Berkshire News Briefs - 7/15/17

With Bank of America's dividend hike, Warren Buffett gets his chance at a $11 billion windfall

[...] Berkshire has warrants to buy 700 million common shares of Bank of America at $7.14 each, or about $5 billion. And Bank of America just did what Berkshire was waiting for: after passing the second of two annual stress tests by the Federal Reserve, it got the go-ahead to hike its annual dividend to 48 cents a share, or 12 cents a quarter, a 60 percent increase.

That is enough for Berkshire to consider exercising those warrants rather than waiting until just before their expiration in 2021. At Bank of America's current share price, the stake would hand Berkshire a tidy $11.7 billion profit, at least on paper. [...]

Berkshire Hathaway makes deal to win PUC approval of Oncor acquisition

Berkshire Hathaway has tentatively agreed with regulators and customer advocates to wall off Dallas-based utility Oncor from risks and debts of its parent company, a step that could help the conglomerate win approval for the $9 billion deal to acquire the largest utility in Texas and Oncor's bankrupt parent.

The move is aimed at protecting ratepayers from incurring costs not related to the distribution of electricity and ensuring that Oncor has the resources to maintain its transmission lines and the reliability of the system. Such concerns led the state Public Utility Commission to reject two earlier bids to buy Oncor and its parent, Energy Future Holdings, out of bankruptcy.

Late Thursday, Berkshire Hathaway Energy, a subsidiary of billionaire investor Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, said it would pay $9 billion to acquire Energy Future Holdings and Oncor, which provides electricity to 10 million Texans. Oncor owns and operates the grid for most of North Texas. Energy Future Holdings has been in bankruptcy for three years as it has worked to restructure its $40 billion debt.

Berkshire said it values Oncor at $11.25 billion. Another group may bid for Oncor, Bloomberg News reported Friday, citing unnamed sources. [...]

Berkshire Hathaway's Clayton Buys Oakwood Homes

Clayton Properties Group buys Oakwood Homes in a deal that closed Monday, July 3.

Oakwood is Clayton's 4th acquisition of a site-build home building operator, and the largest by far, of the deals, as well as the first one outside the Southeast region. [...]

Oakwood owns 3,000 to 4,000 lots, but has control of 18,000, which allows for continued accelerated growth with the capital access the Clayton deal will provide.

In Oakwood, and with Pat Hamill and his team continuing to run and grow the company, Clayton sees a strong cultural fit as well as a company that can help it on its strategic mission to expand its buyer universe with a price-range sweet spot between its $150,000 top price for its manufactured homes, and prevailing entry-level single-family price points, which tend to exceed $225,000. [...]

Clayton Buys Birmingham's Harris Doyle Homes

Clayton Properties Group will announce today the purchase of home building operator, Birmingham, Ala.-based Harris Doyle Homes.

The Clayton acquisition is the fifth site-build company added to the nation's largest manufactured home builder, whose market share is 50% of the category, which accounts for seven in 10 homes priced below $150,000.

Clayton's Harris Doyle announcement follows last week's closing of a deal to purchase Oakwood Homes, the Colorado-Utah home builder known as one of the most technologically progressed large enterprises. [...]

Sprint executives have engaged Warren Buffett about investment

Sprint Corp. Chairman Masayoshi Son has engaged Warren Buffett and cable mogul John Malone in discussions about participating in a deal with the wireless company, people familiar with the situation say.

The Japanese billionaire met separately with the Berkshire Hathaway Inc. boss and Mr. Malone, whose Liberty Broadband Corp. is one of Charter Communications Inc.'s biggest investors, this week at an annual gathering of CEOs in Sun Valley, Idaho, the people said.

The contours of the deal the parties are discussing are unclear. The talks are at an early stage and may not result in an agreement, the people said, but one possibility would see Berkshire put more than $10 billion into a transaction. [...]

Warren Buffett casts big shadow in banking world

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway is now the largest single shareholder of Bank of America — but that’s not the only piece of Wall Street he owns.

Buffett, 86, is also the biggest shareholder of Wells Fargo, with a little under 10 percent of the San Francisco bank, and US Bancorp, a Minneapolis bank that’s among the largest in the country.

In addition to those holdings, he’s also the seventh biggest owner of Goldman Sachs and Bank of New York Mellon — and the eighth largest shareholder of M&T Bank, a Buffalo bank with $16.5 billion in assets. [...]

Berkshire News Briefs - 11/24/15

The quarterly 13F came out last week, detailing the changes in Berkshire Hathaway's portfolio last quarter. Dataroma has a convenient chart to visually show what changed.

Berkshire Hathaway Reduces Goldman Sachs, Wal-Mart Stakes (ABC)

Buffett told CNBC on Monday that the main reason he reduced Berkshire's stakes in Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. was to generate cash for his $32 billion acquisition of Precision Castparts Corp. that's expected to close next year. [...]

Warren Buffett is having an unusually bad year (CNBC)

Warren Buffett has seen shares of his Berkshire Hathaway fall more than 11 percent this year. Even worse, Berkshire shares have underperformed the S&P 500 by more than 10 percent.

What makes this highly unusual is that Berkshire famously tends to underperform when the S&P skyrockets and outperform when the stocks as a whole do less well, which makes sense given Buffett's long-term time frame. [...]

Buffett Doubles Down on Big Blue (Fool)

To me, and presumably Buffett, as well, there's a readily identifiable disconnect with IBM's very gradually declining core business and the huge discount the market has placed on the company's future outlook. For context, IBM stock currently trades at a remarkably low 9.5x its LTM earnings, and yields 3.9%. Wall Street analysts expect IBM's revenue to continue to fall into next year, but believe that Big Blue will actually return to EPS growth in 2016. That reversal alone could be enough to inject some much-needed optimism into IBM shares, even as its broader business realignment requires more time to fully materialize.

Is Warren Buffett Still a Bargain Hunter? (CNN Money)

Consider Axalta Coating Systems, which makes automobile finishes and other coatings. [...] Axalta sells for a whopping 130 times its past 12 months of earnings and sports a price/earnings ratio of 22 based on future estimated profits. [...]

On paper, this would hardly seem like a stock that a vaunted bargain hunter would gravitate to. Yet Axalta isn’t the only example.

Berkshire Hathaway [Travel Insurance] expanding again (Insurance Business)

Insurance giant Berkshire Hathaway Travel Protection (BHTP) teamed up with VacationGuard, a specialist provider of vacation rental insurance, this week to create customized travel insurance products for timeshares, travel clubs, resorts and vacationers.

Targeted at both property owners and vacation renters, the products protect against trip cancellation, delays, injuries and accidental damage to rental units.

Fire at Leetsdale chemical plant leads to 70 homes being evacuated (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

Residents were evacuated from more than 70 Leetsdale homes Tuesday after a fire at a chemical manufacturing plant filled the sky with black smoke and noxious fumes.

Four workers at the Lubrizol Corp. Oilfield Chemistry site in the Leetsdale Industrial Park were adding chemicals used in gas well fracturing to a production tank about 10 a.m. when the fire exploded to life, a company spokesman said. The workers — and about 36 other employees — escaped the buildings, though five of the workers were injured.

Buffett’s Grandson Seeks Own Investment Route: Social Change (NY Times)

At 32, Howard Warren Buffett, the grandson of the Berkshire Hathaway founder Warren E. Buffett, has already enjoyed a diverse career. He teaches at Columbia University, runs a farm in Nebraska, previously oversaw his family’s foundation and worked on economic redevelopment efforts in Afghanistan for the Defense Department. [...]

Now, that is changing. Mr. Buffett has co-founded a permanently capitalized operating company with big ambitions [...] The plan is for the new company, called i(x) Investments, to invest in early-stage and undervalued companies that are working on issues such as clean energy, sustainable agriculture and water scarcity. [...]

Berkshire gets flak from ClimateTruth, others for solar panel policy (Omaha World-Herald)

A climate activist group said Tuesday that Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s utility division favors policies that would hinder the spread of rooftop solar energy panels.

Outside Omaha’s Kiewit Plaza, where Berkshire has its offices, representatives of ClimateTruth.org and other groups gave a security guard what they said was an electronic copy of an online petition with about 100,000 signatures. The petition, addressed to Berkshire Chairman Warren Buffett, said, “End your profit-driven challenges to net metering programs in Nevada and all over the country.”

Prominent film company focuses documentary lens on Buffett (Omaha World-Herald)

Kunhardt Films of Pleasantville, New York, is gathering information, photos and videos about the chairman and chief executive of Omaha-based Berkshire Hathaway Inc.

When the project airs, possibly within two years, Buffett would join a long list of prominent Americans profiled by the film company headed by Emmy winner Peter Kunhardt.

Berkshire News Briefs - 10/15/15

Buffett Builds Rail Superhighway to Grab Truck Freight (Bloomberg)

After this year, BNSF Railway Co. will be more than 99 percent finished with a second, parallel line to its 2,200-mile (3,500-kilometer) Los Angeles-to-Chicago route. Doubling up will create a rail superhighway speeding deliveries of toys, electronics, autos and other goods, because trains won’t have to yield to each other on sidings as they do on single tracks.

The goal: help the unit of Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. grab cargo now going by road. [...]

The Los Angeles-to-Chicago route links the busiest U.S. container port to the biggest mid-continent rail hub, giving BNSF a leg up in the race to find alternatives to those dwindling coal cars. [...]

Warren Buffett: We don't do due diligence — we just look into your eyes (Business Insider)

Buffett told Loomis he met with Precision Castparts CEO Mark Donegan for about 10 or 15 minutes and asked whether he would listen to a takeover offer from Berkshire. After taking this to his board, Donegan agreed to listen to an offer.

And so Buffett made an offer, they talked about it, and then they had a deal. At this point, Buffett said, he and Donegan had talked for about 25 minutes in total.

How does a deal like this come together so quickly? "We basically do no due diligence," Buffett said. "Our due diligence is basically looking into their eyes." [...]

Lubrizol acquires Particle Sciences (Today's Medical Developments)

The Lubrizol Corporation announces that it has acquired Particle Sciences, a leading contract drug development and manufacturing organization with a comprehensive suite of services for the formulation, analysis and production of complex drug delivery solutions. Headquartered in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Particle Sciences is a global leader in complex formulations including drug eluting device product development as well as sterile and particulate drug products. This acquisition further expands Lubrizol LifeSciences' pharmaceutical development capabilities, providing full service drug delivery solutions to the market across a variety of dosage forms.

Goldman Sachs is planning to ditch a Warren Buffett-owned news wire for earnings releases (Business Insider)

When Goldman Sachs announces its third-quarter earnings on October 15, it is planning to do so with a release on its own website and a tweet linking to the release.

It does not plan to release its results on Business Wire as it did in the second quarter, however, according to people familiar with the matter. [...]

Buffett's Portfolio Takes Another Hit as Wal-Mart Shares Plunge (Bloomberg)

Billionaire Warren Buffett’s stock portfolio suffered another setback as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. plunged after predicting profit would decline in its next fiscal year.

Wal-Mart fell $6.70, or 10 percent, to $60.03 at 4:15 p.m. in New York. That translates to a one-day paper loss of more than $450 million for Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc., which had about 67.7 million shares as of June 30. [...]

Warren Buffett expected to win over regulators on reinsurers (Financial Times)

Regulators will drop proposals to hit the world’s biggest reinsurance companies with tougher safety rules, thanks in large part to the influence of veteran investor Warren Buffett, the head of one top reinsurer has predicted. [...]

Mr Kieholz said Mr Buffett’s status in US financial and political circles seemed to have helped global reinsurers fend off inclusion in the systemically important insurers list. [...]

Mr Buffett’s office denied suggestions he had directly lobbied contacts in Washington. But he has been outspoken in speeches and interviews, arguing that it would be illogical to apply a systemic label to Berkshire Hathaway, but not to the likes of Apple, ExxonMobil or Walmart.

MasterCard Send Streamlines Berkshire Hathaway Travel Pay (Pymts)

A new partnership was announced yesterday (Oct. 14) between Berkshire Hathaway Travel Protection and MasterCard that’s aimed at taking the hassle out of paying travel insurance claims.

Because those payments are traditionally made online, through EFT transaction or paper checks, there’s typically a lag of a few days — or even a few weeks. By using MasterCard Send, Berkshire Hathaway Travel Protection can streamline that process by facilitating the payments for those claims nearly instantly. This solution then sends funds directly to a personal account through a debit card. [...]

Warren Buffett (still) doesn't want to be an activist investor (Fortune)

Chatting with Carol Loomis, Fortune’s retired senior editor-at-large, Buffett said that activism is a profitable and "salable form," which happens to be attracting big money right now. But it’s spurred a wave of activism that may have gone about as far as it can go. "They stretch for targets, and you’re seeing that now," he said.

A famous buy-and-hold investor, Buffett compared activism—where investors push companies to make major changes to increase shareholder returns—to an old saying: "If you want to guarantee yourself a life of misery, marry someone with the expectations of changing them."

Warren Buffett dumped on hedge funds for a promise that lasts long enough to get them rich (Business Insider)

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett, the chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, dumped on hedge funds during Fortune's Most Powerful Women Summit.

He said that as hedge fund assets grow in size, the fund managers don't really need to worry as much about performance. [...]

Berkshire News Briefs - 10/10/13

Scripps News investigates lawsuits involving Berkshire Hathaway (Scripps)

Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. of Omaha, Neb., has become one of the most powerful forces in asbestos and pollution litigation in the world. Insurers such as American Insurance Group, CNA Financial Corp. and Lloyd's of London have paid Berkshire to assume their risk for tens of billions of dollars in future asbestos and pollution claims. That money, known as "float," has proven to be a great source of investment income for Berkshire. But instead of paying people like Charles Lute, Berkshire subsidiaries are accused in lawsuits across the country of delaying or denying payments. Rather than paying victims, the suits claim, Berkshire is holding onto the cash, the float, to keep its money invested. "They wanted to hit the projected numbers in the books of business so they could maximize their return on investment," said one former claims executive under oath.

Here's the full Scripps report, including Berkshire's response.

Ford, Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary settle insurance dispute (Cleveland News 5)

(There's a 1:30 video version of the story here too, if you want a summary.)

The Ford Motor Co. announced Monday it settled a lawsuit with Berkshire Hathaway Inc. subsidiary National Indemnity Co. for $22.1 million -- $2 million more than the automaker sued for in the dispute related to unpaid claims from rollover deaths. [...] “We filed the complaint because we were experiencing no pay and slow pay,” Oostdyk said, claiming National Indemnity intentionally delayed paying Ford’s claims as part of a larger pattern of wrongful conduct. [...] In this instance, Oostdyk said, Ford wanted to send a message, and refused in negotiations to settle the claim until National Indemnity agreed to let it announce the amount of the settlement. New York asbestos attorney Joe Belluck said the scrutiny of Berkshire’s business practices leading up to the publication of the Scripps investigation “likely played a part” in the Ford settlement before a public trial.

Moving on to better news...

Buffett Makes Sweet Profit Off Mars Investment (Wall St. Cheat Sheet)

Berkshire Hathaway Chairman and CEO Warren Buffett has logged a lot of wins in the wake of the late-2000s crisis. During the crisis itself, the firm served as a white knight investor to major companies with a need for a huge amount of cash, and fast. [...] One of the companies that Berkshire lent money to was Mars Inc., which in 2008 needed to finance the $23 billion purchase of Wm. Wrigley Jr. Co. Buffett loaned Mars $4.4 billion and purchased a minority interest in Wrigley for $2.1 billion at a discount to the buyout price. [...] The Wall Street Journal reports that Berkshire is set to bank a profit of at least $680 million from the deal. Berkshire sold the notes back to Mars at about 115 percent of face value plus interest.

Buffett's $2.15 Billion Payday (Fool)

On Tuesday, Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway was set to become the sixth-largest external investor in Goldman Sachs by grabbing a stake in the banking giant worth around $2.15 billion. Oh, and did I mention Buffett scored the position for free? You read that correctly. That's right. For his mammoth stake in Goldman Sachs, Buffett paid absolutely nothing.

Warren Buffett protégé in trouble at Benjamin Moore (NY Post)

Tracy Britt, a handpicked favorite of Buffett who has an office down the hall to his at Berkshire’s Omaha headquarters, was tapped last year to tackle Benjamin Moore’s sliding market share and serves as the company’s chairman. Late last month, sources said, Britt led a Friday afternoon conference call with Benjamin Moore employees, surprising them with the news that CEO Bob Merritt had abruptly left the company after just 14 months on the job. [...] The bombshell exit of Merritt, a former restaurant exec tapped last year to reverse a tailspin at Benjamin Moore, is a rare embarrassment for Buffett, who had fired Merritt’s predecessor, Denis Abrams, just 15 months earlier. The reason for 61-year-old Merritt’s departure couldn’t be confirmed, but some insiders say he appears to have clashed with Britt.

Berkshire Hathaway unit TTI buys Lod-based Ray-Q (Globes)

On Friday, TTI, Inc. an indirect, wholly owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, announced the acquisition of Lod-based Ray-Q Interconnect. Financial details of the deal were not disclosed. Ray-Q was founded in 1969 as a Raychem subsidiary based in Israel with offices in Turkey and India. It provides high quality electrical interconnect solutions to military, aerospace and other high-reliability product industries. TTI is a specialty distributor of passive, interconnect, electromechanical and discrete semiconductor components. [...] Ray-Q employs approximately 70 associates and counts among their customers virtually every major defense contractor.

Warren Buffett's pick for Borsheims CEO took six-year break on rise to the top (Omaha World-Herald)

In fall 2004, Susan Jacques, president and chief executive of Borsheims Fine Jewelry, ran into Karen Goracke at a soccer game. Goracke had been a watch buyer at Borsheims until leaving in 1998 to tend to her growing family. “I said, 'Why don't you come back and work part time?' ” Jacques recalled. [...] Now Goracke has been chosen by Warren Buffett to be the Berkshire Hathaway-owned retailer's president and chief executive starting Dec. 31. [...] Jacques is leaving Borsheims after 31 years, including 20 years as president and CEO, to head the Gemological Institute of America, a Carlsbad, Calif.-based nonprofit organization that offers gem and jewelry education and oversees industry standards.

Berkshire News Briefs - 10/3/13

Buffett to Get $2 Billion Goldman Sachs Stake With Warrants (Bloomberg Business Week)

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. will get more than $2 billion in Goldman Sachs Group Inc. stock through warrants acquired during the depths of the 2008 financial crisis. Berkshire will receive about 13.1 million shares in Goldman Sachs, according to an agreement that uses the average closing price on the 10 trading days through today to calculate Buffett’s stake. [...] Goldman Sachs turned to Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire in 2008 to bolster capital and shore up market confidence when shares plunged following the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. Buffett, Berkshire’s chairman and chief executive officer, invested $5 billion for a preferred holding and got warrants to buy $5 billion of stock for $115 a share.

NV Energy approves sale to Buffet's MidAmerican Energy (Reno Gazette Journal)

The deal was announced over the summer, and now it's official.

Shareholders of NV Energy Inc. have approved selling the Nevada utility to Berkshire Hathaway’s MidAmerican Energy utility for $5.6 billion. NV Energy announced the shareholder vote on Wednesday, but the deal isn’t expected to close until sometime in the first quarter of next year because it still needs regulatory approval. The NV Energy deal will be one of MidAmerican’s biggest, and it will be a sizeable addition to Warren Buffett’s Omaha-based Berkshire conglomerate.

A stronger network, with more capacity (Railway Age)

This is a long article about BNSF's capital investments, if you're a fan of the railroad business.

BNSF's 2013 capex program is a whopping $4.3 billion, the industry's biggest, about a 16% increase from 2012's $3.6 billion. This year's program was initially set at $4.1 billion, but was increased by $200 million "due to more expansion-related spending," Rose said in the railroad's Form 10-Q for the period ended June 30, 2013. "We will spend $2.3 billion in capital in 2013 to maintain a strong core network and related assets. In addition, we will continue investing in our locomotive and railcar fleet and in projects that expand and improve the efficiency of our infrastructure, and continue installing Positive Train Control in response to a federal mandate." The program includes about $200 million for PTC and $800 million for terminal, line, and intermodal expansion and efficiency projects.

The Consequences of Poaching: Berkshire Edition (Daily Finance)

With Berkshire's entrance into the commercial property and casualty insurance market, it's stepped on some pretty big toes: AIG's. Trying to boost its measly 1.6% market share of the U.S. excess and surplus liability market, estimated to be around $25 billion annually, Berkshire's poaching may have cramped its other operations. After 20 AIG employees left the company for Berkshire's new division, the former decided to halt any future ties with the latter's reinsurance business. [...] Based on AIG's 2012 annual report, Berkshire was its top reinsurer with $2.19 billion in coverage, including a $1.6 billion policy from 2011 on AIG's outstanding asbestos claims. Berkshire's policies represented 8.5% of AIG's total reinsurance of $25.8 billion. In terms of Berkshire's total 2012 underwriting revenue from its reinsurance businesses, the $2.19 billion would equate to 14%.

Berkshire’s Benjamin Moore Seeks Third Chief in Two Years (Bloomberg)

Benjamin Moore, the paint maker owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc., said Chief Executive Officer Robert Merritt left the company. Benjamin Moore, which hired Merritt last year, is searching for a new leader and expects to name a replacement “in the coming week,” the Montvale, New Jersey-based company said yesterday in a statement on its website.

But on the plus side, in Benjamin Moore news...

Benjamin Moore Unveils 'Breath Of Fresh Air' As Its 2014 Color Of The Year (Sacramento Bee)

Benjamin Moore, a unit of Berkshire Hathaway and one of North America's most respected paint and coatings manufacturers, unveiled today its highly anticipated Color of the Year for 2014 to be "Breath of Fresh Air" (color number 806) as part of its Color Trends 2014 palette. Announced by newly appointed Benjamin Moore Creative Director Ellen O'Neill at the opening of the company's New York City showroom during Fall Market 2013 for architects and designers, Breath of Fresh Air is a gorgeous, ethereal blue serving as a "new neutral" that is livable and functional.

Buffett’s Alpha Paper Illustrates Buffett’s Achievements (Value Walk)

The paper finds that studying data of all listed US stocks from 1926 to 2011, Berkshire Hathaway Inc. has the highest Sharpe ratio of all. Moreover, Buffett also has the highest Sharpe ratio of all US mutual funds that have been around for more than 30 years. [...] The paper estimates that Buffett’s leverage ratio has averaged 1.6-to-1 during the past 30 years, boosting risk and excess return in that proportion. Sustaining a leverage ratio of 1.6:1 over several decades and through several significant periods of market turbulence has boosted Buffett’s returns when many other market participants have been forced into fire sales and write-downs.

Berkshire Hathaway launches business crisis event cost coverage insurance (Insurance Business Review)

Berkshire Hathaway Specialty Insurance has unveiled a new Business Crisis Event Cost Coverage policy, to cover costs incurred to manage a business crisis, including the fees of a crisis management consulting firm. The new policy offers up to $100,000 to hire a crisis management consulting firm to advise the policyholder in managing adverse media coverage and public perceptions, following a crisis. The events include a serious accident or explosion, an act of violence, or a contamination incident. Moreover, the coverage also provides expenses required extending immediate support to victims and their family members, including funeral expenses, psychological counseling, travel, and temporary living costs.

Nebraska Furniture Mart president recalls Kansas City store as lesson in patience (Omaha World Herald)

The Nebraska Furniture Mart's new store in Kansas City, Kan., was a disaster for nearly two years. It was overwhelmed with customers. Deliveries lagged purchases by 30 days or more. Problems began multiplying almost as soon as the store opened in 2003 and didn't let up. [...] As time went by, the Omaha retailer resolved its Kansas City store's problems and the company's managers learned from their mistakes, Blumkin said. The idea of expanding into another market gradually became a possibility, and Buffett's backing did not waver. Today, the Mart is halfway to opening its third and most ambitious mega-store, a $1.5 billion, 433-acre development in suburban Dallas that's due to open in 2015.

Berkshire Hathaway's manufactured home unit offers man cave inspired by Duck Dynasty star (The Republic)

Clayton Homes is offering a new house inspired by one of the stars of the Duck Dynasty reality show. Berkshire Hathaway's home builder says the limited edition design with camouflage wall panels, wood grain linoleum flooring and a built-in gun closet would make an ideal man cave. Clayton Homes says Si Robertson from the hit A&E show is endorsing the 1,280-square-foot, three-bedroom home as a good value. The company posted a series of videos of Robertson chatting with Clayton's CEO online at http://www.claytonhomes.com .

View the Si Pad here.