Ruane, Cunniff & Goldfarb Investor Day 2015 Transcript Part I - Sequoia Fund

Sequoia Fund investor day transcript, May 2015

Disclosures

Please consider the investment objectives, risks and charges and expenses of Sequoia Fund, Inc. (the ‘‘Fund’’) carefully before investing. The Fund’s prospectus contains this and other information about the Fund. You may obtain year-to-date performance as of the most recent month end, and a copy of the prospectus by calling (800) 686-6884, or on the Fund’s website at www.sequoiafund.com. Please read the prospectus carefully before investing. An investment in the Fund is not a deposit of a bank and is not insured or guaranteed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation or any other government agency.

• Average Annual Total Return

The performance data shown represents past performance and assumes reinvestment of dividends. Past performance does not guarantee future results. The investment return and principal value of an investment in the Fund will fluctuate so that an investor’s shares, when redeemed, may be worth more or less than their original cost. Current performance may be lower or higher than the performance data quoted. Year-to-date performance as of the most recent month end can be obtained by calling DST Systems, Inc. at (800) 686-6884.

The S&P 500 Index (the ‘‘Index’’) is an unmanaged, capitalization-weighted index of the common stocks of 500 major US corporations. The Index is not meant to be indicative of the performance, asset composition or volatility of the Fund. The Fund’s results may differ markedly from those of the Index, in either up or down market trends and interest rate environments. Unlike a mutual fund, the performance of an index assumes no taxes, transaction costs, management fees or other expenses. It is not possible to invest directly in an unmanaged index.

As reflected in the current prospectus, the Fund’s Annual Fund Operating Expenses for 2014 were 1.03%. Ruane, Cunniff & Goldfarb, the Fund’s investment adviser, has agreed to reimburse a portion of the Fund’s operating expenses. This reimbursement is a provision of Ruane, Cunniff & Goldfarb’s investment advisory agreement with the Fund and will be in effect only so long as that investment advisory agreement is in effect.

Investing in the Fund involves risk. Investors should carefully review the risks associated with an investment in the Fund and understand those risks before investing. The principal risks of investing in the Fund include market risk, value investing risk, non-diversification risk, foreign (non-US) risk, currency risk, small-cap and mid-cap company risk, managed fund risk and liquidity risk. As of June 30, 2015, the top ten holdings of the Fund included:

Disclosures (continued)

Any sector focuses of the Fund are subject to change, and past returns are not indicative of future returns. The cash generation of a company in which the Fund invests may not continue given market or other conditions, and portfolio turnover may change depending on future circumstances.

Fund holdings and/or sector weighting are subject to change and should not be considered recommendations to buy or sell any securities. Current and future portfolio holdings are subject to risk.

Shares of the Fund are offered through the Fund’s distributor, Ruane, Cunniff & Goldfarb LLC. Ruane, Cunniff & Goldfarb LLC is an affıliate of Ruane, Cunniff & Goldfarb Inc. and is a member of FINRA.

The opinions expressed below are those of the personnel of Ruane, Cunniff & Goldfarb and should not be considered a forecast of future events, a guarantee of future results, or investment advice. The following has been edited for clarity.

Bob Goldfarb:

Good morning and welcome to our investor day. We are going to follow the same format we have followed for a number of years. We will take questions until 12:30. We have to vacate the room by one o’clock but we will be around between 12:30 and one o’clock to answer any questions that you may still have. Before we begin, I would like to introduce our team. On my right are Greg Alexander and Greg Steinmetz. On my left are David Poppe, who is the president of our firm, and Jon Brandt. The rest of our team is seated in the front of the room. In alphabetical order they are: Saatvik Agarwal, Girish Bhakoo, Jon Gross, who is our director of client services, John Harris, Jake Hennemuth, Arman Kline, Antonius Kufferath, Trevor Magyar, Scott O’Connell, Will Pan, Terence Paré, Rory Priday, Chase Sheridan, Inder Soni, Stephan van der Mersch, and Marc Wallach. I would also like to introduce the directors of the Sequoia Fund, who are seated in the front row: Vinny Ahooja, Roger Lowenstein, and Sharon Osberg. Bob Swiggett is away in Africa. Who wants to ask the first question?

Question:

Howard Schiller has resigned as the chief financial officer at Valeant Pharmaceuticals (VRX, Financial) after four years. The Financial Times joked that he may be exhausted from ‘‘all this fiddling.’’ With Valeant’s lofty stock price likely bringing its percentage of our fund’s assets to upwards of 20% and with the company’s accelerated growth likely to be impacted by the specter of rising interest rates, have you been reevaluating our position?

Rory Priday:

He has done quite a bit of fiddling. The market cap since Howard Schiller joined Valeant went from less than $15 billion to over $70 billion today. But I think some people get burned out at the company just because of the number of deals that they do and the number of products that they manage. Some people refer to their time at Valeant as a tour of duty. It was a little concerning for us that he left, but he is going to be on the board hopefully for a long time. He told us that he would be there as long as investors wanted to have him. So I do not think he is going anywhere.1

David Poppe:

The fact that Howard is staying on the board is a pretty strong sign that there are no disagreements or unhappiness. Not so long ago, he was telling us that Valeant closed a deal at eight o’clock at night on New Year’s Eve. It is a very intense pace. Sometimes you make a lot of money and that pace is too much. I think it is more about that than it is about anything else.2

Question:

Last year you spoke about your investment in Rolls-Royce (LSE:RR, Financial). In your December report, it was quite a horror show that was reported for Rolls-Royce. Could you give us an update?

Arman Kline:

We try to be supportive of the companies we invest in, but sometimes we do not agree with the management team. That is what happened at Rolls-Royce. The board has now chosen a new chief executive with whom we are pleased. We have not had a chance to meet him yet, but I was in London last week and met with the board. The strategy seems to be more in line with what we would like to see. We are looking forward to meeting the new CEO. Our initial research on him has been positive. So we are cautiously optimistic, and we continue to think that the core aerospace business at Rolls-Royce is very attractive.

Question:

How do you think about selling a company? Is it because there is a negative development at that company or is it more because of a change in your thesis about an industry?

David Poppe:

If I understood the question correctly, you have noticed that we sometimes sell when there is a negative development at one of our companies. So, is our general strategy to sell upon negative news or do we sell for some other reason? Speaking broadly, we always sell based on valuation. Valuation can seem too high because of negative developments, but every situation is unique. So it depends on what the negative development is. Some things are temporary and fixable, and some things may seem more intractable. We would not be sellers because there is negative news like a short term earnings miss or something like that.

Question:

If I could ask about Valeant as well.... Being students of the family of Berkshire, can you discuss your views and perhaps comment on what Mr. Munger insinuated about Valeant recently?

Bob Goldfarb:

After reading about Mr. Munger’s comments, Rory looked for all the books on Harold Geneen that he could find. I think he is the man to answer your question. Rory?

Rory Priday:

We were not at the Daily Journal meeting, where Mr. Munger made the remark comparing Valeant and ITT. So we do not know exactly what he said. But it was something to the effect that Valeant was like ITT, except that Mike Pearson was worse than Harold Geneen, who became CEO of ITT in 1959. ITT was one of a number of serial acquirers that were active particularly in 1960s. Geneen bought a raft of companies — some of the names you will recognize today like Sheraton and Avis. Bob can provide more context than I can because he is pretty familiar with the company as well. But Geneen bought a lot of disparate businesses in different industries. I recall from the books I read that ITT’s sales went from $700 million to $17 billion over eighteen years and the earnings went from $29 million to $550 million. But ITT also issued a lot of equity and was prone to issue equity in order to buy these companies. By the time Geneen stepped down from the CEO’s spot, ITT’s share count had increased tenfold.

One of the big differences is that Valeant is focused on the healthcare sector. Last year, 57% of sales came from pharmaceuticals. The company is not really going outside the healthcare space, and it is not going far outside pharmaceuticals. There are plenty of pharma companies that operate in different therapeutic areas, and the main ones for Valeant today are dermatology, ophthalmology, and gastroenterology. Another difference is that Mike does not like to issue equity. Even though the Bausch & Lomb and Salix acquisitions required him to issue some equity, the share count has not really moved that much.

If you adjust for the dividend that Valeant paid out before the Biovail merger, earnings per share have gone from 81 cents to probably close to $27 this year. Next year’s EPS will be close to $38 a share. So the earnings will have gone up over 45 times in seven years.

Bob Goldfarb:

My guess, when I saw the comments, was that Charlie might have been targeting Valeant’s accounting. If I were going to question the accounting, the principal issue I would have would be with the accounting for the restructuring charges after Valeant makes a large acquisition. The company and the analysts who follow it add back these restructuring charges to derive the company’s cash earnings. What we do is add back the restructuring charges to the purchase price; so that if Valeant buys a company for $9 billion and there are $500 million of after-tax restructuring charges, the company effectively paid $9.5 billion rather than the $9 billion that it announced initially.

If you deduct the restructuring charges associated with significant acquisitions from a given year’s earnings, I do not think that is accurate accounting even though it does conform to GAAP. When we look at a company’s reported earnings in a given year, we are always searching for a sense of what the true earning power of that company is relative to the stock price. If you deduct the large restructuring charges in a given year, you are not going to get an accurate number for the earning power. Heinz — Berkshire acquired 50% of the company — is an example. Jonny, Heinz had very low earnings last year, right, because of the restructuring charges?

Jon Brandt:

Yes, it did.

Bob Goldfarb:

That was GAAP accounting. Heinz’s earning power is clearly very substantial but it was masked in the accounting by that huge restructuring charge. So when we looked at Berkshire in the year Heinz was acquired, we just added back those restructuring charges to get a better idea of what Heinz was earning, half of which Berkshire3 was earning as well.

Question:

I guess it is no surprise that most of the questions are about Valeant. So I will add one more. A few weeks ago in the papers it was reported that Valeant raised the price on a particular drug by 400% − 500%, within a very short period of time after purchasing the rights to that drug from another company. I was troubled by reading that. I am curious to hear your reaction.

Rory Priday:

I understand why reaction to that could be negative. Obviously, Sequoia and our clients that own Valeant are benefiting from those price increases. But in general, the capitalistic approach to pricing is to charge what the market will bear. Valeant believes that when it buys a drug and it is underpriced, it should charge a price that will maximize the company’s long term cash earnings. Some people maybe feel differently about healthcare. It is obviously a more sensitive topic.

Bob Goldfarb:

Embedded in the asking price for Marathon — which is the company that sold these drugs to Valeant — embedded in the sale price was a significant increase in the price of those drugs. In fact, Rory, what had Marathon’s management been advised to do with its prices?

Rory Priday:

We were told that Marathon had hired a consulting firm that advised it to take huge price increases. So Valeant was following the advice of the consulting firm, not that Mike would shy away from taking a price increase if he saw an opportunity. We are not really sure why the company decided to sell these drugs, but I think part of the reason was that management was looking at selling another asset. So Marathon needed to get this deal done. That is the one that David mentioned earlier when Valeant was working at 8:00 p.m. on New Year’s Eve.

Bob Goldfarb:

A point that the article missed, and I am not faulting the Wall Street Journal, is that either those prices or the volumes at those elevated prices are going to be very short-lived because both of those drugs are subject to genericization and Valeant management expects that they will be genericized within a couple of years. So Valeant had to recoup its investment and more within that short window of time in order to achieve the returns that management was expecting.

Question:

I have a question about World Fuel (INT, Financial). I wanted to ask about the level of confidence that you have in volume growth and pricing trends in the marine, aviation, and land segment over the mid-to-long term and how important you think acquisitions are to the future. I find those mid-to-longer term numbers hard to get my hands around.

Rory Priday:

We did too. We do not own the stock anymore. As I mentioned last year, World Fuel Services is a fuel supplier. It gets credit from some of the major oil companies and uses that credit to buy fuel to sell to various customers in marine, aviation, and land markets. When you talk to the company’s managers, they will point out that World Fuel has very small shares of those markets; so you can get excited about the potential. Any time you look at an investment, you want to look at what percentage of its market it has and how big it can get. One of its biggest competitors in marine fuel went into bankruptcy late last year, but the trouble is that it is still going to be pretty difficult for the company to grow organically at a good enough pace in each of its markets. The markets may be huge, but there are structural reasons why organic growth is difficult to come by.

We thought that most of the growth going forward would come from acquisitions, which is fine — the management team has been terrific. It has presided over a lot of value creation. Mike Kasbar is a great operator and has built a really nice company. The company does smart acquisitions. If you run through the list of deals, on average over the last five or six years, World Fuel probably earns, by my math, between 10% − 12% on its acquisitions. If you had a company that was not growing at all organically and it could invest all its earnings at 10% − 12% each year, it could grow earnings at that rate. But we did not feel confident, owning something like that over a long period of time, that it would get a bigger at a fast enough pace to meet our hurdle rate. So that is why we are out of it.

Bob Goldfarb:

We sold World Fuel Services because it reported a very strong quarter, which to a fair extent was based on the volatility of oil prices, which usually benefits the company. Going back to an earlier question, there are some occasions when we are selling into strength, and others when we are selling because there is a disappointment.

Question:

Would you comment on TJX please?

David Poppe:

We have owned TJX (TJX, Financial) for ... it will be fifteen years this summer. Obviously it has been a terrific stock, a terrific compounder. It still has a very good future. TJX is the largest off-price retailer in the country. Nothing has really changed from prior years, but at this point TJ has become a very large customer for many of the biggest apparel brands in the country and in the world. So it has a very important buying position and great access to merchandise. As a result, it can become a question — the company has become so large in the United States — of how much of what is in the store is actually true surplus that TJX bought versus product that was made for it. That is a tricky thing for TJX to manage. But there are still good growth opportunities in the US, Canada, and Europe. We think Carol Meyrowitz is an excellent CEO, and she has done a fine job. TJ’s number one competitor, Ross, also does very well. So you are at the top; it is a very strong industry; the consumer has shown over time that she is willing to buy this way as opposed to paying a higher price in a department store. So TJ and Ross continue to capture market share, the two of them. But even today, TJ, Ross, and if you add Burlington and Nordstrom Rack and combine them all, they are less than 15% of the US apparel market. So we do not think they are close to a ceiling.

The other thing I would say about TJ is that I get some pushback from people who believe that, to exaggerate a little, all retail sales are just going to move to the Internet, and that people do not want to be in the stores anymore. To go to TJ, you are making a trade of time for price. You are making the trip to the store and combing through those racks of clothes that are not always very well organized. But at the lower price points, it is showing to be very, very hard to make money online in apparel. The average ticket at TJ is about $15 and at Ross probably $10 or $11. We think that there is a consumer who is very willing to make that trade of time for price. Off-price is also difficult — there are very shallow levels of inventory of a very broad assortment of product. And it is very hard to manage a website when the product turns over and is never replenished as it is in conventional retail. So for all those reasons, we think that TJ is fine.

There are a couple negatives. Currency is very much against the company this year. TJ also has a minor pension issue, which will restrain earnings this year. We could have flattish earnings this year after many years of 15%-plus earnings growth. So the stock looks a little more expensive than it has in the past. But I still think the long term outlook for the business is quite good.

Question:

A couple of questions on MasterCard (MA, Financial). Visa (V, Financial) benefits from a lot of the same secular trends that MasterCard does; so I am curious why you guys own MasterCard and not Visa. Secondly, if you could comment on some of the recent acquisitions that MasterCard has made, and the strategic and financial rationale, if you agree with those.

John Harris:

Let’s see, why do we own MasterCard instead of Visa? There is not really a good answer. We should have owned both. We should have owned more of both. We should have owned a lot more of both. It is a tremendous mistake for which I bear significant responsibility. So that is the answer to that.

The acquisitions — I have to be honest with you, and this is self-deprecating and not intentionally so — I have had a tough time understanding many of the acquisitions that these two companies have done over the years. Not just MasterCard, Visa also. Visa plunked down a sizeable amount of money to buy a business called CyberSource, which worked for a couple years and now is not working so well. There is an understanding at the card networks that things will eventually change. It has been remarkable and surprising to me how slow the pace of change has actually been and how as threats have emerged, they have quickly gone by the wayside. It just turns out that the network business model is incredibly resilient. But there is some concern — subconscious, whatever you want to call it — that eventually things may change and that the change is going to be driven by technology. So there is a desire on both of their parts, especially when new CEOs took over at both companies I noticed a marked increase in this desire, to try to ramp up the pace of innovation hopefully to head off some of the technological threats that they see on the horizon. The fact of the matter is that Visa and MasterCard have not traditionally been terribly innovative organizations. They were cooperatives for most of their lives and overseen by bankers. That is all you need to know on that subject.

They are doing their best. To be totally honest, they feel like part of being innovative and doing a good job is buying small innovative businesses. Whether any of them have really added anything, there certainly is no perceptible evidence. It is possible that at some point in the future we will find out that MasterCard is able to adapt to technological change because of some small acquisition it did in the past — it is entirely possible, but I do not see any evidence of it. In the past, for the most part the deals the company has done have been so small that they have had a nonmaterial impact on the financial progress of the business. This year that has changed a little bit. MasterCard did a couple of deals that were pretty meaningfully dilutive to its earnings so that the company is going to have the slowest rate of earnings growth it has had this year since we have owned the stock and since it has been a public company — we have owned it for its entire life as a public company. A lot of that is foreign exchange, which is a real headwind this year. Part of it is those acquisitions, which are detracting in a meaningful way from the earnings.

Bob Goldfarb:

As to why we bought MasterCard rather than Visa, we bought MasterCard in the first few days that it went public. We should have kept going, as John said. Visa went public later and it was priced off MasterCard, which was selling at a significantly higher price at that time than when it went public.

Question:

Would you please comment on the prospects for Tiffany and Richemont?

David Poppe:

I will talk about Tiffany (TIF, Financial) and Saatvik can talk a little bit about Richemont. I will give you the high level view. The high level view we have is that Cartier and Tiffany are two of the great jewelry brands in the world. We have owned Tiffany not consecutively but for most of the last 14 or 15 years; so we feel like we know it pretty well. What I would say about Tiffany is it has grown the topline at about 7% over the last decade, which is good, not great but good. But it is still immature in a lot of parts of the world. Except for Japan, Tiffany was very late to Asia-Pac, very conservative about expanding in Europe. American luxury — I think a lot of Europeans do not believe in it, and Tiffany was conservative about enlarging the store base there. But in the last few years, Tiffany has opened a bunch of stores in Europe including one on the Champs-Élysées in Paris, and done very well. The company has gotten more aggressive in the last few years about opening stores in China, and not only are those stores doing really well, but the engagement ring custom is catching on there as it did in Japan, I want to say in the ‘70s. It seems like that is going to become a custom for people all through Asia as well, which is good for Tiffany since the company has a strong position in higher-priced engagement rings.

Tiffany managers have been very good stewards of the brand and very good store operators, although not as financially sophisticated as they might have been in some cases. So we think there is good operating margin potential for Tiffany. The tax rate is an American tax rate, even though over half the sales come from outside the United States. So there should be good opportunity to manage the tax rate. The company is talking about getting it from 34% − 35% to 30%, which is a good opportunity for earnings growth.

If I think about a sustainable 5% − 6% − 7% − 8% revenue growth rate, operating margins that could be higher, and a lower tax rate, I feel pretty good about Tiffany. Again, the bigger picture is it works everywhere. The comps right now... the earnings this year will be tricky because currency is so much against you when you do a lot of your sales outside the United States, and Tiffany makes a lot of the product in the States. So it is probably going to have a difficult earnings year in 2015. But longer term, branded jewelry is taking share from unbranded jewelry at a rate of something like a point a year. Cartier and Tiffany ought to be two major beneficiaries of that trend.

Saatvik Agarwal:

Richemont is actually more of a watch business than a jewelry business. Its largest and best known brand is Cartier. But Cartier generates more revenue from watches than from jewelry. Plus, Richemont owns a collection of other Swiss watch brands including IWC, Jaeger-LeCoultre, and Piaget. On the jewelry side, branded jewelry has only a 20% market share, and, as David mentioned, it is increasing that by about a point a year. But jewelry sales for Richemont have grown better than 10% a year for something like ten years. More generally, I would say the high end luxury goods business will benefit from the world getting wealthier.

One thing we worry about with Richemont is the dependence on the Chinese and the Asian consumer. We have all heard about the crackdown on gift-giving in China, and gift-giving is in fair part really a code word for corruption in China. Swiss watch sales had gone backwards by about 30% in China. But given the quality of its brands and the quality of the business, we think Richemont has a long runway of growth in front of it. Historically, the business has done a lot better than 6% − 7% revenue growth.

Question:

Could you update us on Precision Castparts (PCP, Financial)? I know that the stock underperformed in 2014. I know it was kind of slowing down. And in 2015, it preannounced a couple quarters back to back. I was wondering if you could update us on that and if you still see compelling value there.

Greg Steinmetz:

We do see compelling value, but it has been a disappointment. It was supposed to earn $16 a share in the fiscal year that we just started. Instead, management is guiding to something like $13. The difficulty has been confined largely to the forged product segment, which is a very high fixed cost business. So when volume goes against you, you really feel it in the margin. We saw a 900 basis point drop in the margin of that segment last quarter. Furthermore, the oil & gas market has gone against Precision. Management had big plans for the oil & gas business, making very large diameter pipes that are highly resistant to corrosion. Precision is the only company on earth that can make that kind of pipe. Management thought that whatever happens with the oil & gas market, the company would be ready, and it would still be able to sell this pipe because of its compelling value. That did not happen, and the company was late to restructure that business and cut costs. The restructuring is now completed; so things should get a little better. Management was expecting $400 million in revenue out of that pipe business last year and only got $200 million, and it will probably be similar this year.

Another thing that has hurt is that Rolls-Royce is aggressively trying to take inventory out of its system. Rolls had too much inventory because managers were worried about not being able to meet delivery schedules and overdid it on inventory. Now they are cutting back the other way. There have been some other issues. Precision makes a lot of parts for the military. Military spares are down 35%. That was not something that the company foresaw happening in the current fiscal year.

That $16 a share was a number that was derived three years ago and as recently as six months ago management was still talking about $16 a share for this year. But lately management recognized that the world had changed and decided to throw in the towel. In addition to the restructuring I mentioned, the company also wrote down some inventory. This year, Precision thinks it is going to make about $13. I think that is a conservative number. Time will tell.

What we like about Precision and why we are keeping it is, as I mentioned, that it is the only company in the world that can make these large diameter highly corrosive resistant pipes. Precision is also far and away the leader in making powdered metal components that are used in large jet engines. It is the only company that can make certain large structural castings, and there are some other things that only Precision can supply. That gives the company a lot of leverage over its customers. Management is not afraid to use it. So it has a very strong competitive position. We also have what should be a growing market for aerospace.

I was with Boeing (BA) management this week — the company is talking about raising the monthly unit deliveries of the narrow body 737 from 42 a month now to 47, and then to 50-something. That could even go to 60 because the backlog is so big, and there is still an enormous appetite even in China — which, as you know, has a soft economy — to get these planes and get them now. The 787 has gone from 10 a month to 12 and that is going to go to maybe 14. So there is growth there. Precision is seeing that in some of its segments. The company will not see it in other areas because of de-stocking at Rolls-Royce. And the build rate for the 747 is being dialed back. Also there is a transition going on from the old models of the 737 and the Airbus narrow body, the A320, from the current generation to a re-engined version. Precision has had to absorb a lot of development costs along the way as that transition has taken place. But now it is coming to an end.

One thing that I think worries people is that, okay, aerospace is going to be a growing market, but is Precision losing share? We all know that because of Precision’s arrogance in the way it treats its customers — raising prices and making demands on them — they would like to cut Precision down to size. So is there a case of customers taking market share away from Precision and giving it to Alcoa and others? I have looked under as many rocks as I can think of to try to get to the bottom of this and I am not finding the evidence. Maybe I am looking under the wrong rocks, but the fact that I have not turned anything up and the fact that the customers buy under long term contracts which they are locked into, and the fact that competitors are not giving me any examples of how they have taken share from Precision make me think we are okay on the market share question.

If Precision can preserve market share in a growing market, we should be okay, which is why we are still holding the stock. Plus at its current price it is not expensive. It trades at a discount to some other of the big names in aerospace. Before it always traded at a premium.

Read part II here.