Charley's 2008 letter is out

[bookie71]

http://www.wescofinancial.com/cm2008.pdf

enjoy

[basl1]

Business and human quality in place atWesco continues to be not nearly as good, all

factors considered, as that in place at Berkshire Hathaway.Wesco is not an equally-goodbut-

smaller version of Berkshire Hathaway, better because its small size makes growth

easier. Instead, each dollar of book value atWesco continues plainly to provide much less

intrinsic value than a similar dollar of book value at Berkshire Hathaway. Moreover, the

quality disparity in book value’s intrinsic merits has, in recent years, continued to widen in

favor of Berkshire Hathaway.

 

interesting statement

[UhuruPeak]

Yeah, I took it as a subtle hint that BRK was doing better than the market expects - or in other words, Munger thinks BRK is undervalued.  I may be reading too much though, still substantially long Berkshire (though not as much as before as I've largely swapped for FFH)

[woodstove]

Doesn't he write that every year?  Is the wording meaningfully changed?

 

Seems like parsing fed-speak.

 

His comments about Precision Steel were curious.  I gather he thinks

the business is declining in terms of customer potential long term,

but I'm not clear why that should be.  Seems to me an economic

recovery should create steel demand and Precision should again get

it's share of that business.  I realize Precision is a drop in the bucket

for Wesco - the steel service centre industry itself interests me and

just trying to figure out Charlie's outlook.

[basl1]

It's curious to me why he's in precision steel at all

 

[basl1]

and why does Charlie persist with WSC if brk is so much better?

[zarley]

Doesn't he write that every year? 

 

Yeah, he's included something like that in every letter I've read.  I don't take it for much beyond face value. 

[UhuruPeak]

Doesn't he write that every year? 

 

Yeah, he's included something like that in every letter I've read.  I don't take it for much beyond face value. 

 

 

Ok, my bad.  Thx for the correction

[zarley]

Ok, my bad.  Thx for the correction

 

No worries.  I took a look at the 1997 letter (the earliest letter linked from the BRK website) and that same language is in there near the end.  Makes me wonder when he started putting that in there and what motivated him to add that reminder/warning.

 

http://www.wescofinancial.com/cm1997.pdf