Ann: FY23 Results Investor Presentation, page-19

I finally had a good read through the Q and A that was released to market today just prior to the announcement around the remaining Boral stake.

A lot of the wording around instilling an owners mindset and management decentralisation actually reminds me of a mini Berkshire Hathaway. I was pretty interested to read that they managed to take operational control of Boral without any increased headcount as their office. Even paying a very low dividend in order to reinvest in the existing businesses at a higher rate of return is very Berkshire (although they don't pay a dividend at all).

It's been great to see Ryan Stokes get some credit as one of the best executives in Australia in the last couple of years. The rebuild he's managed to pull off with the family assets has been quite extraordinary when you look at the makeup of the portfolio from 10 years ago to now.

The margin expansion across the group was the most impressive thing about the recent set of results for me and I actually got the sense from responses to broker questions that they might be under promising yet again in terms of what the FY24 figures might end up looking like.

As much of the natural instinct is to consider selling when the SP is rocketed up this high it's really only still on 17 to 18 times earnings which look set to grow strongly well past the current financial year so I'll be holding on for the long term.