Speaking of retail businesses, note that O’Reilly Automotive (NASDAQ:ORLY) joined the top-10 positions at quarter end. We have owned O’Reilly since the 2009 inception of the fund. Until this year, our last substantial purchase of O’Reilly shares was in July 2012 when the company suffered a periodic slump in comp store sales. Such has been the case again in 2017, accompanied this time by pervasive investor concern about Amazon and online competitive incursion into auto parts. This Amazon narrative has weighed heavily and broadly on retail shares in 2017. During the second quarter and more so in the third, we purchased more than 1 million shares of O’Reilly, tripling the number of shares owned in what we consider a truly world-class retailer. While we never say never, especially when it comes to Amazon, we believe that auto parts generally, and O’Reilly in particular, are relatively insulated from material online disruption.
From Chuck Akre (Trades, Portfolio)'s Focus Fund third quarter 2017 commentary.
