Longleaf Partners Semi-Annual Report: Energy holdings; Macau

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Longleaf Partners semi-annual report for the first half ended June 30, 2015.

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One of Southeastern’s distinguishing aspects is that we maintain concentrated portfolios for the Longleaf Funds, seeking to invest only in companies that meet our stringent criteria of strong businesses, run by good management, available at deeply discounted prices. This discipline is critical to meeting our absolute return goal of inflation plus 10% and has produced strong longterm relative returns over most of our firm’s 40 year history. However, because the makeup of the Longleaf Funds will be materially different than their indices, our returns will diverge from them, often sharply. These wide swings impact not only short-term returns but can create an end point that weighs on longer term relative results as well. In the recent quarter, the International Fund outperformed its benchmark with the help of several corporate transactions, while the three other Longleaf Funds trailed their respective indices. At this time last year, the Partners, Small-Cap, and Global Funds exceeded their indices over a twelve month time frame, but currently, only the Small- Cap is outperforming the benchmark for the last year.

The difference between now and a year ago is attributable to three things – corporate transactions that have been positive, plus energy prices and Macau gaming, whose declines have overwhelmed the gains that many of our portfolio companies have made. Corporate transactions have built values and driven value recognition, not only in the Small-Cap Fund, but across all four Longleaf Funds. In the second quarter, for example, CK Hutchison (formerly Cheung Kong) was a top performance contributor after Li Kashing and his son, Victor Li, simplified the company structure and split out its real estate properties. Likewise, over the last year, EXOR, FedEx, Level 3, and Graham Holdings have been leading performers, with our partners taking steps to build value through opportunistic corporate transactions. They have done exemplary work, and as long-term business owners, we have been engaged over time with them to varying degrees – from discussing ways to close the price discount with management at Cheung Kong, to praising the premium prices management achieved for asset sales at EXOR, Cheung Kong and Graham Holdings, to advocating share buybacks at discounted prices with FedEx and Graham Holdings, to recommending board members, supporting a CEO change and evaluating consolidation opportunities at Level 3. Our collaboration at these companies is ongoing, and given our excellent partners and the quality of the underlying businesses, we believe their stocks should continue to be strong compounders.

Longleaf Partners: Energy holdings

This good work was largely offset by two challenges to our performance over the last year, including in the recent quarter. Our U.S. energy holdings have suffered under the large decline in commodity prices, and our Macau gaming companies lost big spenders in China’s broadsweeping anti-corruption campaign. We buy companies with a wide margin of safety between the price and our appraisal to help reduce the impact of mistakes in our investment cases. Because of this, our markdowns in these companies have not been as dramatic as the stock declines. Even after adjusting our valuations for the more austere conditions, the quality of our energy assets and of Macau’s hotels and casinos, combined with their capable leadership teams, make us confident that these should be meaningful contributors to strong returns going forward. Any bounce back in commodity prices or high-end gamblers will be additional upside. In our energy investments, lower commodity prices have served as a catalyst to sharpen our management partners’ focus on how best to optimize the returns on their valuable assets. Our discussions with them have been ongoing and productive over the last few years and have contributed to adding board members, monetizing assets, selling all or portions of reserves, and separating disparate segments. In spite of major progress, the work is ongoing. Stock prices have yet to reflect past improvements or significant ones our managements are currently pursuing. We expect to see additional value accretive activity in the remainder of the year and believe that our energy stocks should rise appreciably as they reflect these initiatives. We also have engaged in important and productive dialogue with our partners who operate the Macau casinos we own. Our CEO partners are large owners alongside of us and are building value by buying back deeply discounted shares, investing in high-return projects to increase visitor traffic, shifting their mix towards higher margin mass and premium mass business, diversifying into non-gaming revenue sources that the government supports, refinancing debt at attractive rates, securing long-term credit lines to increase financial flexibility, and exploring ways to maximize returns on a limited supply of baccarat tables. We firmly believe that our energy and Macau investments should be major positive performance drivers over the next one to three years, if not sooner, as managements’ initiatives deliver returns and mass visitors increase.

Longleaf Partners: Portfolio concentration

The examples above illustrate a strong benefit of our portfolio concentration – it enables us to engage deeply with all of our corporate partners in our role as a significant, long-term owner. This engagement differentiates Southeastern from most investment managers and provides us with what we view as an advantage. Our constructive dialogues, often at management’s invitation, help us understand the actions our managers are taking to increase value per share and provide a way to suggest new ideas based on our investment experience. Sustained, historically low interest rates in many countries have helped fuel global mergers, acquisitions, and initial public offerings (IPOs) approaching 2007 peak levels at multiples beyond our appraisals. This environment presents unique opportunities for our businesses to improve their long-term competitive advantages, lower their cost of capital, and get their asset values recognized. We are working in partnership with the boards and managements of our investees to varying degrees as we have historically. We are not only engaged in our normal activity of listening and asking questions; in a number of cases, we are collaborating with management to suggest and pursue changes that build value and capture it now, at a time when many public and private investors are willing to pay premium prices for certain assets. Numerous alternatives for value build and recognition are available currently, such as:

  • Selling real estate, creating real estate investment trusts (REITs) and master limited partnerships (MLPs), and monetizing other yield-driven assets,
  • Splitting conglomerates or disparate business units to gain proper price recognition and value creation optionality,
  • Positioning segments to be sold at strong multiples,
  • Pursuing consolidation that can build value,
  • Using currency dislocation to purchase assets at a discount,
  • Increasing flexibility by locking in longterm debt at incredibly low rates, and
  • Buying in shares that are materially discounted from intrinsic value.

We believe that the Longleaf Funds should meet our absolute return goal of inflation plus 10% and exceed the benchmarks. In our opinion we are well-positioned against stock markets that are more than fully priced. Our holdings’ margin of safety includes not only price-to-value ratios ranging between the mid-60s% to low-70s% but business values that can grow organically with high free cash flow yields, financial flexibility, pricing power, and margin upside. Our companies, including the few with shorter-term challenges, have talented leaders who are examining current corporate activity opportunities to drive near-term shareholder value growth and recognition. Many are also aligned with our interests as meaningful stock owners, and a number have added to their personal stakes. As your managers and the largest shareholders in the Longleaf Funds, we are working to insure that we and the leadership at our investees deliver strong results.

Sincerely,

O. Mason Hawkins, CFA
Chairman & Chief Executive Officer
Southeastern Asset Management, Inc.

G. Staley Cates, CFA
President & Chief Investment Officer
Southeastern Asset Management, Inc.

July 14, 2015

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