Recapping my $ACIC HQ Visit🧵
Before meeting Dan and Brad, my belief was that $ACIC is a very mature business with limited room for growth. Trading off growth for excellent underwriting. This couldn't be further from the truth.
A friend shared this interesting pitch from Palliser (a London-based fund) on Keisei Electric Railway (TSE: 9009).
They are the 8th largest shareholder and have had 12 meetings with management over the last 2 years and are looking to unlock value.
Does not screen like a
$ACIC is one of my highest conviction non-net-net longs.
Average combined ratio of 69% since inception, yet still trading at less than 4x earnings.
One of the highest quality property and casualty insurers in Florida.
These are the companies I want to spend the most time on during 2024:
- Medical Facilities Corporation (TSE: $DR)
- Hagerty Inc (NYSE: $HGTY)
- DRA Global (ASX: $DRA)
- Plus500 Ltd (LON: $PLUS)
- Tiptree Inc (NASDAQ: $TIPT)
They are listed in no particular order.
"We believe the company could generate some of the lowest combined ratios and highest ROEs of any publicly traded insurance company."
- Raymond James on $ACIC
I was very pleased with $ACIC Q1 Earnings.
Will share more detailed thoughts on it when I am more free.
I am always sad to see companies I own go up. It means I can buy less for cheap, and the company can also buy less.
$ACIC renewed their AOP XoL reinsurance agreement.
The cost of the agreement is $9.9mm, a decrease of 9.24% YoY.
Excluding $ACIC's retention, the AOP CAT agreement provides coverage of $88m for a first event and another $84mm for a second event. Aggregate of $172mm. An increase
"We ordinarily make no attempt to buy equities for anticipated favorable stock price behavior in the short term. In fact, if their business experience continues to satisfy us, we welcome lower market prices of stocks we own as an opportunity to acquire even more of a good thing
Coming out with another update on $TIPT mid next week.
I also have managed to schedule a call with Brad Martz, CFO @ $ACIC on Thursday. Hoping to get a lot more clarity on some of the minutiae.
11/x Overall my conviction in management remains as strong as ever.
I hope to upload a more detailed write-up of all the work I have done on $ACIC in the past few months and weeks.
In the meantime, $ACIC remains a core position in my portfolio.
New write-up on $DR.TO is out.
Conservatively, there is a 70% margin of safety.
I will be coming out with another update in February after my visit to 3 of their SSHs.
Our notes from the call with Richard Cook @ Clarion Housing on $VTY are now up.
We spoke to Richard Cook from Clarion Housing, the largest housing association. In addition, Clarion works with Vistry on affordable housing projects, and they currently have 40 JVs+ throughout the
Here is a list of JP Net-Nets.
1) 9885: Charle, P/NCAV = 48%
2) 5956: Toso, P/NCAV = 56%
3) 2408: Kg Intelligence, P/NCAV = 68%
4) 2917: Ohmoriya, P/NCAV = 59%
Let me know which one I should do a deep dive on.
@ToffCap
I feel like bull case assumes that they add new local councils with relative ease, and local councils know how $VTY is a superior home builder to partner with.
Not entirely the case. I called up the Vale of White Horse, which is the local council that represents Oxford. The
@ArcataCap
and I called Richard Cook today from Clarion Housing Group, the largest housing association in England.
A lot of my initial concerns about $VTY were reaffirmed. We will be sharing our thoughts soon.
Upon
@andrewcoye
's recommendation, I have been looking at $QRTEA.
This is the first time I have looked at a distressed/highly-geared company, so I hope it ends up being a fruitful learning experience.
1/ I recently had the opportunity to talk to James Rosenwald who in 2020 launched the Nippon Active Value Fund (NAVF) which is a London listed Japan-focused activist fund.
🧵
I have recently been exploring the intricacies of the FHCF and how it's funded. This should hopefully give us a bit more certainty on what the 6/1/2024 reinsurance stack will look like. A new $ACIC update is coming.
The more I look into this business the more compelled I am.
1/ A Japanese name I really like: Showa Paxxs (TSE: 3954). An opportunity to buy a positive EBITDA business (8x P/E), grown BV at 7%+ CAGR but trading at <35% of BV.
A Very Very Long Thread 🧵
The new ACIC double-down note is now out on substack.
We covered all of the following new points:
- High Reinsurance Capacity with low Attachment Points
- Dynamic Rate Adjustability in Response to Reinsurance Market Trends
- Strategic Risk Mitigation through Quota Share with
Also, the $DR write-up is coming along. Scheduling a meeting with management and planning a trip to South Dakota before the end of the month to visit the two SSHs.
Finally, I had the chance to speak to Brad from ACIC.
I spent a couple of hours refining my notes, fleshing out all the ideas discussed on the call, and compiled them into a document.
The doc is available on substack now!
@HindenburgRes
We’ve been looking at AIX Investment Group in Dubai for the past few weeks. We think they’re a large scale fraud preying on the financially illiterate.
They guarantee a minimum of 18% returns through “capital secured” products (I.e., promised as risk free). They
I have spent a considerable amount of time screening the majority of Japanese net nets (trading below 75% of NCAV) listed on TSE. These are the most interesting ones without obvious red flags. I will spend the next couple of weeks going further into each of these names and hoping
1/x Biggest risk to $MOB.ST is Jublia genericization. Jublia loses its strongest patent in 2026. Once generics come to the scene pricing becomes much less attractive and MOB-015 will likely be a tertiary or quaternary treatment choice.
The main reason I like Japanese Net-Nets 🇯🇵 over net-nets in any other country
is the COST OF CARRY.
You can borrow JPY 💴 at 0.75% via an IBKR margin account.
This makes owning mediocre businesses for longer periods of time much more bearable.
1/ Quick Update on Showa Paxxs (TSE: 3954)
I have worked out an adjusted ROE metric, removing all non-operating assets from stockholder’s equity. Also removed all income derived from those non-operating assets.
Results in a 19yr average ROE of 15.6%.
WACC and it’s Importance:
This is something that took me a while to grasp, but is one of the most important things.
When you build a DCF you figure out the intrinsic value of the business at a particular point in time.
That intrinsic value is subject to change in the
8/x The primary growth driver discussed with Brad was Journey Insurance Corporation (JIC, a JV with Tokio Marine) which was prematurely divested to raise capital to cushion American Coastal’s balance sheet following the divestiture of UPC. JIC wrote homeowner’s lines in Texas and
10/x Also touched upon the ongoing DFS lawsuit. Brad did not seem too concerned about this given that they have D&O insurance which covers up to $40mm.
The D&O insurance policy has also been successfully renewed, which is a great sign.
7/x Competitors can't do what $ACIC is doing because it will take them 10 years to gather the data. They also don't really care about the data. I was convinced of this after talking to Kirk @ $HRTG.
@InvestInJapan
Yeah completely agree. Even Elliott is moving into Japan with Dai Nippon Printing. Hoping to connect with an MD at Elliott over the next couple of weeks to get more insight into their Japan strategy.
9/x Quota share is also coming down to 20% this 6/1 reinsurance renewal.
As mentioned on the Q4 earnings call it is all about "eating more of our own cooking". Replacing the current QS on an XoL basis will be as good if not better (assuming a lighter CAT load).
1/ Rosenwald has created his four mantras which entail 4 main items to check off before making any investment:
- Has to be a good business
- Has to have a sufficient margin of safety
- Management track record key
- Alignment of incentives between management and shareholders
$TIPT First Update is live on Substack. I currently conservatively see approximately 82.9% upside to the SOTP value of Fortegra + Tiptree Capital.
Will be spending more time on Fortegra over the next couple of weeks.
@atelicinvest
@ArcataCap
I asked Bryan @ Cipher the same question. The answer he gave was along the lines of Moberg wouldn’t be willing to accept any price Cipher would have paid.
He also said that if he wasn’t restricted from it he would personally buy Moberg stock.
7/x Dilution risk is also important to consider. This is mostly due to the peculiar structure of Swedish warrant issuances. When modeling it would be best to assume full dilution, but what if the issuance fails? None of the warrant holders subscribe as the price falls between May
3/x Understanding the full lifecycle and value chain of a policy is important.
Policies are onboarded as AmRisc sends people to properties. They typically have iPads are taking pictures.
If the data is not 100% complete they send someone back to collect data again.
@DheerajNam
@jbmp51
I have changed my view on $TIPT since having written it up. I was never able to underwrite an investment because 1) Premium growth across the board somewhat scared me, especially given that it is hard to determine what is actually driving the growth, and 2) It is hard to break
1/ I am reading Moyer's Distressed Debt Analysis. Early on in his book he states "many reorganizations have left stockholders with no recovery yet the stock trades at positive values very late into, if not at the conclusion of a re-org".
6/x I was also curious as to why licensing partners like Cipher would not bring MOB-015 to market sooner, given the interim cashflows are not insignificant.
Bryan's (CFO @ Cipher) answer was, that Moberg is paying for the trials, so they might as well wait and get the really
1/6 I had written up a short report on $VAXX in October of last year but had never published it. I mention it in my 2023 Recap on my blog.
Just saw that they filed to go dark in April.
Here is the CEO's letter to shareholders.
2/x Sedgwick is a TPA contracted by AmRisc, which is paid for by the fees AmCo pays AmRisc.
Claims up to $500k are done by Sedgwick. $500k to $750k is done by AmCo and AmRisc claims adjusters. $750k to $1.5mm is reviewed by the AmCo CFO and anything above that by Dan or Brad.
5/ He also said that one of the largest supporters of activism is the government. I hope to chat with him more over the next couple of weeks and will accordingly share any more insights I get.
3/ But then I saw someone asking Fidelity to reinstate their worthless and delisted shares of $BBBYQ.
The level of inefficiency that still exists in markets today is both exciting and worrying at the same time.
The number one thing you can do to further yourself as an investor is to read.
Here are my all time top favourites:
1. Deep Value by Tobias Carlisle
2. Margin of Safety by Seth Klarman
3. Security Analysis by Graham & Dodd
4. All of Buffet’s partnership and AGM letters
2/x Phase 3 Trial Risk is not well understood. After having talked to Amir, CSO @ $MOB.ST he blamed the low complete cure rate on urea propylene glycol lactic acid which has strong hydrating properties. Which should not be an issue given the change in dosing regimen.
4/x Milestones are also tricky given that they are not tied to any specific regulatory outcome, but rather commercial sales targets. But management seems confident they will get the milestone payments.
7/ She most likely will like to exit her stake given that she is neither on the board nor involved in day-to-day ops. But before doing that she will want to realize the full value of her stake, rather than just dumping it on the market.
@TheRealDavey2
$ACIC is not overearning. They have a 40% quota share agreement in place, so they're passing all of that underwriting edge off to BerkRe and ArchRe given they had no equity in the biz after UPC was put into receivership.
On top of that structurally Florida is set to stay in a
@puppyeh1
@AltayCapital
Not sure I follow here. I run my portfolio at 100% LTV collateralised against treasuries.
The whole point of taking on yen margin is I don’t want to speculate on $/JPY. I only care about $ returns. I have a yen asset and yen liability. It’s outrageously inexpensive at 75bps.
@MikeFritzell
Haven't seen anything written up on X/Substack. Here is a link to our internal memo from November on DRA. Super preliminary, though.
They divested their G&S Engineering segment, which has historically been a drag on the bottom line. They are also restructuring their APAC biz,
7/ The way I have set up my portfolio means that I am not exposed to Yen risk. I via my broker take Yen-denominated Lombard loans against T-bills that I hold and buy Japanese equities.
This means I have both a Yen liability and a Yen Asset, thus nullifying the FX risk.
3/x But then the question is will efficacy decrease? Amir says no given that in prior trials nearly 80% to 85% of patients have a negative fungal culture test. Hard to evaluate further.
I held a poll a while ago on which Japanese Net-Net I should do a deep dive on you. You guys voted for Charle (TSE: 9885). Working on a report and will be out for free next week on Substack and X!
6/ My bet is that it is more likely than not that Tsutsumi will pay out a relatively large dividend in the next 12-18 months. The main catalyst for this is Wakako just inherited 51% of the business from her father who passed away last year...
1/x AmRisc and AmCo, their relationship? Who actually does the work is one of the questions I had.
Brad explained when it comes to claims processing 3 parties are involved. Sedgwick, AmCo and AmRisc.
5/x It is close to impossible to project and understand US MOB-15 economics. They are yet to partner with someone to bring it to market, but I am hopeful that they will be able to realize fair value given an auction process.
8/ This low cost of carry is what has made net-nets so much more appealing to me. Time is no longer as much of an enemy when it comes to cigar butts or net-nets in Japan.
@AltayCapital
@alluvialcapital
From what I see CFO was negative last FY, and FCF overall has been negative for 4 out of 5 last years. Don’t know enough about biz to make comments, but just what I saw at first glance. Trust your research.
@ContraMundem
Also not a fan that the CEO was VP @ Anavex (starting 2011) which to me is a company that has continually misled investors about their ANAVEX 2-73 candidate for Alzheimer’s.
@HiddeMulder2
@Jaro_rogue
What other costs are there to consider? Jublia isn’t Lamisil where you have to get bloodwork done multiple times and visit a doctor multiple times during the 3 month course.
@gibsonchiang
Not sure about $HGTY but it is in the auto insurance segment, which is a world's away from the cat insurance that $ACIC does.
The risk-to-reward set up on $ACIC is unmatched. Can't speak about the specifics on $HGTY though.
@DheerajNam
Heuristics of any kind are bad to have in investing. Any mental shortcut is prone to cognitive biases.
While I agree that airlines are perhaps below average businesses, it doesn’t mean that there weren’t or that there won’t be great opportunities in airlines.
$LUV and $RYA