Owner-managers

[turar]

While responding to another thread, I thought that it might be a good idea to have a thread compiling a list of public companies run by competent owner-managers. Usually, when discussing such companies, the board tends to focus on obvious value investors -- BRK, FFH, LUK, SHLD, etc.

 

There are other owner managers though, who continue building and growing their companies and rewarding their shareholders, and I wonder if you have any in mind.

 

Some that I can think of top of my head are:

 

Bezos of Amazon

Dell of Dell

Ellison of Oracle

etc.

 

I'm sure there are many many more, especially in the small cap area, that might be beneficial to study for potential investment.

[Liberty]

Some that I like and that you haven't mentioned:

 

Larry and Sergey at Google

Robin Raina at EBIX

Chad Wasilenkoff at Fortress Paper

Brian Dalton at Altius Minerals

Bill Berkley at W.R. Berkley

John Michael and the management and employees of RLI (insiders own a big chunk, but it's spread over many people)

[turar]

Thanks Liberty.

 

I don't think Larry and Sergey own much of GOOG though, although they do wield strong control as founders and officers.

[Liberty]

Thanks Liberty.

 

I don't think Larry and Sergey own much of GOOG though, although they do wield strong control as founders and officers.

 

I thought they owned around 15+ billion worth of it each (if that's not a financial incentive, I don't know what is). Will have to look it up...

 

edit: Looks like they've been selling some (probably to diversify in other things), but still own a nice chunk: http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/000119312510011019/d8k.htm

 

Larry and Sergey currently hold approximately 57.7 million shares of Class B common stock, which represents approximately 18% of Google’s outstanding capital stock and approximately 59% of the voting power of Google’s outstanding capital stock. Under the terms of these Rule 10b5-1 trading plans, and as a part of a five year diversification plan, Larry and Sergey each intend to sell approximately 5 million shares. If Larry and Sergey complete all the planned sales under these Rule 10b5-1 trading plans, they would continue to collectively own approximately 47.7 million shares, which would represent approximately 15% of Google’s outstanding capital stock and approximately 48% of the voting power of Google’s outstanding capital stock (assuming no other sales and conversions of Google capital stock occur).

 

And of course, the other part of the 3-headed leader, Eric, owns a bunch too, though not as much.

[turar]

I stand corrected.

 

Another idea -- I wish there were something like an "owner-manager" ETF, where the only criteria for inclusion would be that C-level executives collectively hold over a certain percentage of the company. I wonder what the long term performance of such an ETF would be. As an alternative, board members could also be included, in something like "inside ownership" ETF.

[moore_capital54]

I like Dan Loeb a lot, there is a vehicle called Third Point Offshore Investors (TPOU LN) and its essentially a closed end feeder fund that feeds into the Third Point Offshore Fund, capitalized @ $451mm.

 

I have owned it for a while and am very happy with the results.

 

Another guy I like is Bradley Meier, he is only 42, owns about 34% of Universal Insurance Holdings (UVE), Wharton Grad, has done a great job of consolidating the Florida Homeowners Insurance market, and has generated some amazing cash flows. He has yet to really invest the float in an aggressive manner but I am not sure if he is waiting or if it is just not part of his investment strategy.

 

Another "Interesting" one is PineTree Capital (PNP CN) which is owned/run by Sheldon Inwentash.. While Sheldon doesn't have the best reputation on Bay Street he has created some tremendous value over the years and manages a $700mm portfolio of juniors with no debt. If you want leverage to the resource sector PineTree could be perfect.

 

Another interesting one is OverStock.com (OSTK) The insider group owns about 33% and @ 224mm its priced for insolvency in my opinion, I mean how can anyone rationalize Zynga/Groupon and all these Chinese BS IPO's (Taomee,Qihu/Yoku) which all btw use the metric of "Prices to Sales" LOL, and then OSTK which has $1B in sales is worth only $224mm

[Guest Hester]

Ken Peak at Contango Oil & Gas (MCF).

[DCG]

Mark Benioff of Salesforce.com. Bezos, Jobs, Buffett also stand out.