No. of Recommendations: 4
very thoughtful, had to chew on it a bit.
My sense is that for the most part, Brookfield has and does retain a conglomerate discount. Of course it will hit a periodic high time-to-time, but its pretty rare for for flatt , or even most bulls, to ever claim it has become meme-like overpriced.
The conglomerate discount that persists seem to have some general features, the easiest to quantify is perception that managers and shareholders within its subgroups have limited power. Voting shares make this indisputable. Not sure that subsidiaries allow some thematic grouping makes much difference. (Brookfield Business has had its share of companies that could fit into other groups, and vice-versa) An extreme example is that if Brookfield's board decided to completely offload a sub, well it probably could get done.
Again, a comparison to Berkshire is worthwhile, as it enjoys a substantial halo effect for its subs who are subject to even more unidirectional cashflow.
Another more tenuous characteristic for the conglomerate discount is that buybacks dont help much, or only help after very long periods of overperformance in growth and profits. But this may occur longer than the mean shareholder holding period, so attribution would be tough for most to accept.
Again, a comparison to Berkshire is useful, as almost all holders are willing to accept the proclaimed increase in book value. No worry over there about holders ditching for dividend reasons, despite the fact warren drools over dividends from others!
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on another note, its killing me that brookfield looks so inexpensive when so many other good players in the alts space also look good. BN being my largest single-stock holding, some paralysis has set in.
