The Letter -- Putting Things In Perspective -- Comments -- IN PROGRESS -- February 25, 2024

Locator: 46898BRK.  

BRK is tracked here.

Updates

Later, 12:47 p.m. CT: link here. 

Original Post 

The scorecard: 

Earnings.

The letter.

An earlier excuse -- doesn't pass the "common sense" test -- any more. $2 million may not move the needle, but $5 billion in TSM would have. By a huge margin.

Note: numbers are rounded, some numbers are assumed to be inaccurate but probably "within the ballpark"; dates are estimated; everything needs to be fact-checked but I just want to get an idea so as to help put things in perspective.

October 28, 2023: TSM was trading at $62. Warrren Buffett had just recently acquired 80 million shares (exact number needs to be fact-checked). Regardless, it was reported that as of November, 2022, BRK had a $5 billion stake in TSMC.

May 16, 2023: by this date, he had sold his entire stake in TSMC, trading at $90. At the link, he reportedly sold 86% of the TSM shares in February, then trading for $90.

February 23, 2024: latest, coincidentally almost exactly one year later, TSM closed at $130.

Back of the proverbial envelope:

• 80 million shares x $62 = $4.96 billion.
• 80 million shares x $130 = $10.4 billion.
• delta: $5.44 billion

See "scorecard" for 2023, reproduced above, operating earnings for the full year:

• insurance-underwriting: $5.43 billion (less than TSM above)
• insurance-investment: $9.567 billion (wow)
• railroad: $5.087 billion and almost a billion less than a year earlier
• utilities and energy: $2.331 billion and more than a half-billion less than a year earlier

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But, But, But ..

But, "they" say, instead he invested in those five Japanese companies just as the Japanese stock market got back to its old highs!

Two things, one or the other or both:

• I doubt any / some / all of those Japanese companies did nearly as well as TSM over that one year time period; and,
• BRK could have done both with all that cash: kept TSM and used $5 billion of that $170 billion cash horde to invest in those Japanese companies.

I thought about that from personal experience. A bitter story. A fiduciary recommended I sell one of my great investments and move the cash into "his" company's portfolio. It would have been a disaster. I never saw him again, after that. But, I did even better. I kept my investment, kept investing in it and invested an identical amount into that new account. Incredible piece of luck.

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BHE

Incredibly bad and the narrative was even wore.

This was the best news:

BHE’s extensive multi-state transmission project in the West was initiated in 2006 and remains some years from completion. Eventually, it will serve 10 states comprising 30% of the acreage in the continental United States. 

This project started in 2006 and it's now 2024 and still "remains some years from completion." 

"Some"?

And, as noted, that's the "best" BHE news.

The California forest fire risk is BRK's "sword of Damocles."