Sections
1.Berkshire's Equity Holdings
For 2008 the table has been divided into three parts. The first part with the orange background comes from the list that Buffett gave in his Chairman’s Letter. I start with this list because it includes some foreign positions that are not on the 13f because they are not subject to registration with the SEC. Also some of the domestic positions show larger positions than appear on the 13f. To Buffett’s list I have added Burlington Northern and Moody’s as they were shown in the 13f.
The data in these tables is taken from our collection of Berkshire Hathaway's annual reports which dates back to 1989. The data comes from the Balance Sheets, Cash Flow Statements, and from the Tables on the Business Segments.
Berkshire's furniture business consists of five separate segments:
" We have found over time that the undistributed earnings of our investees, in aggregate, have been fully as beneficial to Berkshire as if they had been distributed to us (and therefore had been included in the earnings we officially report). This pleasant result has occurred because most of our investees are engaged in truly outstanding businesses that can often employ incremental capital to great advantage, either by putting it to work in their businesses or by repurchasing their shares. Obviously, every capital decision that our investees have made has not benefitted us as shareholders, but overall we have garnered far more than a dollar of value for each dollar they have retained. We consequently regard look-through earnings as realistically portraying our yearly gain from operations"
5.Comments from Client Letters
A list that contains links to our Client Letters that have discussed Berkshire Hathaway.
Central to any attempt to value Berkshire is the ability to understand and value the company's enormous ($61+ billion) insurance float. What follows is a weak attempt to justifying adding some value for insurance float when calculating Berkshires intrinsic value.
Magazine Articles
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"The Berkshire Bunch", This is an article from October 1998 Forbes Magazine. It gives background information and net worth figures on some long-term Berkshire investors. Be sure to read the sidebars.Dr. Angle, now 71, recalls, "He brainwashed us to truly believe in our heart of hearts in the miracle of compound interest."Persuaded, she and her husband, William, also a doctor, invited 11 other doctors to a dinner to meet young Warren.Buffett remembers Bill Angle getting up at the end of the dinner and announcing, "I'm putting $10,000 in. The rest of you should, too." They did. Later, Carol Angle increased her ante to $30,000. That was half of the Angles' life savings.Dr. Angle still practices medicine, as director of clinical toxicology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. But she doesn't work for the money. Her family's holdings in Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway have multiplied into a fortune of $300 million.
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"The Warren Buffett You Don't Know" Business Week story from July 1999 that contains some very interesting comments about Warren Buffett as a corporate manager.Buffett knows the sort of self-motivated, hands-on exec he covets wouldn't tolerate being pushed around by Omaha. And Buffett's respectful treatment of his managers has instilled in them an ambition to 'make Warren proud,' as one puts it. 'Somehow, Warren has been able to keep a diverse cast of characters working harder for him than they did for themselves,' Goldberg says. 'I see it every day—and I still don't know how he does it. But I do know that all of us feel this incredible responsibility to him.'"
Charlie Munger
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November 10, 2000 Speech to the Philanthropy Round Table" The "wealth effect" from rising U.S. stock prices is particularly interesting right now for two reasons. First, there has never been an advance so extreme in the price of widespread stock holdings and, with stock prices going up so much faster than GNP, the related "wealth effect" must now be bigger than was common before. And second, what has happened in Japan over roughly the last ten years has shaken up academic economics, as it obviously should, creating strong worries about recession from "wealth effects" in reverse.
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Speech to Harvard Law 1995 The Psychology of Human Misjudgment" "Although I am very interested in the subject of human misjudgment—and lord knows I've created a good bit of it—I don't think I've created my full statistical share, and I think that one of the reasons was I tried to do something about this terrible ignorance I left the Harvard Law School with."
Best Berkshire Sites
Berkshire Hathaway Home Page
BRK News Email news service by Futile France
Futile Finance
Sandman's Place By The Sandman
Value Investing By Rich Rockwood
Toronto Investment Club
http://boards.fool.com/Message.asp?mid=18912122