gfp

I read everyone's posts on this site. I follow wabuffo (Bill) on twitter and actually go there every day to see what he has posted - like the newspaper! I also follow @dirtcheapstocks on twitter to keep up on the ECIP banks. I also follow mungofitch on the shrewdm.com board and he also has a website that he has only ever made one post at but it called the exact 2022 market bottom so it's a high value per post ratio there - https://mungofitch.com Oh, and one spot or another, I've been reading dealraker / chompin / charlie / chuck's posts since I was like 20 years old...

I was curious if chatGPT would write a better one

This article is pretty funny. Go Toronto Star! “And a renowned stock investor who left Berkshire exposed to last year’s stock-market rout is difficult to regard as risk-averse, which Buffett declares himself to be.” https://www.thestar.com/amp/business/opinion/2023/03/02/berkshire-investors-would-do-better-if-the-firm-was-broken-up-its-time-for-warren-buffett-to-step-aside.html

$1 million minimum! That would be bonkers. Since short term T-bills are purchased at a discount like zero coupon bonds the minimums are actually little bit lower still... .98-.99 on the dollar vs face value

Share price up 57% in the month since this post. Hat tip ragnarisapirate....

That was me 4 months ago!

$100 USD on treasury direct

Some folks were disappointed that Warren omitted the list of the company's 15 largest equity holdings by value, since this list sometimes gave additional disclosure of the size of our foreign stock holdings vs. what shows up in a 13F. This screen shot below is for calendar year 2022, and is only for National Indemnity. There are additional foreign stock holdings inside General Re and other Berkshire insurance subs. The list below is just the new shares acquired during 2022 and I have put a red mark next to the foreign purchases since the US stocks are disclosed on dataroma and other 13F sites. Pay attention to the date acquired and you can see that Berkshire was still adding to the Japanese trading houses late in the year, so he may have omitted the chart for just one year since it would have probably caused his favorites to move up in share price. I will try to post a few more screenshots of other stuff. This isn't for all of Berkshire - just National Indemnity. (BTW, National Indemnity owns GEICO at a $43B carrying value and $6.9B cost basis, and also owns BNSF at a $47.3B carrying value and a $33.8895B cost basis) The "Harney Investment Trust" is a $77 Billion investment fund that Buffett created decades ago to keep trades hidden, so some of these will be transfers from Harney to National Indemnity direct. Wallacbeth Capital is Berkshire's preferred "broker" for large block trading. edit: that screen shot was made pretty blurry by this site's compression, try the attached PDF (also added a PDF showing General Re's year end stock holdings, some foreign, some well known) National Indemnity Foreign Stock purchases.pdf Gen Re stock portfolio.pdf

Yes, the first three entries are Li Lu from Himalaya Capital.

I hold Fairfax shares in both tax deferred and taxable accounts for myself and other people. I'm not concerned with Fairfax's capital structure but it is true that it is nothing like Berkshire's. Look around and you won't find very many companies like Berkshire. If Fairfax moves to a more reasonable valuation I may reduce the size of my Fairfax holdings, probably starting with shares held in tax deferred accounts. But who knows? Maybe I will be more enthusiastic about Fairfax's prospects at that time. I am not particularly excited about the returns from owning Berkshire going forward. They will be decent and they will occur with a high likelihood as compared to other options. The degree of certainty has value. The interest free long term loan from the government has value. Plus I like following the company and it is easy enough to value that occasionally you can play the options with uncommon safety (as far as buying call options is concerned). Berkshire's great! Fairfax is great! Someone should make a website to discuss!

That's interesting. Berkshire is a completely different type of situation, but every time I look at Markel, which I own a tiny amount of, I end up purchasing more Fairfax (which I already own a consequential amount of). The Berkshire I own is held in taxable accounts at such high deferred tax burdens that it will probably never be sold. Owning a few companies with such large built up unrealized taxable gains that they won't be touched is the closest I will get to the 'dealraker ideal'...

https://www.saratogarack.com https://www.propetroleum.com https://www.scfuels.com https://pilotwatersolutions.com There is also a large energy commodity trading business, a small part of which was shut down by Berkshire. The CEO (first non-family CEO I believe) came from Castleton Commodities International and has an energy trading background. https://www.pilotcompany.com/leadership/shameek-konar https://www.pilotcompany.com

Here is the 10-K filed this morning for Burlington Northern Santa Fe, LLC for those nerds that like to look at subsidiary annual reports, check the cash distributions ($5 Billion in 2022), compare to other railroads, etc https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/0000934612/000093461223000005/bni-20221231.htm

Thanks to BiggieCheese, FindingCompounders and longterminvestor for posting the letter and its more readable PDF form. Every time I read something from Ted I am more reassured that Berkshire is extremely lucky to have found him and brought him on board. It's interesting how many of these portfolio holdings have been acquired over the years, putting cash back in his former shareholders' hands. W.R. Grace was acquired after a huge gain, DirecTV was acquired, Valassis Communications (VCI - the direct mail/coupon insert outfit) was acquired by Ron Perelman, Cincinnati Bell was acquired by Macquarie Infrastructure. The ones that haven't been acquired: DaVita, Liberty Media (which kept splitting into tracking stocks post distribution), WSFS Financial (huge gain) and Cogent Communications, which delivered a large gain and still pays a 5.77% dividend today. I wonder what Cogent's current dividend represents as a percentage of Ted's Peninsula cost basis?

Yes, that is correct, OTC, pink sheets, etc are not required to be disclosed. So weird ADRs with long ticker symbols aren't required to be reported (like TCEHY or BYDDY, BYDDF, etc) - I am not saying Berkshire owns those tickers they are just examples. DJCO owns TCEHY I believe but that is just off the top of my head.

It is securities that trade on a US exchange. So it includes foreign stocks that trade on a US exchange like DEO and BABA but not Berkshire's ownership of equities that trade on exchanges in Germany, Japan, Hong Kong, Australia, etc... It also doesn't include traditional open-ended mutual funds or short positions, except for certain short positions in options that are similar to a long position in the equity.

Check in with the SKYH and SKYH.wt warrant holders on how this trade worked out for them. Buyer beware in a SPAC short squeeze. The warrants *might* be the rationally priced security...

Pilot company has grown a ton since 2017. They are doing a lot more business than just the truck stops. Since they took over control, Berkshire has shut down a portion of their oil trading operation and let some employees go. I would link to their subsidiaries but they have removed the list from the website as far as I can tell. Moody's will probably do an update soon to reflect the credit rating bump from being a consolidated Berkshire subsidiary and they may spell out more detail in that report.

This is the PDF of that guidance for those that want to delve in deeper: https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-drop/n-23-07.pdf

Berkshire paid $8.2 Billion cash on 1/31/2023 for the additional 41.4% of Pilot . The original 38.6% interest was carried at $3.2 Billion on Berkshire's books and will be subject to a remeasurement gain in Q1 2023. Valuation of 100% of Pilot based on the original 38.6% carrying value of $3.2 Billion is $8.29 Billion Valuation of 100% of Pilot based on the Jan. 2023 deal is $19.81 Billion. Berkshire's 80% would make Pilot a $15.85 Billion subsidiary. ----- Another interesting bit from the 10-K is what they are doing with Alleghany Capital (the non-insurance businesses acquired with Alleghany). The larger companies, like W&W/AFCO Steel [builder of the MSGE Sphere in Las Vegas] are operated independently as part of the Manufacturing, Service and Retail group - I assume reporting to Greg Abel. The smaller manufacturing companies acquired with Alleghany "primarily became part of Marmon." - page K-48

It's hard to untangle because many of the operating subsidiaries, including BNSF, are entirely owned by the Insurance Companies - is BNSF's equity funded by float liabilities or the substantial positive net worth of National Indemnity? Same with so many other subsidiaries. It's hard to know what he is valuing when he says the Insurance group is worth $90-100 billion or whatever is being implied there. I wouldn't worry too much about the specific number.

Report is here, happy reading https://berkshirehathaway.com/2022ar/2022ar.pdf Q4 earnings release PR here: https://berkshirehathaway.com/news/feb2523.pdf " Approximately $2.6 billion was used to repurchase Berkshire shares during the fourth quarter bringing the total for the year to approximately $7.9 billion. On December 31, 2022 there were 1,459,733 Class A equivalent shares outstanding. At December 31, 2022, insurance float (the net liabilities we assume under insurance contracts) was approximately $164 billion, an increase of $17 billion since yearend 2021. The increase in float includes $14 billion related to Berkshire’s acquisition of Alleghany Corporation." February 13, 2023 share count: 1,458,235 A-share equivalents, or 2.187353 Billion B-share equivalents. ($665 Billion dollars on Friday)

https://www.sec.gov/edgar/browse/?CIK=934612

Thanks John, that is a good piece on BNSF. " Since the acquisition, BNSF has distributed $47.7 billion to Berkshire, accounting for all free cash flow plus the net proceeds of additional debt incurred since the acquisition. " Ravi takes the carrying value of Berkshire's investment in Burlington stock before the acquisition, where I usually used Berkshire's cost basis on that stock (much of which was acquired by selling puts interestingly). I think that is where I got a number slightly below Ravi's $33 Billion. Warren does private equity! Don't let those PE boys have all the fun edit: thanks pupil, I knew you could work your terminal magic on this one

It would be cool if TIKR covered BNSF since it is still an SEC reporting company but it doesn't appear to. I'm sure a Bloomberg terminal could produce similar numbers for BNSF to compare, but I know that Berkshire has been taking virtually all of BNSF's after tax earnings out as (tax free) dividends to National Indemnity for many years. I haven't don't the math recently but I assume Berkshire is close to pulling out their entire 'headline' cost basis from the BNSF acquisition in cash dividends - I think they paid something like $34 Billion all in if I remember correctly, maybe a bit less. The true cost basis is complicated by the shares used for part of the deal of course.