Arguably some of the best sources of value investing knowledge around are the annual pearls in the shape of Warren Buffett’s Letters to Shareholders of his investing vehicle Berkshire Hathaway.

However as some of you may realize, the humble beginnings of the World’s most successful asset allocator date back to late 1950 whereas the widely available Letters to Shareholders only report on Mr. Buffett’s investing adventures from 1977 onwards.

Effectively a vast pool of invaluable investing knowledge, provided in the annual letters of The Buffett Partnership (ie. Mr. Buffett’s humble beginnings in the pre-Berkshire investing era) and covering the years 1959 to 1968, is much harder to come by.

Yet, in my opinion, the strategies and information in them may be of much assistance to an average value investor, who is probably nowhere near to the available investing “float�? levels of Berkshire Hathaway hence unable to fully benefit from the knowledge gained through dedicated reading of the annual Letters to Shareholders.

As I see it, on the investing level, most of the value aimed investors (and their investing position) align much better against the investing profile of “early Buffett�? than with the billionaire philanthropist of today.

Realizing that, I took my time and read through all the Buffett Partnership reports and I must say, as all most of the Buffett’s writings, its an enjoyable reading indeed. And since, for some to me unknown reason, they were rather difficult to find, I decided to host them here for all my readers to enjoy and learn how its done.

Note: Should there be any issues with hosting the publicly available Buffett Partnership annual reports here please let me know. Thank you.

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If you ever found yourself in a situation when your business needed a quick, fast approved business loan without all the required security for the banks, I bet the guys over at Business Loans would come really handy.

With their great service and fast funding process Business Loans is willing to lend a helping hand at times when no other lender would. They mainly specialize in unsecured loans and lines of credit for small business owners to whom they provide finances at rates from 9.5% to 15.5% per annum.

At normal circumstances it takes Business Loans between 1 and 3 days to get the loan fully approved so for instance an average owner of 2+ years old business could walk away with a no doc loan of $350,000 virtually day after he or she applied for it. In my opinion that is fairly good service indeed.

Related thoughts:
Banks are offering different types of instant loans with very easy terms and conditions. In this competitive banking market, banks are offering loans ranging from bad credit loan to business loans. Different banks and loan consulting companies are also offering fast equity loans. People usually love to go for credit union loan because of easy installments and low interest rate. While on the other hand interest on car finance loans vary from bank to bank and tenure of the loan. Now day’s you can even apply online for loan by calculating the interest and installment by auto loan calculator.

established: 1982, ASX code: FLT, homepage: www.flightcentre.com

Overview
Flight Centre is arguably the most dominant player on the Australian retail travel services market with significant international exposure. Apart of it own flagship Flight Centre travel offices it also generates significant earnings from fully owned specialized travel agency chains such as Student Flights, Escape Travel and various leisure businesses including Quickbeds.com, Travel Associates and others.

Analysis of 2007 financial results

• Market Cap: Depending on the daily stock price of this company the total market capitalization is around $2.4 billion over 94 million shares on issue
• Shareholders Equity: $484 million making the stock’s book value approx. $5.15 per share (18% growth on FY2006)
• Earnings per share: $1.28 making the average EPS growth in last 3 years about 17.5%
• Return on Equity: 24.8%, averaging around 20.5%pa in last 3 years
• Balance Sheet: Working capital of $223.1 million (ie. $2.4 per share) versus total debt of $75.3 million

Sharemaket’s valuation:
Average FLT’s Price to Earnings ratio of 19 suggests the share price around $24.3 ($1.28 EPS x 19 P/E)

GROWTH STOCK

• Conservative forecast of average EPS growth in next 10 years: 14%
• Share price in 10 years time: about $90 (EPS in year 10 based on forecasted yearly EPS growth times average P/E)
• Total shareholders return in 10 years times: $105 (share price of $90 plus $15 of the 10 years worth of dividends if the current payout ratio of 55% persists)
• Rate of Return in next 10 years based on end of November 2007 price of $26.5 per share: 14.8%pa

Pros and cons:
+++ Dominating company within its industry
+++ Excellent both ROE and EPS growths not only in currently prevailing booming market conditions, but also if averaged long term
+++ Strong balance sheet (entire debt could be easily wiped out by part profits of one single year)
— Operates in cyclical industry where profits are to be affected by both global and local economy performances, fuel costs, levels of disposable incomes and similar factors
— Stock trades constantly at high P/Es and obtaining it at comfortable margin of safety levels is very difficult

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