Lemsip

Being a fellow UK based shareholder who last attended in 2019, I found the simplest process was simply to collect the credentials in person the Friday preceding the meeting from the "Will Call" area. You just show up with a copy of your borkerage statement ( electronic works too) and an ID. There was a bit of a line initially of folks eager to do this first but this quickly cleared and it was pretty easy and quick to walk in, collect the credentials and leave. I tried getting the credentials via my UK broker but they were not structured or able to get this done and in the end, picking them up in person was the simplest process. Obviously this only works if you can do this the day before in the afternoon

Down 3.5% in GBP. Brk,Mkl and Unilever top performers with visa, mastercard not too bad. Alphabet and growth names ( Terry Smith type stocks) took a beating but overall happy to have survived 2022 with most of my capital intact. Feeling ok about next 3 years with a defensive portfolio which is cheaper across the board.

In his letter published last year the figure he quoted was $41b. This year's contribution is around $4b at current prices so the total donated should be around $45b. https://berkshirehathaway.com/donate/jun2321.pdf

Thanks. What source is this from ?

I have held Berkshire for more than 20 years and never found a UK broker that was switched on to the AGM related admin process for any US listed firm. Interactive Investor do a reasonable job of adminstering UK listed companies though but don't have a clue regarding US co's. I used to have a few BRK shares in a US account ( with Citibank) in NY and they faithfully used to send all AGM material to me in the UK. I switched the holdings on to something else so no longer get the BRK material from them. In any case it is simple enough to just show up with a printed copy of your brokerage statement and do this the day before the meeting and that's what a lot of the overseas attendees ( of which there are usually a lot) tend to do.

I am a UK shareholder though not attending the AGM this year. I did go in 2019. The process of getting credentials is pretty straightforward and I didn't bother doing it in advance. If you arrange your schedule accordingly, you can turn up at the venue the day before and go to the "Will Call" area with a copy of a brokerage statement showing a Berkshire holding. Standing in line takes longer than the credentials process which is less than a minute. Then you use the credentials to attend the following day. I used II and Eqi at the time but they weren't really clued in on the Berkshire credentials process so I just took a printed copy of the statements along on the day. Some people were also showing statements on their smartphone to get credentials.

I thinks the error is due to the wrong B share equivalent as of Dec 31 used in your table. Per the 10-K it should be 1,543,960 A share or 2,315,940,000 B share equivalents ( page K-107 of 10-K). The B share number for Dec 31 in your table should be 1,350,043,471 rather than the one used. That will help get to the correct figure as your A share number for Dec 31 is correct from the 10-K.

I don't think your calculations are correct as your share equivalents correspond to mine but your dollar amount calculations seem too low. They had already purchased $4.4b worth by 17th Feb if you use 233 as the avg price per b share till then

Roughly $5b quarter to March 3 reducing share count by a further 0.92% since Dec 31.

I think it is fair to consider these if you are looking at an estimate of earning power. Obviously for valuation purposes, the public securities portfolio is quoted regularly so the maket's valuation is included in book value. Berkshire owns 5.4% of Apple and as it stands you would not be able to get an accurate picture of Berkshire's true earning power derived from its Apple stake as only dividends received show up on the income statement. In comparison, KHC earning power is regularly reflected on the income statemen due to equity accounting although the form of ownership is essentially the same with a 26.4% ownership in this case. The issue is whether Bloomstran is being aggressive in the numbers he is using. I don't think he is. The 2019 Annual report had a table at the start of the letter which shows the retained earnings for just the top 10 portfolio holdings were $9b. Bloomstran uses $10b for the entire portfolio a year later so it doesn't look like he has applied unduly optimistic values here.

9% in USD and 5.65% in GBP. Happy with that. Was largely inactive all year ( including in March). Sold down a bit of BRK after the AGM where Buffett appeared spooked. Should've held. Best performers - NKE, GOOG Just 2 MKL, DEO had YTD losses. Positioned OK for next year although have to constantly resist the urge to trim NKE ( approaching 3x from my buy price of $51 in 2017).

In 2019 they were repurchasing till March the 29th so I don't think this is an issue.

Berkshire is down more than 7% in Frankfurt right now so a big one might be on its way.

For Berkshire the key issue is not whether this is a bubble ( I personally don't see it at current interest rates and equity valuations). They key issue is with the amount of cash they have accumulated and lacking reinvestment opportunities, this is time to use for returning capital to shareholders. That needs to be a far more important part of the allocation process than it hitherto has been. Certainly, most other money managers would not be afforded luxury the building up hundreds of billions of shareholder cash waiting for the phone to ring. Also, it is a myth that Buffett only invests when there are market dislocations. He wasn't particularly aggressive in 2008 ( focussing mainly on preferred fixed income type arrangements) nor in 1987 ( when he did nothing) or 1999. He was also totally inactive in Q4 2018 when the market dived 20% - a rare event. The key current capital allocation issues are size and shrinking universe and a hesitation to aggressively repurchase even when Berkshire has been cheap. Sitting on cash waiting for a future meltdown involves too much faith in specific future events and is also limited by Buffett's age and the lack of anyone else at Berkshire who can claim any experience allocating sums of this amount.

As someone with almost a 50% position in Berkshire, I agree that the capital allocation in the last 5 years has been sub-par and frustrating to an extent. Since the end of 2014 - Cash has doubled from 58 to 116 billion ( not 128 as reported in the media) Operating earnings generated and retained have been 93 billion ( virtually all cash) About 37bn of this capital has been deployed in sizeable new deals - $22b for PCP ( rest by debt) , $5b new commitment to KHC and $10b in OXY preferred. PCP has been subpar as earnings seem to be static since 2015, KHC has been a disaster and OXY should work out OK but is unlikely to move the needle at Berkshire. His straight equity deals have been better with exiting IBM, loading up on Apple and building a JPM position basically looked good. Buybacks in size - as in 2011- have been an opportunity missed due to thumb sucking and overly complicated self imposed rules. I think at the current price, Berkshire continues to be safe and bullet proof but I am not comfortable with a move to a market timing operation of hoarding cash sitting around waiting for a market event when the allocation model is totally centralized to 2 90 year olds. Market timing is iffy at the best of times but especially if practised by a couple of guys for whom time is the one thing they have a decreasing amount of with each passing day. The next rung of capital allocators have no experience or track record of handling anything like the amounts of capital that will needs to be allocated if all earnings continue to be retained. I do feel that one of the aspects that the market is not pricing is the possibility that allocation will become more rational post Buffett in that management will be less bound by self imposed constraints in returning capital to shareholders via buybacks. New deals may also improve since the Buffett model of wait for the phone to ring will not work for others so that operation may need to be a bit more proactive. These last 5 years have included 2 periods of weak markets - 2015 and 2018 and the 2018 plunge was pretty brutal so it is not as if it has been a market going straight up without any opportunities for rational buybacks in size or other purchases.

It is $442m buybacks according to the 10Q. I notice seekingalpha has an inaccurate summary where they say the buyback was 8.29m B shares whereas it actually is 1.76m

Berkshire, close to London, in the UK

I think some British papers are massaging the headline to cater to a local audience. Buffett gave his standard response "we will be happy to buy outside the US" and obviously being the FT, the questioner made it more specific and he obviously obliged. In the past one of the issues Buffett has pointed out in the UK is that the reporting threshold for ownership positions here is 3% and he has said in the past this is a issue since they like to take large positions and this would alert others prematurely but he considers this a jurisdiction he understands well. On another note, I don't see Rolls Royce as a viable candidate. Currently it is a well known brand but not a great business with zero growth, loads of debt, highly variable earnings and high capital intensity. it has a 3 part business strategy that includes the phrase "transform the business". If that does not keep Buffett away I'm not sure what will. It may be a good cigarbutt candidate though but Buffett doesn't do that anymore.

Mine was in an ISA so no need to keep records for tax purposes and BRK.B gave me the added advantage of no dividends to reinvest and pay withholding tax on, giving me a further advantage over an S&P500 index fund. There turned out to be other advantages over the equivalent index fund investments based on what I could fund with the proceeds in 2014-2015 when the index was lagging considerably, perhaps more by luck than judgement. Same here. As of 6th of April the entirety of my large BRK position is in ISAs with a little bit in a SIPP. No capital gains ever. Per the BRK proxy, after my latest buying spree at a recent cost basis of $198 ( between July 18 and Feb 19), I now own more shares than one of the BRK directors ! If I had to pay capital gains on the accumulated gains there it would be an uncomfortable amount - that is what compounding over more than 15 years and full use of ISA allowances will do for you ! I will need to sell a bit from time to time to fund living expenses from next year but fortunately do not have to consider tax consequences. So all academic studies of performance vs S&P etc notwithstanding, BRK has definitely worked very well in setting things up comfortably for me. Of course it has also hedged against the local currency shenanigans over the last 3 years as an added bonus.

@Dynamic, I have also held Berkshire from 2002 but my recordkeeping till 2015 was haphazard at best so hard to calculate the overall IRR but suffice it to say the investment has worked well and allowed me to sleep at night. You make a crucial and often underappreciated point about the relatively small range of price that Berkshire usually experiences. In the list of stocks I follow it has the lowest range between highs and lows in the last 1 year ( a particularly volatile one in the markets) apart from Unilever ( 18% and 15%) What this means in practical terms is that if you are a buyer or a seller, the difference between picking the absolute best time to buy or sell in any year is much less than the average stock so over the long term, you are unlikely to be penalised much for unfortunate timing, when evaluated over a 5 year period. Finally one of the characteristics of Berkshire is that it has to be held as a 5 year+ position to evaluate performance. It's the wrong business for quarterly excitement. It can go through long-ish periods of price stagnation and in retrospect they tend to be good opportunities to lock-in safe and significant returns.

I guess I do too, as long as I'm buying shares. And/or Buffett is buying shares back. But at some point I'll be looking for share appreciation. And it's a little dishonest of Buffett unless he believes it. He is otherwise misleading shareholders as to Berkshire's prospects when he offers to buy their shares back. Considering the fact that no one including Buffett can predict the future market conditions with 100% accuracy, it is sensible to be realistic about the prospects of a very large company. Assuming average endpoint conditions, the realistic expectation is the return on shareholder equity that berkshire earns which is around 10%. As for misleading shareholders, it couldn't be further from the truth. He has already bought back shares at these levels so obviously thinks this is well below intrinsic value. It is just that some people would want him to buy a lot more - but they are not privy to the other options he is considering in capital allocation in any given quarter. There is no upside for a CEO talking up future returns. I posted by 4 year returns above and I am more than happy to have those numbers in a portion of my portfolio. Having Berkshire as a significant weight especially helped in 2018 when it beat the market by almost 7 points and helped me to a mid single digit positive return on my portfolio when most investors lost money in the markets ( including in bonds).

Buffett has been saying this almost verbatim at least since the mid 80s. I wouldn't take it literally but as a prudent reminder to keep expectations modest. I much prefer it to management teams offering confident forecasts of shareholder return of 15% over 5 years etc. Berkshire will deliver a 10% or so return in almost all market environments over a 10 year period ( more if you enter during a weak period). Good enough for me as a bedrock holding in a portfolio. Amidst all the criticism of Berkshire performance etc, I just did an IRR calculation on my position for the last 4 years. With significant buys in Aug-Dec 2015 and July 18-Feb 19, the IRR is 17.4% in GBP and 11.7% in USD. And this with an endpoint where Berkshire has been flatlining since the new year, is sitting on gobs of cash and the business is chugging along well. I'd take it anytime.

I would expect a range of $1 to $1.5bn unless he has been working on other deals. Not having bought much by Feb 14 does not really matter. If you look at Q3 2018, all the buying of about a billion was concentrated in the space of 10 working days in August. The pattern was the same in Q4 with a block of a week to 10 days in October and December accounting for all the buys with no buys on any of the other weeks . So if he wanted to, he could have bought upto $2bn between Feb 14 and end of March. My guess would be closer to the amount seen in Q3 August i.e $1bn.

Please do yourself the favor of reviewing the video with the interview of Mr. Buffett with Ms. Quick. Please ask yourself about your personal experience during the clip - especially with regard to Mr. Buffett's behavior and appearance in the clip. That question that Becky Quick read out was from me and I asked it because I saw people obsessing over the minutae of Berkshire buybacks. I had predicted that the reason for the lower than average buying in Q4 was because they might have been working on an acquisition and Buffett confirmed it in his answer which I thought was rational and well explained even though it had to be drawn out by asking a direct question. People are not usually privy to the choices he is evaluating while making capital allocation decisions so most kneejerk reactions are based on very limited information. People sometimes forget that Buffet's core focus as CEO of Berkshire is to increase operating earnings, not sit around watching stock prices and time buybacks. Trying to get large acquisitions is where I want him to focus. He can do buybacks etc as he finds that advantageous vs alternatives n but I do not expect a CEO of one of the largest companies in the world to be micro managing that aspect not does it make a material difference in short time frames. He has already for the first time made it explicit that Berkshire will be doing significant repurchases in the letter and I think that is good enough as long as the business overall creates value. With regard to amount of buybacks, note that the pattern so far is that Berkshire has done most buybacks in specific blocks of a week or two so not having bought anything in size by 14th Feb doesn't mean much. He bought a billion's worth in a 2 week period in August in the 3rd quarter and the buying activity in the 4th quarter was also concentrated in 2 blocks of a week to ten days in October and December.

A quarter is too short a time period to draw any conclusion since there is so much noise in price data over sich short periods. Berkshire has flatlined after outperforming the S&P by 7% for the year ending 31 Dec and the market has moved up but these things happen. Last summer Berkshire was weak till July and then went on a 17% run in under 3 months to September. Good time to be a buyer as the business is substantially cheaper than it has been for a while with no deterioration in the business. With regard to buybacks, they are likely to be small this quarter. They had bought back only $14m by 15th Feb per 10-K. Buffett did explain in an interview that they were holding cash for a very big transaction that got away. Even if they had stepped up the buying after that, it is unlikely to be significant as they would only have about a month and half remaining. It will some years for buybacks to start showing their impact even if they were really stepping it up so for the foreseeable future, the main driver will continue to be operating earnings and the stock portfolio ( judged over a 3-5 year time frame - not every quarter)