William Smead
Chief Executive Officer
Chief Investment Officer

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Dear Clients and Prospective Clients:

One of the most famous parables in the Bible can be found in the book of Luke, the Seventh Chapter. Jesus compares the Kingdom of God to farming. The farmer spreads seed around the land. Some falls on the path, gets trampled and eaten by birds. Some lands on the rocks and does not grow due to a lack of moisture. Some grows up among the thorns and gets choked in the process. Some falls on good soil and yields 100 times itself.

In the long run, the stock market is the same as farming. Most investors use an approach designed to produce short-run success. Some use momentum models designed to get on the hot path, only to get eaten up by paying too much for future success. Some invest in concept stocks and buck such low probabilities that their losers rob all the moisture from their winners. Some seek to predict the economy or use wide asset allocation and choke on errant macro-economic predictions or faith in obscure or illiquid asset classes. Some rely on wide moats and the generation of ample and long lasting free cash flow that can make many times their original investment over many decades.

At Smead Capital Management, we’d like to focus on the successful part of the farming analogy. It refers to “good soil”. What is good soil for an investor? We believe it is buying shares of an outstanding business for less than its intrinsic value and holding it for years as the company continues to succeed. We believe we are more likely to do that in companies which will survive and prosper much longer than other companies. The most important factors in longevity for a public company are balance sheet, product necessity and strength of moat.

To understand why we think this way we would like to refer you to the writing of Brett Arends of the “Wall Street Journal” in a May 11th article called, “How to Value Stocks? Ignore Economic News”. In it he chronicles the work of Ben Inker, Director of Asset Allocation at contrarian fund company Grantham Mayo Van Otterloo & Company (GMO). Inker points out that the present value or intrinsic value of a company is the discounted value of all future cash flows and dividends. And Inker can’t understand why people put so much emphasis on what is going on in the stock market right now or in the economy next year when they seek to analyze common stocks. He thinks they are mistaken for two reasons.

First, because most of the value of shares really depends on the cash they will generate many years, even decades, ahead. The next few years are only a minuscule part of the equation. “Since stocks do not have an expiration date and dividends grow over time,” Mr. Inker argues, “the duration of stocks is extremely long. If we assume that half of the return from stocks in a given year comes from the dividends and half from the growth in dividends, most of the value of stocks comes from cash flows in the distant future.”

How distant? Using Mr. Inker’s hypothesis, it turns out that about 75% of the value of shares is actually based on dividends that will be paid more than eleven years from now. Half the value is based on dividends to be paid after 25 years, and a quarter on those to be paid after about 50 years.

In other words, when you look at the market today, three quarters of its true value is based on what companies will earn and pay out after 2020 and half is based on what they will do after 2034. So really, how much attention should you pay to next quarter’s earnings?

We at SCM love his logical and mathematical conclusion. Since most of the current value of a company comes from discounting cash flows and dividends coming years and decades from now, our analysis should be spent trying to ferret out the companies which can survive at high levels of profitability the longest. It reminds us of why Warren Buffett paid an astounding 18 times trailing earnings to buy a large stake in Coca Cola back in 1988. When asked why Buffett answered, “‘Let’s say you were going away for ten years,’ he explained. and you wanted to make one investment and you know everything that you know now, and you couldn’t change it while you’re gone. What would you think about?’” He knew that he could discount cash flows and dividends thirty, forty and even fifty years out and Inker proves that those future flows make up most of the current or intrinsic value of a stock.

His second reason is that economic performance follows a fairly consistent long-term path and gravitates towards the mean. If the economy has been terrible, it is likely to revert back to acting better. If it has been terrific for quite awhile, it is headed for difficulty. At SCM we are asking whether the current economic trouble is making our companies more or less likely to survive and prosper for many decades? We think the overwhelming answer is that the current circumstances are making the kinds of companies we like to own more likely to survive! Six Flags declares bankruptcy and Disney gets stronger. Washington Mutual disappears and Wells Fargo gets stronger. Nobody wants to finance young biotechs, so Merck and Pfizer will buy most of the great future science. The list goes on and on. The economic cleansing of the last two years has done more to strengthen and widen the moats of strong balance sheet companies with powerful brands and distribution chains than any phase in history in our opinion. However, since these facts are long term in nature, the marketplace actually discounts these virtues rather than giving them their usual premium. We believe that the next few years could very well rectify the under valuation of the most valuable franchises in business and our companies could turn out to be “good soil”. We will leave investments on the path, on a rock or in the thorns to someone else.

Best Wishes,

William Smead

The information contained in this missive represents SCM’s opinions, and should not be construed as personalized or individualized investment advice. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. The securities identified and described in this missive do not represent all of the securities purchased or recommended for our clients. It should not be assumed that investing in these securities was or will be profitable. A list of all recommendations made by Smead Capital Management with in the past twelve month period is available upon request.

William Smead
Chief Executive Officer
Chief Investment Officer

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Dear Clients and Prospective Clients:

At the start of the year, we at Smead Capital Management predicted that 2009 would be like 1988. In the aftermath of the 1987 Stock Market Crash the market thrashed around violently in both directions before settling at the end of the year with about a 10% gain counting dividends. People had to put up with a great deal of volatility to earn that gain in 1988 and we felt that 2009 would look similar. We are halfway through the year and 2009 appears to be 1988 on steroids. The down swings and upswings have already been huge, but the stock market is about where it started the year.

We also have felt that the economy would begin to grow again once we got past the massive “reset” in consumer spending which started in September and October of 2008. Spending figures are typically measured against the prior year. We have continued to believe the year over year retail sales comparisons will be positive in the fourth quarter of this year as compared to the economic coma figures of late 2008. The stock market is an anticipatory vehicle and we expected that the market’s rally would begin six to nine months before the economy improved. It did in fact bottom around March 9th or six to seven months before the consumer spending reset turned one year old.

There have been some big surprises for us this year and those surprises are a big part of the market’s recent pullback. We believe that the economic “reset” is going to become the kickoff of an era of slower growth and unwillingness on the part of the average consumer to take on debt. In this slow and consistent era we expect a substantial premium to be placed on the companies which perform well despite the new environment and borrowing reluctance. In the prior era, investors basked in the belief that the growth in emerging market countries like Brazil, Russia, India and China would drive worldwide growth, thus placing a premium on the production and distribution of natural resources like oil, basic materials and fertilizer. These cyclical industries out-performed the market from 2004-2008, got clobbered from the second half of 2008 into the new year and came roaring back in the rally off of the March bottom.

If we are right and investors resign themselves at some point to the new environment, the normal premium for strong balance sheets, brand recognition and consistency of customer base should be reestablished. This means lower P/E ratios for cyclical businesses and higher P/E ratios for companies that meet our strict 8 criteria. What normally is highly valued by investors will take its usual place in the hierarchy of common stocks. We believe this current correction in the market is the beginning of a flow of money away from investor attempts to revive the BRIC trade. We expect to move toward a premium for large quality blue chip companies with relatively non-cyclical businesses. We wait patiently.

Best Wishes,

William Smead

The information contained in this missive represents SCM’s opinions, and should not be construed as personalized or individualized investment advice. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. The securities identified and described in this missive do not represent all of the securities purchased or recommended for our clients. It should not be assumed that investing in these securities was or will be profitable. A list of all recommendations made by Smead Capital Management with in the past twelve month period is available upon request.

William Smead
Chief Executive Officer
Chief Investment Officer

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Dear Clients and Prospective Clients:

If there is any agreement out there among investors, it surrounds the measures being taken by the Federal Reserve to stabilize the financial system and prevent a 1930’s style contraction. These same investors agree that these actions to revive our economy will lead to high levels of inflation. We’ve rarely seen a future expectation get baked into the stock market as quickly as this topic. People from the political right (who bash Obama) and those from the left (who like Warren Buffett love him) are in agreement. Money could be made by playing the devil’s advocate. At Smead Capital Management, we’d like to make the case that this crowd could be wrong. To understand why, we have to take you back to childhood games of Monopoly.

In the winter when we were trapped inside or in the summer when baseball was over, my friends and I played hours of Monopoly. The game is played on a board representing four streets or neighborhoods. Each player starts with $2000 in cash and collects $200 for every time they pass Go. The bank exists for collecting payments for the purchase of properties and buildings. Its second function is paying rewards that can be reaped by landing on certain favorable squares. While one travels around the board, they can use their money to buy properties. If you accumulate two to three properties in the same neighborhood, you can buy houses and ultimately hotels to place on your properties. When an opposing player lands on your property, they pay you rent. The more real estate you own as well as the amount of additions (houses and hotels) to the property, the greater the rent that is paid. The object of the game is to create monopolies and eventually bankrupt your opponents.

To this point the actions of Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve Board have been both systematic (backing money-market funds) and stimulative (dramatically growing the money supply). They sought to and succeeded in driving down interest rates and reestablished normal inter-bank borrowing in the process. Both conservatives and liberals are convinced that the huge increase in the money supply (printing of money) will result in an economic recovery which is followed soon after by very high levels of inflation.

Bernanke’s actions are the equivalent of doubling the amount of money held by the bank in the game of Monopoly. If the bank has twice as much money and you pass Go, they give you $200 just like when the bank had less. None of the bank paid rewards change because of the bank having more money. The only way to inflate the game or inflate the economy is to directly put money into the hands of the players. Ironically, to speed up the game as kids, we did just that and gave each player an extra $2,000 or stuffed the center area with thousands of dollars. The more money players had, the faster they bought property and buildings. The faster the Monopolies developed, the faster that everyone but the winner went bankrupt.

The Federal Reserve has increased the money supply immensely, but the institutions and systems for putting the money into the hands of the players are not functioning. Banks are building capital to meet stress tests and working hard to work through existing loans on the books. Non-bank lenders have practically disappeared from lending and securitization is nearly non-existent. Savers sit in CD’s and money-market funds at dismally low interest rates and borrowers cut spending to pay off prior debts and build meaningful savings. They are passing Go and getting the same $200 even though the bank has twice as much money as they did before. Investors have twice as much cash in money market funds as any historical low point in the stock market for forty years. The lower rates are great for getting through the existing debts, but are a big drag on the incomes of conservative fixed-income investors.

Unless the Federal Reserve starts paying $400 for passing Go or people who have learned all the negatives about borrowed money suddenly start borrowing again, the inflation fears are over-blown at best and possibly dead wrong at worst. We will see you at Boardwalk or Park Place if these fears prove incorrect.

Best Wishes,

William Smead

The information contained in this missive represents SCM’s opinions, and should not be construed as personalized or individualized investment advice. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. The securities identified and described in this missive do not represent all of the securities purchased or recommended for our clients. It should not be assumed that investing in these securities was or will be profitable. A list of all recommendations made by Smead Capital Management with in the past twelve month period is available upon request.

William Smead
Chief Executive Officer
Chief Investment Officer

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Dear Clients and Prospective Clients:

Mike Myers is a very talented writer and comedian. His Austin Powers movies really hit my funny bone. In the second Austin Powers movie, Austin’s arch nemesis Dr. Evil clones himself. His clone looks just like him, but is less than half as tall and attempts to be just as evil on a pound for pound basis. Mini-Me, as his clone is called in the movie, creates strife between Dr. Evil and his son, Scott. Scott was the product of Dr. Evil’s dalliance with Frau Farbissina, a loyal employee who he “got weird” with.

Bespoke Investment Research reported yesterday that Oil has now gone up 108% in price per barrel in 118 calendar days. It is the sixth best bull run in the commodity since 1986. Four of those bull runs occurred in the huge secular move from $11 per barrel in late 1998 to the peak at $147 one year ago. This one and the 164% increase when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in the summer of 1990 are the most violent in the shortest amount of time. The four other 100% plus gains in price lasted a minimum of 453 days to a maximum of 542. The huge run from $11 to $147 per barrel culminated in a Malthusian orgy and sought to validate a theory called “Peak Oil”. This theory held that the un-interrupted growth in emerging economies around the world was coinciding with the peak of worldwide oil production. In effect, Dr. Evil (those countries producing Oil and companies involved in producing it) would hold the rest of the world hostage and demand “Millions” of dollars (he meant billions and trillions) in ransom.

In the minds of Smead Capital Management there were at least four big problems with all the excitement about “Peak Oil”. First, it was predicated on uninterrupted growth in emerging markets and that has already been debunked. Second, high prices and fat profit margins caused over-production as every country or company which could find and produce oil did. Third, and most importantly, it assumes that the largest oil consumption country (U.S.A) will not permanently modify its behavior. We believe that we will move away from gasoline powered transportation producing air pollution, just as we moved away from horse transportation activated by oats and hay (resulting in manure) between 1910 and 1925. Everything moves faster nowadays and the huge economic reset of the last year and the will of the Obama Administration seem to have jumpstarted the process. Lastly, the move from $11 to $147 per barrel culminated in a “bubble”. And “bubble” markets can have bounces, but they don’t get put back together for a minimum of 5 to 7 years from what we read and know of history.

This year’s run from $32 to $72 per barrel looks and acts like last year’s activity, but we think it is a Mini-Me among oil rallies. It is predicated on the idea that emerging economies will lead us out of the worldwide recession. Under that assumption, the use of oil and other commodities would be at the forefront of the economic recovery. Today’s oil bulls think oil is the best place to be because the building of infrastructure, in their minds, will dominate the economic recovery. This compares to U.S. consumers who have permanently reset their spending at lower levels. We think they are wrong. Even though China or India have one billion people their consumers still control a pittance or Mini-Me level of buying power in comparison to the average American. An old and true business adage says, “If nothing is sold, nothing is produced.” Most production is held hostage by retail sales. Just ask any automobile company today and they will reinforce us. If the U.S. economy doesn’t come back, don’t hold your breath waiting for everyone else to get their “Mojo” back.

We believe we are in the midst of what we think is a Mini-Me rally in Oil which is attracting the same kind of hot money that it attracted in the first half of 2008. It would like to hold our economic recovery hostage and hog up investment capital. Don’t believe this rally in Oil. We think it is “catnip for clones”.

Best Wishes,

William Smead

The information contained in this missive represents SCM’s opinions, and should not be construed as personalized or individualized investment advice. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. The securities identified and described in this missive do not represent all of the securities purchased or recommended for our clients. It should not be assumed that investing in these securities was or will be profitable. A list of all recommendations made by Smead Capital Management with in the past twelve month period is available upon request.

William Smead
Chief Executive Officer
Chief Investment Officer

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Dear Clients and Prospective Clients:

There are two opinions we hold at Smead Capital Management which are very contrary to the conventional wisdom in the marketplace. First, we feel that we are much closer to behavioral changes in the automobile and environmental world than most people think. Second, we believe we are about to enter a long stretch of outperformance among U.S. stocks by large capitalization companies which fit our eight criteria. We think our “gut feelings” on these subjects are correct, but once in a while you need a little encouragement when your opinion is especially contrary. Jeremy Grantham, of Grantham, Mayo, Van Otterloo & Co. (GMO) fame, is probably the most respected institutional asset allocator in the world today. He chose in the last few weeks to forcefully back us on our arguments and reasoning.

For our thoughts on Oil and Oil-oriented investments, see our recent Missive titled “Bull Markets in Oats and Hay”. Our thesis assumes that the change to electric and hybrid cars will be much swifter than most investors think (5 to 10 years). This swift transition could destroy the “Peak Oil” mentality which had developed last year as oil reached $147 per barrel. It took 25 years for the U.S. to move from horses to cars (1900 to 1925) and we believe everything changes much faster now than in the past. We are under-weighting Oil and Oil service stocks despite their recent popularity.

Grantham seems to be in agreement on the changes in autos, but his opinion is driven by climate change. In a recent interview with Smart Money he said this: “The people who move quickly in this market can make money. The people who invest in energy alternatives will make more. Alternative energies and combating climate change are the single most important economic initiatives over the next 10 years-really over the next 50 years. It will be a very exciting next 50 years.” A victory for energy alternatives is a loss for Oil and Oil Service companies in our opinion.

We always like our investment style of seeking out high quality “blue chips” companies which are out of favor, but once every 10 to 15 years they get especially attractive relative to all the other places people can put their money in the U.S. Grantham and his firm run intense mathematical models to try and determine which asset classes should perform the best over the next seven years. They now manage directly over $80 billion in assets. Here is what Grantham said in a series of interviews at Morningstar’s recent investor conference and Forbes magazine:

Grantham expects a subset of U.S. stocks — those he labels “high quality” — to produce after-inflation annualized returns of 11.5% over the next seven years. Five-and-a-half percentage points on an annualized basis is an enormous difference — and gives investors plenty of incentive to identify those “high quality” stocks.

Although Grantham doesn’t directly define “high quality,” he provides some clues in an interview with Forbes in which he said, “And the best bet, for my money, then and now, a year later, was to buy the great franchise companies, the great quality companies.” This suggests that he favors companies that possess a moat — a sustainable competitive advantage — and that earn excess returns over their cost of capital.

At Smead Capital Management we have solved Jeremy Grantham’s dilemma and have come up with the eight criteria below to define high quality and use it to create our common stock portfolios.

1) Strong Balance Sheet – Preferably more cash than debt, the ability to pay off debt in the next couple years out of free cash flow or companies with debt that have very consistent customer bases

2) Long History of Profits and Dividends (or stock buybacks)

3) History of Shareholder Friendliness – Making shareholder friendly choices with available capital

4) Strong Insider Ownership – Preferably with recent purchases

5) Easy to Understand – Business meets a sustainable economic need

6) High levels of free cash flow

7) Wide Moat – High levels of profitability maintained by barriers to entry

8 ) Low Price in relation to the fundamentals of the business (price-to-earnings/sales/cash flow/book value) in comparison to the last five years

Grantham believes as we do that economic growth could be muted by the debts over-hanging the economy from the last ten years. He thinks that China and India can’t grow as fast without the U.S. returning to our prior spending levels and he doesn’t foresee that in the next seven years. We believe a huge number of retirement age baby boomers could result in sustained high unemployment figures. This “New Boomer Austerity” or attitude could cause the existing spending “reset” (like what we’ve seen since September of 2008) to last for as long as a decade. In that environment, competing with financially strong and well entrenched companies like WalMart, Microsoft, Merck and Disney could be difficult at best and impossible in many cases. The ultimate irony of all this is these “quality” companies trade at or below market P/E ratios and pay above average dividends for the most part. Numerous years of under-performance and reversion to the mean is driving GMO’s computer models and Jeremy’s opinion. Our stomachs are strengthened!

Stay thirsty for investment success my Friends,

William Smead

The information contained in this missive represents SCM’s opinions, and should not be construed as personalized or individualized investment advice. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. The securities identified and described in this missive do not represent all of the securities purchased or recommended for our clients. It should not be assumed that investing in these securities was or will be profitable. A list of all recommendations made by Smead Capital Management with in the past twelve month period is available upon request.