Retreat Proves Buffett Right

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China’s stock market has rocketed upward in 2015, with China’s domestic equity markets having more than doubled, but its recent 20-percent retreat brings to mind Warren Buffett’s recent words on whether traditional value investing has a place in such a market.

“Investment principles do not stop at borders, Buffet noted at the 2015 Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting. “I would apply the principles of the Intelligent Investor—stocks as prices of a business—in evaluating businesses overseas.”

With China’s high-flying stock market increasingly built on borrowed money, with margin debt at a record 8% of the stock market’s free float, Chinese investors may be wise to heed another one of Buffett’s famed aphorisms.

“Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.”

© 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.

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Berkshire Hathaway Energy

The Energy Cloud and Berkshire Hathaway Energy’s Future

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Will Berkshire Hathaway Energy be left out in the cold due to disruptive changes in the energy market?

It’s a question that BHE and other utilities are starting to both ask and answer, and is particularly relevant to BHE, which has become in less than a decade one of the major players in solar and wind power generation.

With rooftop solar power changing the relationship between consumers and traditional energy producers and distributors, electric utilities are starting to think seriously about the changing landscape that the energy industry will encounter over the next few decades.

The Energy Cloud

The industry has started to refer to this changing marketplace as the “Energy Cloud,” mirroring the cloud computing world, and emphasizing the dynamic nature of the relationship between all parties.

A white paper by market research and consulting team Navigant Research called the Energy Cloud “…a concept that borrows from cloud computing, represents a range of technical, commercial, environmental, and regulatory changes that challenge the traditional hub-and-spoke grid architecture.”

An anticipated transformation in the energy grid that decentralizes many pieces of the energy production has utilities looking at additional revenue sources from unregulated business units. For example, Georgia Power rather than fighting rooftop solar companies is joining them in the installation business through a new subsidiary.

Unregulated Businesses

Meanwhile, Berkshire Hathaway Energy continues to aggressively expand its unregulated businesses, which includes its energy service solutions company Intelligent Energy Systems, and residential real estate sales company Berkshire Hathaway Home Services. It also owns 225 million shares (10%) of Chinese battery and automaker BYD Company Limited.

In the end, it’s all about transformation in an industry that traditionally talked to customers more than listened to them.

Navigant notes that “the end result of this transformation is a reimagining of how we generate, store, and consume energy in the next 20 years.”

© 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.