Debate on financial innovation

Read this awesome commentary by Jeremy Grantham at http://www.gmo.com/websitecontent/JGLetter_ALL_4Q09.pdf

" “Beware the Financial Industrial Complex”

It is not often one gets the opportunity to debate a Nobel

Prize winner, but Richard Bookstaber and I went to Wall

Street to debate Myron Scholes and Robert Reynolds

(Putnam’s CEO) on a very topical topic: “Financial

Innovation Boosts Economic Growth.” There are no

prizes for guessing which side opposed the proposition.

Richard Bookstaber, by the way, is an experienced quant

who, despite that, wrote an excellent book, A Demon of

Our Own Design: Markets, Hedge Funds, and the Perils

of Financial Innovation – a title so superb you might think

it unnecessary to read the book, but do."

Mind blowing presentation below. People pays $1500 for the summit.

We get to watch if for free :)

The Letter that I've been waiting for

As usual, the annual letter by Warren Buffett to Berkshire Hathaway shareholder is an awesome read. This letter is particularly good as an Berkshire Hathaway introduction as its target readers are the tens of thousand of new shareholders that got their shares through the acquisition of Burlington Northern.

The letters are available here: http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/letters.html

I love the part of where Buffett advised that for every deal, another investment banker should be employed whose fee will be paid contingent on the deal NOT going through. Haha. Another great section is the part of the letter where he discussed the issue with stock for stock acquisition. To me, this is another instance of Buffett publicly chiding the Kraft-Cadbury deal. I need to learn how to criticize without offending people...

On a personal note, I'm glad that i went to the shareholder's meeting last year, as this year on, Buffett will no longer meet the international shareholders individually. However, the school that i went on exchange in, Richard Ivey School of Business, sent their students in the Value Investing course led by Prof George Athanassakos, to meet Buffett in a closed door session last week!!! How I wish I was there.

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Reading through Zkai's recent post on real estate makes me realize that this is one asset class that I am totally unfamiliar with. I have no clear idea of what are the economic drivers, and the intricacies of making a purchase (e.g. contract details). However, I believe that real estate as an asset class allow you to measure value in the same metrics that you'd measure an investment in the stock of a company.

We should be able to value the said property's prospective rental yield, potential for growth in the rental, accounting for a relevant financing charges and other maintenance cost; and compare the yield to the actual cash outlay that is required.

However, a property like 'land', will not allow us to subject the asset to the same calculation. This is because like other asset such as gold and silver, there is no inherent cashflow in undeveloped land. Thus its profitability will be fully dependent on the sale price, which is determined by supply and demand.

In my view, buying an asset with no underlying cashflow is much risker than buying an asset with cashflow. So unless prospective return is way higher than other alternative (rental properties, equities) this would be a highly speculative venture.

The following quotes are relevant to our above discussion. It is quoted from John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, Chapter 12. The State of Long-Term Expectation. Available here.


...If I may be allowed to appropriate the term speculation for the activity of forecasting the psychology of the market, and the term enterprise for the activity of forecasting the prospective yield of assets over their whole life, it is by no means always the case that speculation predominates over enterprise. As the organisation of investment markets improves, the risk of the predominance of speculation does, however, increase. In one of the greatest investment markets in the world, namely, New York, the influence of speculation (in the above sense) is enormous.

(...)

There are, moreover, certain important factors which somewhat mitigate in practice the effects of our ignorance of the future. Owing to the operation of compound interest combined with the likelihood of obsolescence with the passage of time,there are many individual investments of which the prospective yield is legitimately dominated by the returns of the comparatively near future. In the case of the most important class of very long-term investments, namely buildings, the risk can be frequently transferred from the investor to the occupier, or at least shared between them, by means of long-term contracts, the risk being outweighed in the mind of the occupier by the advantages of continuity and security of tenure.

Basically, It's Over - by Charlie Munger

Charlie Munger - Vice Chairman of Berhshire Hathaway and the right hand man of Warren Buffett wrote a story in Slate Magazine; detailing how "Basicland" grew, prospered and finally declined into "Sorrowland".

I especially love that the good wise man in the story is the fictional character, Benfranklin Leekwanyou Vokker. Sounds familiar, ya? Guess our leader has an admirer in the West.

In my fixed income class, the wonderful Prof Warachka reminded us repeatedly that derivative are not inherently dangerous, it is leverage that is dangerous. It is always excessive leverage that got people and society into trouble.

And in this article, Munger quoted Keynes "When the capital development of a country is the byproduct of the operations of a casino, the job is likely to be ill done."

Imagine if we can unleash all the amazing brains that are currently employed to create ever more complex financial instrument (and the accompanying risk management tools ) to build better bridges, communication systems, vaccines or harness energy better!!! Alas, even in SMU, operations people get far less 'respect' (and pay) than someone who gets a fancy finance job.

Enough of my ramblings, go read this yourself!
Basically, It's Over - A parable about how one nation came to financial ruin. By Charles Munger

Myth of Asia

Baby Chao sent me this article entitled The Myth of Asia's Miracle written by Nobel prize winner Paul Krugman. It is important to note that this article was written in 1994, which predates the greatest tech boom in US in the late 90s and the implosion of Asian financial crises in 1997.

The underlying thesis of this article is that "sustained growth in a nation's per capita income can only occur if there is a rise in output per unit of input". And that the growth in GDP of the Asian countries are driven by increasing inputs (capital and labour) and not increasing productivity (output per unit of input).

The message that was not made explicit is; collectivist, authoritarian state is NOT inherently better at achieving economic growth than free-market democracies.

Collectivist + authoritarian. Sounds like a country I know quite well.

Or do I?

The growth of Singapore between 1966 to 1990 was contrasted against the Soviet Union's method of growth. Essentially HUGE growth in input --> resulting in unsustainable per capita income.

Caveat: The last time i took formal econs lesson was many years ago in JC, so it is likely that I am totally wrong!

As i'm more familiar with finance and accounting stuff, the following is a loose analogy:

Assuming that all 'inputs' in a country are things like labour, factories, intellectual property, machines, etc. and that 'output' - GDP is like net profit.

To increase Net Profit, all you have to do is to increase your assets employed. As long as you can constantly raise capital to buy more assets, then your net profit can increase.

However, for the growth in earnings to be sustainable, there is a need to increase return on assets and not the asset base itself. There is a natural limit on the growth of a company as more assets are deployed, the return on capital revert to the cost of capital, and the company faces diminishing return, thus earnings growth slows down.

Though i know little economic theory and data, I find Krugman essay was very logical and may have great impact on economic policies.

I googled on Singapore's productivity, and is surprised at the ranking as shown below in chart form from Straits Times;

source: http://www.straitstimes.com/STI/STIMEDIA/pdf/20100201/020110productivity02.pdfdf

Of course productivity is not the end of the story. If it cost us $2 to employ a cheap foreign laborer who produce 1 unit of work, eg sweeping 1 kg of leaves, vs spending $1000 to employ Superman to blast off the leaves (100 kg), Superman is undoubtedly more productive by a factor of 100, but it does not mean that Singapore is better employing Superman to clear the street.

Now the issue is how do we ensure a prosperous country AND equity within the society. Some part of me believes that there must be a trade off between prosperity and equity.

Of course our forward looking government set up a committee to look into how we should position Singapore for the next phase of growth. Btw, I love the name of the committee - ESC...look at your keyboard...

It is interesting that key recommendations no longer focus so much on labor growth, but focuses growth on Innovation and Skill. "We must shift to achieving GDP growth by expanding productivity rather than the labour force. We must boost productivity in order to stay competitive, upgrade the quality of jobs, and raise our people’s incomes. A slower growing workforce makes it all the more important for every enterprise to innovate to create more value, and to maximise the potential and performance of every worker."

Now it seems that we are back to Krugman's issue that real economic growth comes from innovation. And innovation is supported by a liberal and vibrant marketplace, which creates new jobs, new opportunities, etc. The BIG question left unanswered is that can government plan for innovation? And to mobilize resources to create a innovative society? In a society which frowns upon failure, the path to innovation and creation will be challenging. I sure hope that somehow somewhat we'll get through this century stronger and better - but who and what will be sacrificed in the process?

To read the full ESC recommendation, click here.

You Pay A Very High Price For A Cheery Consensus

The annual letter to the value fund - Longleaf Partners Fund is out.

Buffett has said that the true test of a fund is to see its performance over a complete market cycle. Many called the last 10 years the lost decade, where stock investments yields you slightly negative annual return. However, over the same period, Longleaf Partners has returned over 67.7% in total.

In the above letter, there is some interesting discussion on the importance of macro economic understanding to a value investor.

Also read this 1979 Fortune article written by Buffett - You Pay AVery High Price In the Stock Market For A Cheery Consensus . Remember before 1980, for a decade almost nobody wants to own stock. I also love the analogy of treating a basket of stocks as a Dow when trading below book value to a discounted bond. And that the return on equity to be thought of as a coupon rate.

There was also a discussion on replacement value accounting vs. GAAP accounting. haha. Accounting Theory taken last year has opened my eyes to things I've not seen before.

And I can't help but laugh at the editor's note:

Warren Buffett is a down-to-earth man of 48 who prefers to operate out of his native Omaha rather than in the canyons of Wall Street, but the pros regard him as possibly the most successful living money manager, a direct descendant of the legendary Ben Graham under whom he studied. Buffett made a fortune for himself and his clients in the Fifties and Sixties but threw in the towel in 1969 because he could no longer find bargains. Then in late 1974, when the Dow Jones industrials were below 600 and the air was thick with doom, he told Forbes: "I feel like an oversexed man in a harem. This is the time to start investing." Within months, the greatest rally in history began, with the DJI running almost 450 points in a bit over a year. What does Buffett think now? In this article, he puts it bluntly: Now is the time to buy. "

The One with Cheese and Chocolates

Kraft sold its pizza business to Nestle and bought Cadbury.

Read this transcript to learn why Warren Buffett opposes the dealS.

On selling the pizza business:

1. Kraft sold the (frozen) pizza business at $3.7 bn, but net of tax will receive only $2.5 bn.

2. The pizza business earns 280 Million pre-tax income on $2.1 bn in sales which has been growing over the years.

3. He thinks that giving up $ 280 million in earnings in exchange for $ 2.5 bn is a bad deal for the seller. We can infer that paying $2.5 bn for $280 million is a GOOD deal for the buyer (ie PE of around 8.9x).

On buying the chocolate business:

1. Kraft stated that they are paying 13x EBITDA

2. Buffett told the interviewer that DEPRECIATION IS A VERY REAL EXPENSE. (i believe he meant capital expenditure to keep the business in place)

3. There will be about 1.3 bn in restructuring charges.

4. Part of the ''currency" used for this transaction is Kraft's undervalued stock. Thus they are acquiring Cadbury at more than 13x EBITDA based on intrinsic value of stock.

(the above two paragraph of numbered points were extracted from the transcript, the following is my analysis... ...proceed with care, cuz this author is famously careless)

"So, the actual multiple, if you look at the value of the Kraft stock, is more like 16 or 17 and they sold earnings at nine times. So, it's hard to get rich doing that. And I've got a lot of doubts about the deal."

From the above statement, we can reverse engineer what may approximate Kraft's intrinsic value per share.

Let us just convert all the deal details available at Kraft's website into USD.

840 pence per Cadbury share for 500 pence in cash and 0.1874 New Kraft Foods Shares

at the exchange rate of 1.63 USD/GBP

840 pence = 13.69 USD ----(1)

500 pence = 8.15 USD ---- (2)

0.1874 Kraft shares at $29.58 = 5.54 USD ----(3)

Check: (1) = (2) + (3) , therefore balance

Since Kraft's statement states that at the current deal price, it is acquiring at 13 x EBITDA, then

13.69 / EBITDA = 13

EBITDA = 1.0533

Mr Buffett said that Kraft is paying at least 16 x EBITDA based on kraft's intrinsic value, thus value of deal at

16 x EBITDA = 16 x 1.0533 = 16.853 USD ----(4)

0.1874 Kraft shares = (4) Less Cash component (2) = 16.853 - 8.15 = 8.703

Intrinsic value of 1 Kraft share = 8.703/0.1874 = 46.44

Compare this to the closing price of 29.58, no wonder Buffett is against the deal as (I think) he believes that the company is selling at 35% discount to intrinsic value!

However, I would like to add that Kraft is expected to earn around $2 per share. Is Kraft worth 23x PE based on share price of 46.44? Of course PE is a super shorthand to estimate value. However, i find this an interesting exercise as this is one of the few times in recent years that Buffett 'reveals' his estimation of intrinsic value.

Also note that for 2008, on 3 bn in net profit, almost 4bn of operating cashflow is generated and CAPEX (with growth) is about 1.3 bn. So maintenance CAPEX maybe way less than 1.3 bn, with free cashflow exceeding net income, which means that EPS multiple maybe a lousy way to estimate value to the long term owner.

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Actually I don't quite know who I wrote the above post for, cuz most friends who read this blog will probably stop at the first line. haha. So I wrote it mostly for myself, to remind me that Price does NOT equal Value, and that smart people may do things that are not too smart things, and that I must not fall prey to over-enthusiastic promoters (however well intended they might be).

Also any readers who find errors in my reasonings or calculations, please tag or comment to set me right.