charlieruane

Restaurant Depot just sold and would've been perfect—founder-owned, sold for $29.1B to Sysco Foods. That one's worth reading about, it was a very Berkshire-like business, sale, and acquisition. Founder wanted assurances that the biz would live on without being gutted.

Call me crazy, but the Shiller P/E is above 42—isn't now precisely the moment we *want* Berkshire to sit in cash? Isn't that, like, our core strategy? Sometimes I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. The headier valuations get, the easier we should make it for Greg to sit in cash! I see all of these articles applauding Greg for taking swings, "Berkshire is back," etc. Well, Berkshire was arguably most "back" when it was letting cash pile up amid a speculative fervor.

One could argue that the big news amid all of these moves is actually Greg's ongoing reduction of Berkshire's decentralization, via this new building products/homebuilding platform. One of the costs of this change is that it makes Berkshire a less appealing destination for long-held family businesses that founding families want to see live on unperturbed... though maybe Greg's calculus is that there aren't too many of these businesses left for Berkshire to acquire, so scaring the remaining ones away isn't that big of a price to pay.

Well, do you know how to identify smaller compounders? If so, buy them! I just use Berkshire as my hurdle rate. Will this other idea beat Berkshire? If yes, buy it. (And sometimes this other idea is just holding cash.) If no, buy Berkshire. Your question depends entirely on the alternatives available to you.

Beyond the float benefits inherent in all airline loyalty programs, Delta has the most devout following of the major airlines... they've successfully positioned themselves as the premium option via investments in lounges (Sky Clubs and Delta One) and premium cabin offerings that outclass their competitors. The Amex partnership only reinforces their walled garden. So with Delta in particular, Buffett/Ted may see some Apple-esque-premium-walled-garden-consumer-product effects in the mix. Anecdotal, but the airline status-obsessed people in my life uniformly fly Delta. The other airlines, especially United, have realized the power of this strategy and are starting to play catchup. But Delta has a lead.

I stopped reading his post at the sentence about BNSF earning a pittance on its replacement value. He's misreading Buffett's comment—it's fine that BNSF earns a pittance on its replacement value (hundreds of billions of dollars), what matters is Berkshire's return on the price it *paid* for BNSF, which was way, way below its replacement value. In fact, Buffett believes BNSF's high replacement value is a key source of its moat! Who would devote the capex to build a competitor that'd earn such meager returns on replacement value in the end?

Tim Cook stepping down!

So looks like BRK bought back $225mm on the first day of the new round of buybacks—according to Kingswell, at least. (I haven't checked the math/proxy yet.) Dare we extrapolate a monthly rate from that one-day figure...? Assuming 21 trading days per month and regular daily buybacks at that rate, that's $4.7 billion per month, way higher than the previous peak buyback rates of 2020/21 (I think the 2021 total was $27 billion). Though I suppose Berkshire's market cap is way higher now, so it's easier to put more dollars to work toward buybacks.

And even if he does buy his stock two days post-AR every year... $15mm is a tiny chunk of the daily volume, who cares.

Well, we've never really had a scenario where Berkshire's CEO could be personally buying in shares with knowledge of undisclosed buybacks. If Abel hadn't disclosed the buybacks in real time, that's the scenario we'd be in today; one could argue that this would constitute an information edge that the CEO would have over other shareholders. I bet that's why they opted for disclosure here, though I agree it seems odd at first glance.

I always wonder what Becky thinks of Joe's comments...

Also found this transcript of his comments re: putting his salary into BRK.A: https://x.com/TheTranscript_/status/2029568736718442995

There's also this one: https://www.cnbc.com/video/2026/03/05/berkshire-ceo-greg-abel-on-succeeding-warren-buffett-i-still-check-in-with-him-nearly-every-day.html?__source=sharebar|twitter&par=sharebar Joe Kernen is a scourge.

Anyone have a link to the full Abel CNBC appearance? Hard to track down these clips.

Yup. His comments to Berkshire underwriters advising them to assume that every cyber policy they write will be money-losing come to mind...