Blogvesting

Seaboard Corporation (SEB) is a conglomerate with diverse businesses, including pork production and processing in the US, commodity trading in Bermuda, flour milling operations in 14 countries, a shipping division based in Miami, a newly started biodiesel plant based in Oklahoma, a sugar refining factory in Argentina, a jalapeno pepper plant in Honduras, and two floating power plants in the Dominican Republic. Given the range of businesses, I haven’t had time to delve into the numbers and come up with an earnings estimate. This is not helped by the fact that no analyst follow this stock, and management is notoriously uncommunicative. Still, this stock has $460 per share in tangible book value, as well as half-year earnings of $73 per share, which makes it ridiculously cheap. The company has consistently repurchased shares over the years, and insiders own a large portion of the company, but has neither bought nor sold shares. As a result, ownership by external investors have shrunk to the point where the CEO now own 71% of the company. Therefore, management’s incentives are aligned with minority shareholders. I have bought a small position in this stock at a price of $1285 per share based primarily on technical indicators, while I further investigate the intrinsic value of this intriguing company.