The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 66 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 1 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Russo: Weschler and Combs report only to Buffett without committees
“They don't have any reporting responsibilities outside of Warren, in some ways. They don't meet with committees. They don't have to describe why it is that they like Amazon to people who may not have the capacity to even understand the essential value that the…”
Russo: Berkshire Bought PacifiCorp at 10x Pre-Tax, Reinvesting at 10%+
“They paid 10 times pretext to buy that business, and then they had an endless ability to deploy capital in the capital-starved company that they bought. Scottish Power hadn't invested in that production and distribution network sufficiently, and so they had th…”
Russo: Berkshire Compounded at ~8% From 1999-2019 vs 19% Since 1965
“And if you compound from that moment till today, I think the compound is about eight percent. Embedded, you can check that number. What year and what year was that? Between 99 to today, and then if you go back to 65, I think that's when he first starts to repo…”
Russo: Berkshire Hathaway has experienced 50% drawdowns four times
“You know, I think over its life, they've had a 50% drawdown four years over the period of time.”
Russo: Portfolio positions are historically trimmed above 13% weighting
“When the position approaches and then exceeds 13%, maybe it's unlucky 13, whatever the reason is, that feels to me like it's a level above which we can let other people make that money, and so I historically tended to rebalance when positions get above 13%.”
Russo: Greg Abel and Ajit Jain took over executive compensation at Berkshire
“Almost the first responsibility that was handed over to the co-vice chairman was compensation. And so off the bat, at the start, both Greg and Ajit, I understand, were responsible for the compensation structure.”
Substitute-free brands enable inelastic pricing and continuous intrinsic value growth
“That whole notion of price increasing for a brand that had, in the perception of the consumer, no adequate substitute, which delivered price inelastic demand, allowing Warren to raise prices each year to show growth in operating income, and hence the growth in…”
Russo was likely the only scale buyer of Weetabix for 20 years
“I probably was the only scale buyer for 20 years that I owned the shares, and we just kept hoovering them up, and so we did so typically at a very cheap price,”
Philip Morris invested $500 million annually into reduced-risk product research
“Philip Morris, four years ago, decided that they were going to take about half a billion dollars a year from their income statement. And deploy it into efforts to research and develop a reduced risk product set so that they could come to their consumers.”
Russo: Heineken's top two global profit pools are Mexico and Vietnam
“Today, the largest profit pool for Heineken is Mexico, which they bought through the market of FEMSA. The second most profitable market in the world for Heineken State is Vietnam, which they grew Greenfield that didn't even exist in their portfolio in 1994.”
Russo sold H&R Block and Dr Pepper for lacking reinvestment capacity
“That was a recognition at the time that a host of businesses that were family controlled, call it H&R Block, call it International Speedway. Dr. Pepper wasn't family controlled, but it was burdened by the same issue that confronted the other two companies. The…”
Russo's portfolio fell 2% in 1999 while major indices gained mid-twenties
“For example, in 1999, I was down two percent, and the Dow and the S&P were both up mid-twenties. That's a big miss, let's just say.”
Warren Buffett struggles to assess foreign management compared to domestic leaders
“He doesn't feel That he has as strong a way of quickly assessing the caliber of the management in foreign markets as he does in the U.S.”
Berkshire Hathaway comprises almost 13% of Tom Russo's firm's holdings
“We have a, almost 13% holding in Berkshire”
Managing $11 billion may force Russo to expand historical investment categories
“We managed over eleven billion dollars, and I may have to start to migrate away and look for some fields to invest in that are either akin to or some possibly just slightly distant from where we spent most of our time historically.”
Wells Fargo cannot acquire banks after exceeding the 10% deposit cap
“Well, that's a very interesting question because their capacity to reinvest Had already been fairly limited by virtue of the fact that they now exceed 11% of the deposit base in North America, and they can't buy new assets in the banking industry, new banks or…”