I know, I know, the headline above is not earth-shattering news. Every quarter dozens of the world's best investors disclose their holdings to the world via SEC filings (granted, the data is about 45 days outdated, but it still gets lots of attention). It's easy for individual investors to follow well-known money managers into certain stocks, figuring that they can piggyback on their best ideas. I can certainly find far worse investment strategies for people to implement, but it is still important to understand that even the best investors make mistakes. And there is nothing stopping the stocks you follow certain people into from being one of the mistakes rather than one of the home runs.
I think this topic fits right in with my previous post on Sears. Not only is Eddie Lampert the company's CEO and largest shareholder, but he is one of the best hedge fund managers of the last 25 years. It is perfectly reasonable to assume that a billionaire in his position would be primed to create tons of value for investors. And yet, since Lampert orchestrated the merger of Kmart and Sears, which formed Sears Holdings in 2005, the stock price has dropped from $101 the day the deal was announced to $40 a decade later. Adjusted for dividends and spin-offs received over that time, Sears stock has fallen by about 40%, while the S&P 500 index has risen by about 80% during the same period. Eddie Lampert's ownership and involvement alone has meant little for investors' portfolios. Simply put, Sears Holdings has been one of his mistakes.
Interestingly, many of the company's steadfast bulls point to the fact that another very smart and successful investor, Bruce Berkowitz of Fairholme Capital Management, owns 23% of Sears Holdings. That's right, Lampert and Berkowitz own or control 70% of the company. Berkowitz isn't new to the Sears investor pool either; he started buying the stock in 2005 just months after Sears Holdings was created. How can both of these guys have been so wrong about Sears for so long? It's not a tricky question. Neither of them is perfect and they have made (and will continue to make) mistakes. It really is that simple. Since I have written about Eddie Lampert many times since this blog was launched ten years ago, I think it would be interesting to try and figure out why Bruce Berkowitz has been on the losing end of Sears.
Berkowitz's background is in analyzing financial services companies, which is why you will often find most of his capital allocated to banks and insurance companies. Those industries are his bread and butter. In fact, Berkowitz's flagship Fairholme Fund had more than 80% of its assets invested in just four companies as of February 28, 2014: AIG, Bank of America, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac. If that doesn't signal his preponderance for financial services companies, I don't know what would.
Now, Berkowitz has not been shy about why he invested in Sears Holdings; he thinks there is a ton of hidden value in its vast real estate portfolio. Unfortunately, his trading record in Sears (he first bought the stock during the third quarter of 2005 at prices well over $100 per share) shows that real estate might not be one of his areas of expertise. Warren Buffett has popularized the term "circle of competence" and tries very much to only invest in companies he understands very well. That's why up until recently (his 2011-2013 purchases of IBM shares bucked the trend) Buffett has avoided technology stocks.
I would postulate that real estate investments do not fit squarely into Bruce Berkowitz's circle of competence. As you will see below, his trading record in Sears underscores this, but we have also seen it with his massive and long-standing investment in St Joe (JOE), a Florida real estate developer.
Below is a quarterly summary of Fairholme Capital Management's historical trading in Sears stock (I compiled the data via SEC filings). Of the 24.5 million shares Fairholme currently owns, more than 55% (13.6 million) were purchased over a 15-month period between July 2007 and September 2008, at prices averaging about $110 per share. More troubling is that this was when real estate prices in the U.S. were quite bubbly, coming off a string of record increases (most local markets peaked in 2006 and 2007) and Berkowitz was largely investing in the company for the real estate. The timing was quite poor. All in all, if we assume that Fairholme paid the average price each quarter for Sears, the firm's cost basis is about $85 per share (before accounting for spin-offs).
St Joe (JOE) has also turned out to be one of his relatively few mistakes. It could certainly be merely coincidence that both the Sears and St Joe investments were made based on perceived (but yet-to-be-realized) real estate value, but I'm not so sure. Like with Sears, Fairholme Capital Management has a very large stake in St Joe. In fact, Fairholme is the largest shareholder (owning about 27% of the company) and Bruce Berkowitz is Chairman of the Board (sound familiar?). Berkowitz started buying St Joe during the fourth quarter of 2007, around the same time he was massively increasing his investment in Sears. His largest quarterly purchase was during the first quarter of 2008 (talk about bad timing), when he purchased more than 9.2 million shares (37% of his current investment).
St Joe's average trading price during that quarter was about $38 per share, but subsequent purchases have been at lower prices, so the losses here are not as severe as with Sears. By my calculations (see chart below), Fairholme's average cost is around $28 per share, versus the current price of about $20 each. But again, not only has the investment lost about 30% of its value, but the S&P 500 has soared during that time, so the gap in performance is so wide that it would take a small miracle for either of these investments to outpace the S&P 500 index over the entire holding period, as the returns needed to make up for 7-10 years of severe losses during a rising stock market are significant.
Now, the purpose of these posts is not to point out the few big mistakes two very smart investors have made over the last decade, while failing to mention their big winners. Any of my readers can look at the history of the Fairholme Fund or ESL Partners (Eddie Lampert's hedge fund) and see that they both have posted fabulous returns over many years. The point is simply to show that sometimes these investors make mistakes, even with companies where they own and/or control a huge amount of the stock. Just because Eddie Lampert and Bruce Berkowitz are involved in a major way (either in ownership, operationally, or both), it does not ensure that the investment will work out great for those who eagerly follow them. Just because they are smart investors does not mean these are "can't miss" situations. There are plenty of people who are sticking with Sears because of Eddie, or sticking with St Joe because of Bruce. That alone, however, is not necessarily a good reason to invest in something.
I will leave you with one more example of Bruce Berkowitz making a large bet on a stock outside of his core financial services wheelhouse. At the end of the third quarter of 2008 Fairholme Capital Management owned a stunning 93 million shares of pharmaceutical giant Pfizer (PFE). It was an enormous position for him and was featured in many investment magazines. This single $1.73 billion investment represented as much as 24% of end-of-quarter total assets under management for Fairholme, and all of those shares were purchased over a 26-week period in 2008 (more than 3.5 million shares purchased, on average, every week for six months).
Now, given how large of a bet this was, even by Bruce Berkowitz standards, it would have been easy to assume that this investment would be a home run. But as you can see from the trading data above, Fairholme lost money on Pfizer after holding the stock for only about 18 months. During the fourth quarter of 2009 alone, the firm sold more than 73.4 million shares of Pfizer (after having purchased 73.7 million shares during the second quarter of 2008). Perhaps pharmaceuticals aren't Bruce Berkowitz's bread and butter either. Fortunately for him and his investors, however, his prowess picking banks and insurance companies has helped him compile an excellent track record since he founded his firm in 1997.
Full Disclosure: No position in St Joe or Pfizer at the time of writing, but positions may change at any time.