Value investor Chuck Akre has beaten the S&P 500 in 9 out of the last 10 years. His 10-year cumulative return until Dec. 31, 2011, was 188%, while the S&P just gained 35%. Chuck Akre looks for companies that have high return on equity with a wide moat, treat shareholders as partners, and have the ability and capacity to reinvest. He calls this the three-leg stool. To understand more about his investment philosophy, please read the transcript of his talk at the 8th Value Investor Conference and GuruFocus interview with him.

We have just updated the first quarter portfolio of Chuck Akre. He has been buying a lot more stocks than selling. As of March 31, 2012, Akre Capital Management LLC owns 38 stocks with a total value of $975 million. These are the details of the buys and sells:

• New Purchases: MCO, V, SHLD, LUK, LPS, MTG, UA,
• Added Positions: MA, AMTD, LPLA, AMT, TJX, NLY, ROST, AAPL, HIG, DHIL, PRMW,
• Reduced Positions: PENN,
• Sold Out: BDX, TECH,

Chuck Akre has 44% of his portfolio in non-bank financials. He has MasterCard (MA) as his largest position, and continued to add to this position. His second-largest and long-term holding American Tower (AMT) is about 10% of his portfolio. Markel Corp (MKL) is his fifth-largest holding. The Chief Investment Officer of Markel Tom Gayner is a good friend of Chuck Akre.

Chuck Akre likes MasterCard. He likes the business of earning a piece of trillions of transactions across of the world. The business has a 45% of free cash flow return. It needs little capital to grow; therefore management can repurchase billions of dollars of shares per year. The market still has huge room to grow as only about 15% of the world’s transactions are in credit card payments. He favors MasterCard over Visa because MasterCard has a smaller market share in the U.S., and it has more room to grow.

Chuck Akre also bought into Visa. Apparently he likes both of them. His purchase prices were between $99.11 and $120.06, with an estimated average price of $103.87. The impact to his portfolio due to this purchase was 3.6%. His holdings were 300,000 shares as of March 31, 2012.

Chuck Akre also bought Sears and Leucadia. Both are run by the Gurus we track, Edward Lampert and Ian Cumming. Leucadia is now traded at below book value. Our columnist has written detailed research on Leucadia, submitted to our Value Idea Contest. You can read it here: Value Contest Submission – Leucadia.

Here is the complete portfolio of Chuck Akre. Also check out the Undervalued Stocks, Top Growth Companies and High Yield stocks of Chuck Akre.

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