“Charlie and I would be less than human if we did not feel a special kinship with our fifth bucket: the million-plus individual investors who simply trust us to represent their interests, whatever the future may bring,” Buffett said in his letter released Saturday, referring to long-time business partner, Charlie Munger. “They have joined us with no intent to leave, adopting a mindset similar to that held by our original partners.”
Cash Pile
Berkshire still has more than $138 billion in cash to deploy. A portion of the never-ending cash flow will be sucked up by two of its businesses, the railroad and energy operations, and Buffett said the incremental investment will probably generate “appropriate” returns. Railroad BNSF has invested $41 billion in fixed assets, and has paid $41.8 billion in dividends to the conglomerate since its purchase in 2010, Buffett said in his letter.
While the attractiveness of share buybacks might come or go based on the market’s price for Berkshire, the conglomerate still has those two large operations that continuously help reinvest funds, according to shareholder Thomas Russo. That, Russo argues, helps ease the pressure on Berkshire to do an “elephant-sized acquisition” to generate more returns.
“He doesn’t really have to find the elephant because he has two elephants already corralled that need to be fed,” said Russo, who oversees a portfolio including Berkshire at investment adviser Gardner Russo & Gardner. “One of them is Burlington Northern and one of them is Berkshire Hathaway Energy. He can deploy tens of billions of dollars on an ongoing basis, bringing both up to standard,” and then still have funds to deploy in an acquisition.
One of Berkshire’s top three most valuable assets these days is actually a $120 billion holding of Apple Inc. shares, an investment he likened in importance to the railroad. Berkshire has ended up with an even larger portion of the company’s shares thanks in part to Apple’s own appetite for buybacks, Buffett acknowledged in the letter.
“He’s redefined what an elephant can be,” said James Armstrong, who manages assets including Berkshire shares as president of Henry H. Armstrong Associates. “An elephant can be thought of as a 5.4% interest in Apple.”
Some of Berkshire’s major tweaks to its $281 billion stock portfolio last year were done to reposition its holdings. Throughout 2020, Buffett’s company cut its holdings in banks, insurance and finance firms -- an exposure that constituted more than 41% of the portfolio at the end of 2019 -- to just 24% of the portfolio by the end of last year. He also dumped his airline stocks earlier in the pandemic.
Chevron, Verizon
The company did find stocks to buy last year, including two large stakes in Chevron Corp. and Verizon Communications Inc., plus some purchases of pharmaceutical companies. Berkshire also bought $6 billion worth of stock in five of Japan’s biggest trading companies.
“He’s been a net seller, however, more recently it seems like he’s identified some opportunities, buying blocks of Japanese industrial stocks” and some health care stocks, Jim Shanahan, an analyst at Edward D. Jones & Co., said in an interview. “He is finding some value given all the limitations. He can’t put a substantial amount of capital to work into any individual stock unless it’s a large one. But being willing to consider investments in a basket of similar companies creates a little bit more opportunity for them too.”
Buffett made little mention in this year’s letter about one of the looming questions over the conglomerate: Succession. The investor, who’s received his coronavirus vaccine, proved he’s still willing to travel by announcing he’ll head to Los Angeles to film this year’s annual meeting alongside Munger, 97, who wasn’t able to make it to last year’s event in Omaha, Nebraska.
“This year our meeting will be held in Los Angeles ... and Charlie will be on stage with me offering answers and observations throughout the 3 1/2-hour question period,” Buffett said in the letter. “I missed him last year and, more important, you clearly missed him.”
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.