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Strategies & Market Trends : Value Investing -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Spekulatius who wrote (44345)	9/14/2011 12:23:52 PM
From: Jurgis Bekepuris	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 78602

TRV - I looked at it again and I guess the pre-2004 numbers should be discarded since they did a large acquisition/merger (?) in 2003-2004. gurufocus.com I'll redo my analysis with 2004 as starting year and see if this yields different insights. they realized the overall market is stagnant (soft market since 2007) and rather than hunt for market share, they are just buying back shares There are tons of insurers and re-insurers that did the same thing. L is the most dramatic buyback champion. But almost every company I hold did this: RE, AXS, etc.

To: Spekulatius who wrote (44345)	9/14/2011 11:14:39 PM
From: Jurgis Bekepuris	Respond to of 78602

OK, I looked at my calculations on TRV. I actually calculated the growth from 2004 when the big jump in equity happened. So you are correct that they have grown book value per share 10% annually. This was all due to the share buybacks that reduced shares by 30% since 2004. Although book value growth is distorted by share buybacks, the book value per share growth is much less so. So we can use 10% annual growth. This is average and not outstanding. TRV results this year are also average. Their buyback is actually the biggest of all companies I have looked at, so that's impressive. I still probably won't invest in it.