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 18 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 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
Philip Morris's IQOS captured 25% of Japan's market in 18 months
“And as a result of those spending years, they developed a product that once launched, 18 months ago, has captured nearly 25% of markets in Japan, the first market it launched to. They've converted two million cigarette smokers to users of one of their new prod…”
Russo: FedEx stock halved while simultaneously serving and competing with Amazon
“Now, one of the ironic stock declines over the past several weeks has been Federal Express, which has dropped from two 60 to a 150. And, you know, they're trying to serve Amazon at the same time, compete with it. And its share prices collapsed to nine times th…”
Berkshire Subsidiary MiTek Used Phantom Stock That Increased 1,000x
“They had an interesting phantom stock arrangement. They created a phantom share. Called a share of my tech within the company. And Warren referred at one point an annual report that had gone up a thousand times.”
Russo: Buffett insisted Berkshire subsidiaries compete instead of trading internally
“Warren insisted over the years that companies had to compete for the business, that the internal crutch of a natural demand to Clayton homes for the Acme bricks threatened over time to lead to less than market tested outcomes because each of them knew that the…”
Russo: Buffett never forced Berkshire retail stores to accept American Express
“American Express is part of the portfolio, and Borsheim's had, and Nebraska Furniture Market had MasterCard, and Visa, no American Express, because obviously each of them said, the premium's just not worth it for us, and Warren never insisted that they migrate…”
Russo: Olympus Re collapsed after Hurricane Katrina from concentrated regional risk
“I remember after Katrina, where they survived with barely a nick relative to the kind of crushing consequences that even Jack Byrne suffered with White Mountains, and then they had something called Olympusry. And it was blown up. They aggregated too much risk …”
Russo: Berkshire wrote post-Katrina reinsurance for one year then pulled back
“And Berkshire survived, and then they wrote the next year, and at premiums that were massively higher, and they wrote lucky, and so they kept all the premium, because it was an event-free year. And then they didn't write the next year”
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.”
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'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.”
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…”