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gfp

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Posts posted by gfp

  1. John, the first quarter 2019 repurchases cost $1.69 Billion.  The second quarter repurchases cost $443 million (rounded up).

     

    2.133 Billion minus 1.69 Billion gets you to the 443

     

    The discrepancy in the Q1 cash flow statement likely results from the fact they were purchasing right up through quarter end (March 29th), and cash had not left the building for the settlement of some of the last shares purchased yet.  That's why the number in cash flow statement says 1.585 B in Q1, when in fact 1.69 billion worth of shares had been purchased.  Settlement is 3 days in the US

     

    scorpioncapital,

     

    I appears to me you have been looking at the movements in share counts for A & B in note 20 on p. 21. Those movements are half-year figures. You find the exact figures for the quarter on p. 47.

     

    The easiest way to get the capital spent in the quarter on buybacks is to look up treasury stock acquired in the cash flow statement and calculate the difference to last quarter [in casu : USD 2,133 M - USD 1,585 M = USD 548 M].

     

    If you calculate directly based on the buyback specification, you get USD 442 M.

     

    The cash flow statement for 2019H1 ties with the buyback specifications for 2019Q1 and 2019Q2 on a total level, while there for 2019Q1 is an inconsistency between the cash flow statement and the buyback specification amounting USD 106 M.

     

    Because the numbers fits on a total level for 2019H1, I dare to posture that there is an error in the cash flow statement in the Berkshire 2019Q1 10-Q [0_0]+[*holding my head low* & *arms up in front of my head* for incoming rotten tomatoes, rotten eggs, Scud missiles and the like!].

     

    - - - o 0 o - - -

  2. One small note I noticed so far this morning refers to Pilot Flying J (page 11 of the 10Q) as having "nearly $30 Billion in annual revenues."

     

    What was interesting to me is that this time last year, the 10Q described it this way, "approximately $20 Billion in annual revenue."

  3. What is your source for the quote?  Not the 10Q

     

    I think it's more...

     

    "Stock buybacks: Berkshire bought back 1,539 shares of Class A stock and 8.29M of Class B shares during the quarter, more than the 1,258 Class A shares and 6.53M of Class B shares it acquired in Q1."

     

    8.29m x $200 share = 1.65 billion

    1539 a shares x 300,000 = 461m..

     

    eyeballing it would be around 2 billion. According to the previous poster that would be 12.5 years to spend 100 billion. Of course by then, we can reasonably expected another 250-300 billion.

  4. That makes sense - it was probably the original airline investment for Berkshire by Ted Weschler - he was the Doug Parker fan who got Berkshire into airlines first.  And I believe a good bit of what Ted and Todd manage is in subsidiary pension plans.

     

    It's late here but I'll try to check tomorrow.

     

    I think the 13F total agrees with my automated parsing to avoid human error, and that's 43.7 million shares.

     

    In the adjustments column I subtract all the pension scheme assets and I've left the calculation which I entered manually from reading the 13G linked in the next column, so I'll try to check the figures tomorrow.

     

    That subtracts 20.742 million shares almost halving the total on the 13F to leave only those for the benefit of Berkshire shareholders.

  5. Yeah, the timing of the filing was based on BAC's quarterly results.  The press release with supplemental financial details was filed on July 17th.  Usually Berkshire would wait until a couple days after the 10Q to file something like their Form 3, which was required once they learned of the most recent share count. 

     

    In this case, I don't think BAC has even filed their 10Q yet unless I am missing it somewhere.  But the 8K had enough in it that someone probably made the call to file the Form 3.  Its still an SEC filing with a share count listed after all...

     

    https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/70858/000007085819000037/0000070858-19-000037-index.htm

     

    ** now that I look at the Form 3, it actually says, "date of even requiring statement: 7/17/2019" - which would be the BAC filing linked above.

     

    I wonder where the 10Q is?

  6. I think Warren knew the pace of BAC's repurchases.  He probably is expecting to be able to keep the position given the evolving guidance on what constitutes "control" as far as the Fed is concerned.  I wouldn't be surprised if Berkshire is allowed to stop selling Wells shares as well.  He may not buy more, but I would expect the government to allow Berkshire to drift up passively.  BRK owns more than 18% of American Express, which itself is a bank holding company.

  7. Congratulations to you Gregmal - a good trade on Alphabet and bottom-ticked Howard Hughes

     

    Congrats to the bunch of people buying GOOG not too long ago on that dip under $1100. This is why its baffling people can't outperform if actively managing. You should not be managing anyones money; not even your own, if you cant/couldnt see the merits of GOOG from an investment standpoint. From early June this is up near 20%....

  8. longinvestor is probably referring to the Fed's clarification of what will trigger Bank Holding Company oversight going forward.  Here is some material on the potential future clarifications / implications for Berkshire's forced selling and position sizing of banking investments ->

     

    https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/pressreleases/bcreg20190423a.htm

    (links towards bottom, including a chart)

     

    a commentary -

    https://www.morganlewis.com/blogs/finreg/2019/04/gnostic-secrets-now-revealed-a-first-take-on-the-feds-bank-holding-company-act-control-proposal

  9. Here's a pdf of a recent article on Iscar in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.  I saved it as a pdf because it requires registration to read.

     

    https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/business/.premium-how-warren-buffett-bought-the-best-industrial-firm-in-israel-1.7497532?=&ts=_1563133910334

     

    After the company’s acquisition by Buffett, Harpaz was appointed chairman of all the companies in IMC, the metalwork division of Berkshire Hathaway, which includes a large number of companies similar to Iscar such as Tungaloy in China, TaeguTec in India and Ingersoll and Tool-Flo in the United States. Iscar may be the biggest producer of cash for the group — 40% of the total — but from the top floor of the company’s management building in the Migdal Tefen industrial zone, Harpaz controls 160 companies in 65 countries that employ 14,000 people. They have annual revenues of over $3 billion, with a phenomenal profit margin of over 30% — an amazing figure for an industrial firm.

     

    Iscar has handed Buffett some $5 billion to $6 billion over the past 10 years, according to sources close to the company. This means Buffett has fully paid off his investment in Iscar, and Iscar still has another $1 billion in the kitty. Its sales have grown by hundreds of percent over this period, and it has a cash flow of $1.1 billion a year from operations — more than twice the figure at the time the company was sold to Buffett.

    iscar.pdf

  10. https://www.wsj.com/articles/oxymoron-alert-some-high-yield-bonds-go-negative-11563096601?mod=hp_lead_pos4

     

    It will be interesting to see if Berkshire revisits the European debt markets and can pull off some negative yielding bonds at issuance.  You could tell it was a point of pride for him when he issued the SQUARZ securities years ago (they did not work out to be a good deal for Berkshire).  So he certainly does have a curiosity towards issuing negative yielding paper.  Not as good as insurance float but probably better than the volatility of the index put float.

  11. My hunch is that his specialty was "tax avoidance" for the very wealthy.  Look into the transfers into various charities connected to Epstein - why would Les Wexner just send over $21 million to Epstein's charity for Jeff to take all the credit giving it away?  Why would Les sign over the NYC property for practically no money (this one could have been in lieu of Financial Trust's fees for the year or something similar).  Another charity of Epstein was launched with $10 million that appears to have come from Leon Black.

     

    All of the USVI entities, the strange charitable flows - looks like he was peddling tax strategies to me.  Likely with plenty of 'dirt' and blackmail thrown in for "stickiness!"

     

     

    Also - it does appear that he traded through Bear Stearns earlier in his career (Ace Greenberg said he has gone from working at the firm to becoming an important client - he was fired from Bear for loaning money to a friend to buy stock - likely an insider trade - dating a secretary, and expense account irregularities).  He traded through Deutsche Bank most of his career.  Looks like he lost a lot of money on the Bear Stearns collapse and another $50m through the collapse of a Bear hedge fund.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/10/business/jeffrey-epstein-net-worth.html?action=click&module=RelatedCoverage&pgtype=Article&region=Footer

  12. Not material in any way, but it is 'general news' about Berkshire Hathaway -

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-benjamin-moore-to-become-main-paint-supplier-for-ace-hardware-11562788833

     

    Another note - GEICO will be paying out more than a few claims on vehicles in New Orleans after yesterday's citywide flood.  The small storm headed this way hasn't even arrived yet.  Projections from the Army Corps are that the Mississippi river could briefly overtop 19.6 foot high levees for the first time as the already-high river runs into storm surge pushing the opposite direction.  Yesterday's flood was just a rain event but the flooding came up quick once the pumps were overwhelmed.

  13. what a disaster the US soybean farming business is right now.  Thankful we were able to get a corn crop in the ground at the last minute on our midwest family farm (Indiana).  The wet fields almost forced planting soy since it can be planted later and still produce a crop.  For the life of me I can't understand per acre farm prices in relation to what the land throws off in average income.  An apartment building would never be valued that way.  Nobody wants to be the one to sell the family farm that has been in the family over a century though...

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