No. of Recommendations: 8
Steinberg's article is very good. Thank you for posting. But he too has made an error. Steinberg says:
The letter was posted on Feb 9 when BN was trading at ~$37. During the next quarter, BN dropped to the low thirties (around $32) but Mr. Flatt's response was immaterial - net buybacks of ~$10M in Q1 23, negligible compared with the market cap of ~$50B.Not sure where Steinberg gets buybacks of only 10 million in 1Q 23. Capital Allocation (page 7) in Supplemental Information shows share repurchases of 294 million which is 25% of the 1Q 23 distributable earnings of 1,157. The 25% is in line with what CFO Goodman said in the earnings call.
Return of capital
Dividends 110m
Repurchases 294m
Reinvestment in business
BAM 1040m
Insurance 145m
As Mr. Steinberg has correctly pointed out, there is severe competition for cash in BN. 1,040m was reinvested in BAM which is a lot more than what was received from BAM as DE. With insurance, it's a wash. 145m was received as DE but all of it was reinvested right back.
Clearly, management sees growing BAM as the highest opportunity and therefore it makes sense to hold BAM and benefit from the growth. BN will do well too over time.
I would say no need to overthink BN versus BAM. Just decide what percent of your net worth you would like to allocate to Brookfield as a whole. Split 50-50 or some variation thereof between BN and BAM and be done with it. Then patiently sit back and let Bruce Flatt and team do the work.
