{"id":481,"date":"2014-03-07T07:46:13","date_gmt":"2014-03-07T07:46:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.asadkarim.co.uk\/?p=481"},"modified":"2014-03-07T07:46:13","modified_gmt":"2014-03-07T07:46:13","slug":"berkshire-hathaway-annual-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.asadkarim.co.uk\/?p=481","title":{"rendered":"Berkshire Hathaway Annual Report"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the press in the past few days as been a lot of comment on the annual report from Berkshire Hathaway and the comments from the <strong>CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, the revered investor, Warren Buffett<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>It makes fantastic reading.<\/p>\n<p>[<a title=\"Berkshire Hathaway\" href=\"http:\/\/www.berkshirehathaway.com\/letters\/2012ltr.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/www.berkshirehathaway.com\/letters\/2012ltr.pdf<\/a>]<\/p>\n<p>Some salient facts. It has\u00a0 \u201cBig Four\u201d investments:<\/p>\n<p><strong>American Express, Coca-Cola, IBM<\/strong> and <strong>Wells Fargo<\/strong>. In the past year Berkshire Hathaway has increased its stake.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Amex<\/strong>\u00a0<em><strong>13.7%<\/strong><\/em>. [151,610,700 shares worth\u00a0 <strong>$8,715 Million<\/strong> = <em><strong>$8.7 Billion<\/strong><\/em>]<br \/>\n<strong>Coca-Cola<\/strong> <em><strong>8.9%<\/strong><\/em> [400,000,000 shares worth <strong>$14,500 Million<\/strong> = <em><strong>$14.5 Billion<\/strong><\/em>]<br \/>\n<strong>IBM<\/strong> <em><strong>6.0%<\/strong><\/em> [68,115,484\u00a0 shares worth <strong>$13,048 Million<\/strong> =<em><strong>$13 Billion<\/strong><\/em>]<br \/>\n<strong>Wells Fargo<\/strong> <em><strong>8.7%<\/strong><\/em> [456,170,061 worth <strong>$15,592 Million<\/strong> = <em><strong>$15.5 Billion<\/strong><\/em>]<\/p>\n<p>A great quote from the annual report:-<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;<em><strong>The four companies possess marvellous businesses and are run by managers who are both talented and shareholder-oriented. At Berkshire we much prefer owning a non-controlling but substantial portion of a wonderful business to owning 100% of a so-so business<\/strong><\/em>&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Funding Berkshire Hathaway comes from its insurance businesses, giving <strong>Berkshire $73 billion of free money to invest<\/strong>. This is explained by another brilliant quote:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Property-casualty (\u201cP\/C\u201d) insurers receive premiums upfront and pay claims later. In extreme cases, such as those arising from certain workers\u2019 compensation accidents, payments can stretch over decades. This collect now, pay-later model leaves us holding large sums \u2013 money we call \u201cfloat\u201d \u2013 that will eventually go to others. Meanwhile, we get to invest this float for Berkshire\u2019s benefit&#8230;..<strong>This is truly having your cake and eating it too.&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>What makes great reading is the dividend policy on page 18, they don&#8217;t like them, wanting to invest the money organically.<\/p>\n<p>It is a great read, and a long term investor with insight and common sense.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the press in the past few days as been a lot of comment on the annual report from Berkshire Hathaway and the comments from the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, the revered investor, Warren Buffett. It makes fantastic reading. [http:\/\/www.berkshirehathaway.com\/letters\/2012ltr.pdf] Some salient facts. It has\u00a0 \u201cBig Four\u201d investments: American Express, Coca-Cola, IBM and Wells Fargo. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asadkarim.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asadkarim.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asadkarim.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asadkarim.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asadkarim.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=481"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.asadkarim.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":482,"href":"https:\/\/www.asadkarim.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481\/revisions\/482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asadkarim.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asadkarim.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asadkarim.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}