Well, thank you very much for your hospitality and having me. Are there any Chicago Bulls fans here? All right. Anybody know the name Stacy King? You know who he is? He played during the Jordan era for a bit and the night that Michael Jordan scored 64 points, Stacy King scored one. So, he referred to that night as the night that Michael and I scored 65 points. And I feel following the crowd that comes in, I feel like Stacy King and I'm the guy who scored, you know, me and Michael scored 65 points with the people who went before me. So, thank you again. What I don't want to touch the screen or anything if I may. I want to thank Guy for his invitation. And 15 minutes in total he suggested and asked that I would tell perhaps a story about something that had happened in Omaha on Berkshire weekend. And I'm going to tell a story about Guy because I think that's appropriate.
So, Markel has done very, very well over a long period of time. We went public in 1986 at about $8 a share. As of a few minutes ago, we're about $1,800 a share. We've been a permanent capital compounder. We've learned, studied from Berkshire quite a bit and that idea of having an insurance business at your core and using the pennies of underwriting profit to invest longer term, we learned that from Buffett. I learned it by reading the Carol Loomis Fortune article in 1984. Markel went public in '86. I bought stock on the IPO, which I've never sold, and went to work there in 1990, and then so far so good. But, it has taken place in batches. And there have been times when we're sort of off to the races and really bringing in the crops, and there's other times where we've stepped out. We've tried to learn things. We've tried to do things. And there have been some challenges and some real operational difficulties to get from where we were to where we got to the next plateau.
So, here's something that happened, and I think it was probably in about 2005. So, Guy referred to the brunch that we used to have out here, that started in 1992 with six people, and last year, which was the last year of doing it, we had 2,400, 2,500 people at that brunch, and it sort of compounded over time. But, in 2005, we were 5 years into owning Terra Nova Insurance Company, which was the international business we had bought. And we knew that it was a troubled company when we bought it. We had a history of buying troubled companies and trying to turn them around and improve them and fix them. So, we knew that. Now, Terra Nova ended up being a little more challenging than what we had thought it was going to be. So, that J curve took a little longer. And I was taking a little heat from our investors and people in the room. And one of the items of heat that was being lobbed out is that we just weren't really skilled internationally, and we didn't have investments in developing companies. So, that brunch probably had 125 people or so in it, and the stock might have been 350 bucks at the time.
Two points. Between the time that we bought Terra Nova in 2000 and 2005, where people were unhappy, the stock roughly doubled. So, even amidst the challenges, in 5 years, it went from 175 to 350 in rough terms. And again, there's been more IQ points with Bill Ackman and Brian Lawrence preceded me here than I'll ever dream of having, but I like doubles and rule of 72 and rough math that I could do in my head. So, that means the compounding in that 5-year period was about 15% a year to make that math happen. So, in 2005, again taking heat at the brunch and we don't know anything about international investing or developing countries. A guy gets up and he says, 'Well, as a Brit, one of your languages and cultures along the way, it's been my point of view that the US has been a developing country for over 250 years.' So, I appreciated the perspective that guy brought at that particular moment. So, Guy, that is something I will remember for the rest of my life because you were kind. You were kind.
And we live in a business where we quantify and we do math and we use AI and we use these tools, and sometimes we lose the human dimension as part of that. And Brian, I especially enjoyed your quote about the discussion being needed because otherwise you will deteriorate into mediocrity. I feel that way all the time, and I feel very lucky to have the relationships and the friends and the networks that have been so fostered through the Omaha presence to do that because sitting by myself alone in a room reading would keep me stuck at a certain point. So, I did want to start off with that. I would like to again thank those of you who are Markel shareholders, those of you who have been interested in us. We've gone through fallow periods before. We went through one a couple of years ago. I would argue that we're coming out of it pretty nicely at this point. There's pretty strong evidence that that is indeed the case. And the creativity and the energy and the values and the curiosity by which we attract and attack businesses, both insurance and non-insurance businesses, has a long record of compounding in low double-teens for the 39 years since we've been a public company. And that's also recently been true over shorter time frames as well.
Last thing I'll say before taking your questions, so sitting on the chair, I don't know whether this was a gift to me or I'm stealing my neighbor's books, but there was a 'Winning Long-Term Games' by Luca Dellanna. Winning long-term games and to the point that Bill Ackman preceded me talking about the time horizons. I think having the time horizon that we do of generations and thinking in terms of handing off our business to the next generation in a better way that we had it. That is an epic advantage. And I tell myself and I think I have some accurate self-awareness that I am an old, fat, slow, white guy. I know that about myself. And I'm comfortable with that. So, choosing which game you play is epically important. And often times I use the example, if there was going to be a 100-meter dash between me and Usain Bolt, and I know Usain is no longer competing perhaps to the level he did, but I'm going to tell you right now this is a lead pipe cinch, dead cert, that all the money you have on Usain, he's going to win that race 110 times out of 100. He's going to win.
Make that race a 200-meter dash. I think you should still bet everything you have on Usain. He's going to be... Make it a mile. Pretty sure Usain's going to win, but he might have been so optimized, to use a word we hear a lot of these days, to run 100 meters at a time that running a mile, he might be gassed before he gets there. And you may... I'll let you in on a secret, I wouldn't beat him in a mile either, but I think there's a chance. There's a chance. And make it a marathon, 26 miles. I think I've introduced an element of doubt that there may be a circumstance which I could compete with Usain Bolt over a period of a marathon. Make it a foot race from Key West, Florida to Seattle, Washington. That's a bet. Because it is no longer about pure athleticism and the skills and the horsepower and the IQ points that you bring to the table. It's about will. It's about determination. It's about the proper pacing and stick-to-it-iveness that can last for decades. That's my edge. That is our edge.
We do have a permanent capital-based business. We have shareholders who've been very loyal and known it for decades. We have a cadre of long-term shareholders. We have people who are newer to the party and may have a different agenda than what we have. But we know what we can do. And we have a track record of having done it for a long period of time. And I think the values and the formula by which that has been done both in insurance and non-insurance businesses has proven itself to be quite durable and quite able to absorb the volatility that the world throws us. And when we look at things in those 5-year kind of time increments and it's the way in which we measure ourselves and compensate the senior folks, it's been a happy thing for people to own for long periods of time. So with that, I will stop because I know our moments were brief and take your questions.
The question coming back from there, any comment on Jana? They published a letter I guess a couple of days ago that was a restatement of much of what they said when they first engaged with us back in December of '24. There were many things that they said that I agreed with. We had underperformed in our insurance business. And you know, we've made some substantial changes in management and leadership of our insurance business, and we've gotten to the point where I think we're starting to show some pretty good results from that. They talk about the Markel Ventures set of businesses as a distraction. Actually, fine, I believe again with the time horizon that we have, the idea of diversification and multiple streams of income coming in provides resilience and durability and the ability to have cash coming in the door when the insurance business was not doing quite so well that I think is of great value. But, the net of it is I think they have a different time horizon that they look at things than what we do. And we've delivered wonderful returns for our shareholders over long periods of time and would like to continue to do so.
You jumped ahead of the curve. I think if we had had a graded exam, not many people would have gotten that. But, he's the one who won. And he did it by strategic withdrawal and letting Napoleon punch himself out. So, observing markets where you get out of phase and being in touch with your values and your core principles is incredibly important. And so, that book actually reinforced some sense of that. Second book I'll talk about and 95 books out of 100 I will read rather than listen to, but some I would recommend listening to rather than reading. And one called 'The Cost of These Dreams' by a writer named Wright Thompson, I would recommend listening to it. Wright Thompson is a long-form sports writer. And he talks about characters and people you would know. And I'll skip ahead. Start with the prologue. Skip it over. He talks about the craft of long-form sports writing, which is a worthy essay in and of itself. Chapter number three was about the integration of the University of Mississippi. And so, many of us who are maybe not quite as keen a student as you know James Meredith in that story. He wrote about it from the point of view of the football team.
Which had been contending for a national championship and basically got so discombobulated through that process that they lost their way. And Ole Miss, you know, is back in a football powerhouse in the world we live in now, but they spent 30 or 40 years in the wilderness of not being a particularly good football team. And that moment of integration broke them. It disrupted... So, read that story. And every single one of those chapters is basically a story you know written from a different point of view. So, the idea of perspective and seeing things from other people's point of view, you know, the older I get, the more I find myself trying desperately to think about what somebody else thinks and how they came to that conclusion and why they wonder that and to have empathy for the way they see things and not be so proud about my own opinions or own views on things. So, I found that book to be a delightful way to just frame the idea of different framings and different perspectives and it really accelerates your learning and I think your personal skills and how you can get along with people when you have that point of view.
