W. R. Berkley (WRB)
Financials · NYSE · US
Fundamentals
Valuation and ratings
W. R. Berkley trades at $69.90, which is 127% below the $158.82 our discounted cash flow model puts on the business. On that measure alone it screens as undervalued, though a DCF is an argument rather than a measurement, and the market is frequently right about why something is cheap.
Our moat model scores it 62 out of 100, which is a moat, but not a deep one. A moat is a structural reason competitors cannot take the profits away, and it matters more to a long holding period than any single quarter's numbers do.
It changes hands at 15.3 times earnings. Be careful reading that in isolation: for a cyclical business a low P/E arrives at the top of the cycle, when profits are peaking and about to fall, which is exactly when the shares look cheapest and are not.
About W. R. Berkley
W. R. Berkley Corporation, an insurance holding company, operates as a commercial line writer worldwide. The company operates through Insurance and Reinsurance & Monoline Excess segments. The Insurance segment underwrites commercial insurance business, including excess and surplus lines, admitted lines, and specialty personal lines. This segment also provides accident and health insurance and reinsurance products; insurance for commercial risks; casualty and specialty environmental products; insurance coverages for fine arts and jewelry exposures; excess liability and inland marine coverage for small to medium-sized insureds; and commercial general liability, umbrella, professional liability, directors and officers, commercial property, and surety products, as well as products for technology, and life sciences and travel industries. In addition, it offers cyber risk solutions; crime and fidelity insurance products; medical professional coverages; workers' compensation insurance products; management liability and general insurance products; personal lines insurance solutions, including home, condo/co-op, auto, fine arts and collectibles, liability, collector vehicle, and recreational marine; law enforcement, public officials and educator's legal, and employment practices liability, as well as incidental medical, property, and crime insurance products; at-risk and alternative risk insurance program management services; professional liability; energy and marine risks; and insurance products to the Lloyd's marketplace. The Reinsurance & Monoline Excess segment provides treaty and facultative reinsurance solutions; property and casualty reinsurance products; facultative reinsurance products include automatic, semi-automatic, and individual risk assumed reinsurance; and turnkey products, such as cyber, employment practices liability insurance, liquor liability insurance and violent events. The company was founded in 1967 and is headquartered in Greenwich, Connecticut.
WRB passes 3 of our 30 screens today
Each screen prints the exact criteria it used, and the circumstances in which it is wrong.
Smart money ownership
13 of the funds we track reported a position in their latest SEC 13F filing. Largest first:
- Cliff Asness, AQR CAPITAL MANAGEMENT LLC$122.49M · 0.1% of book
- Ken Griffin, CITADEL ADVISORS LLC$92.40M · 0.0% of book
- Parnassus Investments, PARNASSUS INVESTMENTS, LLC$53.43M · 0.2% of book
- Arrowstreet Capital, ARROWSTREET CAPITAL, LIMITED PARTNERSHIP$53.23M · 0.0% of book
- Israel Englander, MILLENNIUM MANAGEMENT LLC$30.44M · 0.0% of book
A word of warning on reading these figures: a 13F reports the market value of a holding, so a fund that traded nothing at all still appears to have sold when the price fell. We found 102 companies where the standard reading gives the opposite answer. Only the share count is honest.
Common questions
Is W. R. Berkley (WRB) undervalued?
Against our discounted cash flow estimate of $158.82, WRB at $69.90 is 127% below fair value. That is one model's answer, not a recommendation, and most of a DCF's output sits in a terminal value nobody can forecast.
Which funds own WRB?
13 of the institutions we track reported a position in WRB in their most recent SEC 13F filing. A 13F is filed up to 45 days after quarter end, so it tells you what a fund held then, not what it holds now.
What is WRB's P/E ratio?
WRB trades at 15.3 times earnings. A low P/E is not automatically cheap: on a cyclical company it is usually a warning that earnings are at a peak.
The full research page for WRB, with financial statements, ownership detail, peer comparison and alerts, is free inside the app.
Data from company filings, exchange quotes and SEC EDGAR 13F disclosures. Quotes are delayed. Metrics we do not have are left out rather than estimated. Educational information, not financial advice.