gfp

I wouldn't be surprised. We'll find out in the 13-F. He has made several statements in CNBC interviews and the like that he doesn't typically "trim" positions. Once he starts selling he usually finishes. I thought that perhaps WFC was an exception to this since he seemed to be price-sensitive in his sales (he stopped selling earlier this year). But if he blew it out in Q2 that would say a lot.

Yeah - Berkshire actually included it in the Earnings press release for the first time (I believe)

On the resiliency of the operating earnings figure - operating earnings for the quarter is propped up by GEICO's underwriting gain ($2 Billion pre-tax for the quarter) in a major way. They mention that because they handle the COVID "give back" differently than many carriers (they give you a discount for the length of your policy vs. many carriers taking it month-by-month on a wait and see basis), this will result in higher reported profitability at the beginning (Q2) and potentially lower profitability or even underwriting losses towards the end of the period (12 months out from the start of the give-back, since 6 month auto policies will be renewing throughout the 2nd half of this year)

https://berkshirehathaway.com/qtrly/2ndqtr20.pdf At first glance, my impression is that operating earnings as a whole held up remarkably well. $10 Billion goodwill write-down at PCP. No Apple shares were sold during the quarter. Berkshire's share count at the end of the quarter was 1.60064 million A share eq. Berkshire's share count on 7/30/2020 was 1.59214 million A share eq. So he continued something like $2.3-2.45 Billion worth of additional share repurchase in the month following quarter end, before most of the recent run up in price. Year to date share repurchase is somewhere around $9.8 Billion worth (didn't figure this at cost, just ball park using $300k/sh)

We sort of already know it is less than that through quarter end since the filing that telegraphed the ~$5.3-5.4 Billion in buybacks was in July. But maybe analysts are looking for a to-date and not quarter-end figure.

Maybe I should have posted it in the BOMN thread? https://www.sunshinelady.org/sunshine-ladys-charitable-work-for-warren-buffett-clouded-over/

RIP Doris Buffett - Warren's older sister has died at 92 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/05/business/doris-buffett-the-familys-retail-philanthropist-dies-at-92.html https://omaha.com/news/local/doris-buffett-philanthropist-and-sister-to-warren-buffett-dies/article_0c8e10a9-b750-5636-96d3-2119e0d0c8c4.html#tracking-source=home-top-story-1

I assume by "W's" you are referring to the junior investment managers Ted and Todd? We don't know what they did after 3/31 so far except for limited cases where disclosure was required. One of them bought more Liberty Sirius for example - https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/315090/000120919120032183/xslF345X03/doc4.xml https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/315090/000120919120033068/xslF345X03/doc4.xml https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/315090/000120919120034157/xslF345X03/doc4.xml and then exercised their rights in the rights offering - https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/315090/000120919120035265/xslF345X03/doc4.xml We'll know more later.

I suppose by Americans you are referencing North Americans. I would assume from the handle that the poster was living in Canada - although I am sure there are Raptors fans in the USA. As for the advice - this is exactly the advice I used to always give the type of people that would ask a question like Muscleman did. For most of my friends with more money than sense - it was always the right advice. Fly first class to a wonderful private villa or the 4 Seasons and you will still be ahead of what your beach house fantasy was going to end up costing you and you have zero stress and can change it up every time you feel like it. If you find yourself gravitating to vacationing in the exact same spot every year - by then you will know the market and exactly where you want to buy and you won't be asking vague questions about what might cash flow on a message board. For some people flying private to a rental home was still going to be cheaper than what they were wanting to buy and how much free time they actually had available to "vacation." Since Covid, that has changed and now people appreciate owning a spot they can take over and escape to. There are a lot more arguments lately for owning your 2nd home even though for some markets the rental rates for the rest of the year are depressed by the tourism decline. Still, for the newly wealthy people that I know it is almost never a good idea to own the vacation properties. They just seem to change their minds too often and gravitate towards the most overvalued spots. Muscleman's family is Chinese from his previous posts. This is why the Chinese wind up owning most of the real estate. Because we have had 5,000 years of dealing with land scarcity. Americans has this wide open land mass that allow them to continue to build outward. So Americans tend to think of renting. Either that or Americans are lazy people who spent all their money. They make fun of the Chinese people for speaking bad English and working in the Chinese take outs. The kids winds up saving money and buying the RE who they rent to the Americans. I'm half joking and half serious. But I have seen enough of these stories play out that it's got an ounce of truth to it. Ask any Asian parents for $50k to start a hedge fund and they will scold you for gambling. Ask them for a $250k down payment and they will re-mortgage their primary residence to help you out. Muscleman's quest to look to buy a vacation rental and your response are very telling of the different philosophical approaches to real asset ownership. My $0.02

Yes, of course. Just don't overpay ;)

Great book and great source material website link - thanks for the heads up on both. One correction to my earlier posts in this thread about share count - The share count of Berkshire went from 1.6 million down to about 1 million in the early years of Warren's control. Then there were various mergers to clean up the structure, including Blue Chip, Diversified Retailing, and eventually Wesco much later. But Warren has returned BRK to the 1961 share count of 1.6 million A share equivalents. Another 600k A shares to get us back to a million!

So BRK issuance of shares for acquisitions was totally covered by 1961 repurchase? I'm only on the first chapter! But yes - basically the 1961 repurchase of 18,139 shares (which would be called A-shares today) and the 44,351 A-share equivalents that have been repurchased since 2018 or whenever he started this modern repurchase activity. Not bad Warren. You can tell this is a guy who remembers what the share count was when he started this endeavor. ** edit - plus the shares bought since 2012, which didn't show up on my free ycharts graph. He started with that $1.2 B deal from the estate of the guy who sold him flight safety or one of those acquisitions. Its the dexter folks that really made out though... So I guess the high for share count was about 1.651 million A-share equivalents in 2011 and since then he has brought it down to 1.6006 million A-share equivalents. Or maybe a bit less if he has continued purchasing

Thanks for the recommendation - just getting started on this book today. First thing that I noticed is that Berkshire has essentially the same number of shares in 2020 as it did in 1960 - 60 years of net-zero issuance (thankfully for that 1961 share repurchase of 18,139 A-shares: worth $5.3 Billion today)

The OXY shares are issued at 90% of the VWAP for some number of days preceding the dividend declaration. So they are issued at different prices each quarter. Berkshire appears to be selling them - perhaps even before they are delivered as they have sometimes done in the past. I would not be surprised, if OXY has it right in this registration filing, to learn that Berkshire was pre-selling the dividend shares and ending up with a zero share position upon delivery. (not counting the warrants of course, which are at a very high strike)

If Berkshire were actually like a mutual fund, as it is sometimes misrepresented, the C-corp would obviously be a bad choice - as Charlie has pointed out over the years. But Berkshire is an insurance-focused conglomerate, one of the largest enterprises in the world - not an investment partnership or fund. There are a lot of great sections to that 1986 letter, I enjoyed re-reading it as Buffett was a lot more talkative about important things back then. (you can skip the section on selling encyclopedias to keep it interesting. "5 cents per page!") As for the "why does Berkshire hold all these stocks inside a corporation?" question and the currently popular "why does Berkshire hold so much excess capital in cash equivalents?" question - he addresses them in 1986 pretty clearly:

There are a few funny lines, as usual, in the 1986 Chairman's Letter (which discusses the change to the current tax rate on investments inside insurance companies). This one seemed almost timely: (source - https://berkshirehathaway.com/letters/1986.html )

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20110830006354/en/Berkshire-Hathaway-News-Release

Interesting - thanks for the clarification. If that is correct, Berkshire has sold something like 19 million OXY shares that they previously owned, plus at least one batch of 11 million that they had previously been paid as pref. dividends.

If Berkshire doesn't start selling OXY common shares, they will be at 10% with this recent (stock) dividend payment on the preferred. This prospectus sounds like they are selling, but really it is just a registration statement for the new shares OXY is issuing Berkshire. If Berkshire doesn't stay below 10% (which they are basically at right now absent some quick sales), they will have to disclose share sales within a few days of each trade - which they tend to avoid when possible. Maybe they will let it build up. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/797468/000114036120016019/nt10013471x1_424b7.htm

I was just commenting that I haven't seen any mention of it on the CNBCs or Bloombergs (that doesn't mean they didn't mention it but I didn't see it) and in the not too distant past they used to cover every disclosed or rumored move Buffett made. Sign of the times was just referencing that nobody cares what stock Warren Buffett likes these days - after all, he's washed up as a stock picker. But yes - it is also true that $800 million of incremental purchases of an already large equity position is not big news for Berkshire. It could also be the case that they didn't stop buying after the 1st three days. We'll know soon enough if he has continued since he has to report promptly on this one. gfp, sorry, trying to parse your sarcasm. Which one of these did you mean? (a) $800 million purchase is such a big news that Mainstream press should be making a bigger deal about it. In current times, only some of the press is reporting it and not making a huge deal they would have been making in the past. (b) $800 million is such a tiny amount given Buffett's portfolio. Sign of times that press has to even report it.

Berkshire has been over 10% on BAC for a while now. These buys put them at 11.3%. They have been given permission by the Fed. It is possible that later this year they will be given permission to go as high as 25% under certain conditions. The decision to further loosen bank holdings company rules was delayed to the fall or winter sometime. May be further delayed. Remember when Buffett buying $800 million worth of stock in the open market used to get reported on by the press? Sign of the times

Some backstory on MultiPlan - which Berkshire apparently looked at (or was at least pitched) back in 2013 - https://www.businessinsider.in/stock-market/news/warren-buffetts-dealmaker-closed-the-biggest-blank-check-takeover-ever-this-month-heres-why-he-may-owe-the-berkshire-hathaway-chief-for-the-deal-/articleshow/77085637.cms MultiPlan ended up being sold in 2016 for $7.5 B. https://realmoney.thestreet.com/articles/05/13/2016/multiplan-roll-out-3.3b-loan-back-hellman-friedman-takeover

Thanks for tracking that down. It is no wonder that Warren was so confident that his reserving was still accurate and conservative when speaking at the annual meeting. Warren and Ajit (and Gates) have been thinking about this possibility for many years and made sure they were not covering that risk without being separately compensated for it. It is likely that even the insurers without the virus exclusions will come out OK on the 'no physical damage to property' bit, but Berkshire's subsidiaries seem to have a belt and suspenders situation built into their contracts. I would expect event cancellation type policies to pay out for the most part. And workers compensation could get tricky as people are asked to return to work and feel their employer has not done enough to make it safe for employees.

I don't have more information than this on Ajit's first federal lawsuit testing Berkshire's virus exclusions in federal court - but Insurance Insider's Sunday Recap had this blurb so somebody may be able to find the case in PA federal court. I don't know what district or who is suing. "Turning to the legal disputes over claims arising from the Covid-19 outbreak, Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary National Fire & Marine Insurance Company has stressed to the judge in a Pennsylvania-based business interruption case the importance of his decision as it may be the first to address the enforcement of a virus exclusion for Covid-19 in federal court."

FT has a good article on the Dominion deal / Berkshire / leveraged buyers, etc. Plus I hadn't seen that Brookfield had paid $2B for a 25% stake in the same LNG project Berkshire will now run https://www.ft.com/content/aa05c8fb-7daf-46f1-bfff-fce58cf5c77f