The Ledger
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Bragg: True entrepreneurs must work 70 hours a week, not 50
“That's the hours entrepreneurs have to work every week. Not 50, but 70, and entrepreneurs do work 70.”
Bragg Defends Using EBITDA Against Warren Buffett's Skepticism
“Warner said in the past he's not a believer in EBITDA, but we are. We think it's the cash that the business generates that, and so we're always saying, well, what's the multiple on EBITDA, and so we know what cash is coming, because You can usually cut back on…”
Replicating competitor products identically is easier than making better ones
“Our objective wasn't to make good onion rings. It was to make onion rings exactly the same as the competition, because then it's an easy sell. You don't have to have something unique, and that was not as easy as you would think, and we could make better tastin…”
John Bragg: Entrepreneurs must work 70 hours a week, not 50
“That's the hours entrepreneurs have to work every week. Not 50, but 70. And entrepreneurs do work 70.”
Bragg: Oxford will have more blueberry acreage than New Brunswick has in potatoes
“We're going to have more acres and blueberries than New Brunswick has in potatoes.”
Bragg: Nova Scotia and PEI alone restrict honeybee imports in North America
“So Nova Scotia and PEI are the only jurisdictions in North America that have restrictions.”
Bragg: Bell's massive spending on media programming has not worked out well
“They were paying a lot for this programming, and do you think Bell are happy that they spent a lot of money buying programming now? I don't think so. It really hasn't worked out well.”
Bragg refuses to grant company equity to non-family employees
“Family companies are great to work for, and we're going to pay you well, and you're going to feel very comfortable here, but there's no equity available, and too complicated with the finance structures if you start giving it away, and then if they want out, an…”
Bragg prefers high base pay over performance bonuses
“If I had my druthers, I'd rather Pay you a million dollars and just expect you to work hard than to pay you 500 with a 500 bonus. Incentives seem to be a way of life, but a lot of people will perform without, without incentives.”
Bragg: Long-Term Investors Should Buy Good Stocks Instead of Holding Massive Cash
“Having that money sit in cash, ah, I don't know, he's got a crystal ball that nobody else has. I'd be investing it in, in good stocks. Because if the stocks go down, it doesn't matter. But I guess he's waiting for the opportunity to buy them cheap.”
Bragg: Warren Buffett Is Anticipating a Major Market Correction
“He's creating cash, so he obviously anticipating quite a correction.”
Bragg generated the majority of his net worth after age 60
“Most of my real equity, the way you would measure it, Has come after 60.”
John Bragg: American business culture spends wealth while Canadians hide it
“I would say that the business community in the U.S. If they make ten million, they spend like they have a hundred, and Canadians make 10, they hide it. It seems to me the culture of the U.S. Is making money to spend it.”
Bragg: Founders often fail by diversifying into unfamiliar industries after initial success
“The mistake many people make is, is they have a business, they make the first million dollars, and now they get into things they know nothing about in too big a way.”
Bragg: Investment portfolio accumulated $2 billion in equity late in life
“Well, we've just plugged away at it, and we've got a couple billion of equity or more now in, in the portfolio. All that came late in life.”
Bragg: Oxford processes half of the 300-million-pound wild blueberry industry
“When I started in the industry, the Wild Blue Ray industry was forty million pounds in total, and I hoped to do two of that. And today, the industry is over three hundred million, getting closer to four. And we do half of it.”
Bragg: Businesses historically operated almost fully levered to fund growth
“We haven't shied away from using debt, although today our balance sheets are in great shape, but through the years we've always been, what I would say, almost fully levered,”
Bragg: Eastlink is the largest private telecom company in North America
“I think it's the largest private, yes, by far.”
Bragg: Agricultural processors must make supplier farmers efficient to succeed
“We not only have to have our own farm sufficient, we need the farmers sufficient.”
Bragg: Companies fail when early success leads them to over-diversify
“So stick to your knitting, do what you can do, and do more of it, and try and grow it. Don't try and do everything. So many people fail by getting successful in one, and then think they can do everything.”
Bragg: High-Quality Manufacturing Costs Less Due to Lower Shrinkage and Waste
“Top quality doesn't necessarily cost, in fact, quite often, it's cheaper, because you have less product on the floor, and, Less shrinkage, and you're doing it all right, and the end product becomes better.”
Bragg: Wild Blueberries Contain Double the Antioxidants of Cultivated Blueberries
“First of all, the health benefits, the antioxidants are double in wild blueberries. The flavor is much better.”
Bragg: European Blueberry Producers Cannot Compete and Are Disappearing
“We have, like, jam manufacturers that one of the biggest in the world is Andros in France, and they'll only use European blueberries, which are a different species again, or our wild blueberries. And Europeans can't compete with us because they're still a cott…”
Farming profitability requires competitors to suffer crop failures
“But what you need as a farmer is somebody else to be in trouble with their crop, and your crop work out well.”
Bragg: Eastlink won cable acquisitions by paying top price without overnegotiating
“There's six buyers, but you always get them, and it was basically, we became easy to deal with, and we always lived by our word, and we always paid top price, and so we just kept picking them off one at a time, And made it easy and didn't over, over negotiate.”
Bragg: Eastlink and Oxford Frozen Foods have no obvious next big step
“We just gradually bought them, but there's nothing to buy anymore. I think about this. We have both our cable and food business that were both quite rapid growth businesses from really small cottage industries to professional companies. We've played that game,…”
Bragg: Private firms can absorb premium acquisition prices via longer payback horizons
“If you paid a little too much and you're a private company, You just have to live a little longer to make it work. My brother used to say about buying a woodlot, well, maybe we're paying too much, but if we live long enough, it'll be a good deal. So this is th…”
Bragg: Being Public Slows Companies Down and Attracts Government Scrutiny
“It's costly to be public. And it slows you down, and you're, ah, and you're a target for everybody. Public companies attract government.”
Bragg: Eastlink is doing business with Starlink for fiber backhaul
“In fact, we're doing business with Starlink because when they get down, they want to have fiber that they can feed to people.”
John Bragg: Using your own name is among the best marketing tools
“One of the best marketing tools you can have is use your own name. People catch on. McCain's would be a great example. Everybody knows McCain french fries.”
Bragg: Family investment portfolio exceeds three billion dollars
“I read where so-and-so's running two billion dollars and three billion, and we're doing more than that, and so we've got a big portfolio that's done very well for us, so we try to streamline it and keep it simple and let the operators run the business, and the…”
Bragg: Borrowed heavily at 1-2% interest rates to buy stocks
“We've always had a modest portfolio, but when interest rates were down to where we could borrow money for one or two percent, We said, look, this is an opportunity. We should get at this, and so we did. Borrowed lots of money to buy good stocks, and it's been …”
Bragg: Operating a business and investing in stocks reinforce each other
“Buffett would say that, that if you're a businessman and investing in your business, you're probably a better stock picker, because you use the same principles. But if you're an investor, it will help you in your business, because you're using the same princip…”
Bragg: Food business success depends entirely on cost control over revenue
“So I would say, for instance, in the food business, all about cost, because you don't know what the revenue is going to be, because we don't know whether we're going to have a frost or whether the currency is going to change or whether somebody else got a big …”
Bragg: Capital allocation is the single biggest factor in cable telecommunications
“And I would say in cable, you know, you always have to look at costs, but capital is probably the biggest thing in the cable business, because you can make big mistakes, and, you know, spending, let's say a billion dollars to get into programming, and that jus…”
John Bragg: Environmental rules forced $75k bridge for dry stream
“When you, this particular case, it was a thousand acre woodlot, and we were building roads through it to do silviculture work, great for the future, and I went to see where they put a bridge in, and it wasn't a bridge, but it was half bridge and half rock. It …”
Bragg: First factory ran only 100,000 pounds against two-million-pound capacity
“Having built a factory and all, and geared it up to run two million pounds, and we ran I don't know, a 100,000. There just was no crop.”
Bragg: Bragg Group operated historically almost fully levered with debt
“We haven't shied away from using debt. Although today, our balance sheets are in great shape, but through the years, we've always been, what I would say, almost fully levered.”
Bragg: Oxford Frozen Foods aims to source 50% of blueberries internally
“Our ideal position would be to grow half them on our own farms and buy half from farmers.”
Bragg: Honeybee rental is the single largest cost in blueberry farming
“The biggest single cost are the rental of honeybees for pollination.”
Bragg: Oxford Frozen Foods is the largest beekeeper in Nova Scotia
“We're the largest beekeeper in Nova Scotia by far, and one of the largest in Canada, because we couldn't get the bees, so we had to start our own apiary.”
Bragg: Honeybee pollination increases blueberry yields to 8,000-9,000 lbs/acre
“I think if you had no honeybees imported and relied on, on local pollinators, you might get a thousand to 1500 pounds. If we use four to five hives, which is considered high, but we can grow 8000 or 9000 pounds.”
Bragg: Oxford Frozen Foods is Canada's largest carrot processor
“We're the largest carrot, certainly carrot processor in Canada, maybe in North America.”
Oxford produced McCain onion rings under a one-page agreement for 50 years
“We had a one-page agreement, which I still have, which gave us the exclusive right to make onion rings under the McCain label in Canada, and we've been doing that for over 50 years”
Bragg: Oxford Frozen Foods' Advantage Is Operating Across Three Microclimates
“Our advantage is that we are in three, three different microclimates.”
Bragg: Oxford paid up to 2x market price for 3,000 carrot acres
“We bought About 3000 acres of carrot land in the Annapolis Valley at premium prices. Why would you pay premium? We need to secure the base. That's where we grow our carrots, and we were, you know, doubling the production of carrots, so we need the land base, i…”