Little mini essay on my investment philosophy, and why I've bought back a bunch of $CGEO today: Whether it's banks or insurance, or really any value type investment, I look for three things - Where the stock is trading relative to book value / tangible book value - Quality of the earnings / Alignment - What is the company doing to close the discount to fair value There are plenty of names trading below book value. I think tangible book value is very applicable to financial names relative to other sectors, because the "value" in question can be valued easily. Unlike a factory or inventory that would likely sell for way less than it is on the books for, if a bank has good credit quality or an insurer has a well run investment portfolio, you can have reasonable certainty that the "value" indeed exists, and isn't just a number with significant uncertainty. The next thing is quality of earnings and alignment. Are the earning diversified? Is it a business that can continue to grow steadily (you already know what insurer I am talking about). Does the management team own a lot relative to their salary (IGI owning $350 Million on a $6 Million salary should be the gold standard). Finally, if the company is trading at a deep discount to tangible book or intrinsic value, WHAT IS THE COMPANY DOING TO ADDRESS IT. A great example of what not to do (funny because I own in anyways - this is a double pun) is Onity Group $ONIT. They trade at $29 with tangible book value up in the 70s, the leadership team takes a massive salary, and they are focused on deleveraging further and likely selling the company in the next decade or so (guessing $GHLD or $RITM), instead of closing the massive discount. Total value trap. Now, on to $CGEO. Net Asset Value of 27.14 GBP, trading at just 13.60 GBP, a 50% discount to tangible book. They have large stakes in Georgian pharmacies, insurers, utilities, and schools, but almost 40% of the NAV is Lion Finance Group (Bank of Georgia) which I also own and is listed. So the NAV isn't entirely a made up number, as 40% of it can be assessed daily. Now we move on to the quality of earnings. The cash flow, income, and revenue continues to steadily grow on the portfolio companies, and BGEO itself has huge net income and pays a sizeable dividend, so this isn't a situation with "phantom" or PIK income, but cold hard cash that continues to improve. As for alignment, the insiders own roughly 10% of the business, 52 Million GBP, although insider compensation is high around 11 Million. Most of the 11 Million is share based compensation, and while this figure is high, I think the overall 52 Million in ownership is enough to align them well. Finally, capital allocation. It's one thing to trade at a discount to book, it's another thing to do something about it. CGEO has been slammed the buyback in 2024, reducing the share count from 40.7 M to 37.6 M. Since then, they have added on an additional $25 Million USD program to the existing $25 Million USD program, and are currently buying back around 20,000 shares (0.05% of the company) a day. The share repurchases are highly accretive to earnings (5x P/E) and tangible book (0.5x Tangible Book Value), and given the repurchases are about 20% of the daily volume, they really are going as fast as they can. Of course, there are a lot of geopolitical risks (tanks could roll in - although the new Georgian PM is close to Russia so I think it is less likely to happen), and also financials risks (world meltdown), but you have a name trading at 5x earnings and half book, with strong growth potential repurchasing a bunch of shares. Essentially, you are getting $BGEO, and then an investment portfolio of insurers, utilities, and education centers for free here. It fits my investment criteria, so I've added it back at 40,000 USD, and will probably trim it up to 50 soon.