The Ledger
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Parrish: Cults, sales, and politics manipulate using multiple simultaneous biases
“When you see extreme outcomes, Berkshire Hathaway's success or New Coke disasters, cult conversions, corporate catastrophes, ask what combination of tendencies created this? Be alert when multiple tendencies are being used to manipulate you. Cults have figured…”
Berkshire Hathaway's Next Leaders Will Aggressively Push Operating Margins and Efficiency
“It appears to us the next generation is going to be much more focused on, you know, extracting the most from the businesses Berkshire owns.”
Cool: There will not be another company like Berkshire Hathaway
“Berkshire is a phenomenal place. I mean, it's unique. It's one of a kind. I don't think there'll be another one by any means.”
Bragg: Long-Term Investors Should Buy Good Stocks Instead of Holding Massive Cash
“Having that money sit in cash, ah, I don't know, he's got a crystal ball that nobody else has. I'd be investing it in, in good stocks. Because if the stocks go down, it doesn't matter. But I guess he's waiting for the opportunity to buy them cheap.”
Parrish: Controlling shareholders enable outperformance by resisting short-term market pressure
“If you have a company that's controlled by no one shareholder, you end up with this suboptimal strategy where you're always, you're almost forced to pursue the best strategy in the moment instead of the best strategy overall. Whereas when you have a controllin…”
Ackman: Berkshire Hathaway stock is a real bargain in the $180s
“And actually the big opportunity for Berkshire is Berkshire itself prior to the coronavirus crisis was a cheap stock, you know, in the low 200, you know, in the one eighties it's, you know, a real bargain.”
Collison: Berkshire Hathaway and Koch Industries prioritize applied epistemology and structured doubt
“It's very striking to me how Warren and Charlie at Berkshire and how the folks at Koch Industries are so into a kind of epistemology and structuring of doubt and accounting for biases and mechanisms for clarity of thinking like to a very striking degree.”
Panera generated a 25% IRR over two decades, outperforming Berkshire Hathaway.
“Panera was the best performing restaurant stock over two decades. Its last two decades produced 25% IRR In fact, somebody told me we actually beat Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway.”
Scilipoti: Buffett's operating cash flow frees him from fund manager benchmark constraints
“Buffett has built a business that generates cash. So he has operating businesses, Geico, Prudalum, etc. These generate cash. He takes that cash and invests it when he wants to invest it. In the way that he wants to invest it. You know, the average portfolio ma…”
Teledyne's Decentralized Model Influenced Berkshire Hathaway's Playbook
“Warren Buffett was an admitted singleton admirer, and we can see how Teledyne's decentralized structure with centralized capital allocation became central to Berkshire Hathaway's playbook.”
Charlie Munger attributed Berkshire's success to rarely being forced into bad decisions
“At dinner one night, I was talking with Charlie Munger, and I asked him for the unconventional sort of things that people don't appreciate as much about Berkshire Hathaway's success as he might think that they should. And one of the things that he mentioned to…”
Davis: Berkshire's charity program made its shares difficult to borrow and short
“Berkshire for many, many years had a charity program where if you owned a share of Berkshire each year, you were given a dollar amount per share that you could assign to any charity of your choice... But In order to be able to do that, you had to own the share…”
Davis: Berkshire is managed assuming shareholders have 100% net worth in it
“Berkshire is run with the idea that some, that, that from the very beginning that the people that were invested in Berkshire had a hundred percent of their net worth in Berkshire.”
Davis: Berkshire generated outperformance without penalizing investors for extreme conservatism
“It's been run in this incredibly conservative way, but you haven't paid any price for that as an investor. Except some weird theoretical suboptimal outcome. But the fact is that you got your cake and you got to eat it too. You got to have, you know, longterm w…”
Gaynor: Markel Adopted Berkshire's Playbook by Investing Specialty Underwriting Profits Long-Term
“I saw the idea of a specialty insurance operation that was dedicated to making an underwriting profit. And Steve Markel was the vice chairman and really the financial guy there. He was also interested in investing the underwriting profits long-term rather than…”
Wolfe: Bill Gates only sits on Berkshire, Microsoft, and Kymeta boards
“Which led to this company called Kymeta, which I co-founded with Bill Gates. And I'm in a board room with Bill Gates, and he's on the board of this company. It's the only board he's been on besides Berkshire and Microsoft.”
Bakshi: Berkshire's Refusal to Sell Underperforming Businesses Creates a Reputational Moat
“Even though in the short term, it might cost Berkshire some money, in the long run, it has created a huge reputational advantage for them and of course, that has helped Berkshire.”
Parrish: Berkshire uses heavy debt on railroad and energy assets
“On the railroad, for instance, they'll put a decent amount of debt in the railroad, because they know what the earnings, it's very predictable.
And they're comfortable.
The same as the energy, where they're putting a lot of capital, they put a lot of debt in”
Parrish: Berkshire Hathaway Enforces Rule Requiring Prompt Delivery of Bad News
“At Berkshire Hathaway, there's a common injunction. Always tell us the bad news promptly. It is only the good news that can wait. This is a deliberate practice to combat the Persian messenger syndrome.”
Berkshire Hathaway acquired Clayton Homes for $1.7 billion in cash
“Clayton Holmes and Berkshire Hathaway entered into a merger agreement for 1.7 billion dollars in cash.”
Berkshire's massive balance sheet allowed it to hold Clayton's loans directly
“Berkshire could do something that nobody else could do. They could hold the loans on their own balance sheet rather than sell them to other people.”
Cool: Pampered Chef was in decline for 10 years under Berkshire
“Pampered Chef was a business that was in need of transformation. It had been in decline since Berkshire bought it for about 10 years”
Tracy Britt Cool: Cambric is more hands-on operationally than Berkshire
“And then I think for us in terms of one thing that we do distinctively different than Berkshire is we're much more hands-on operationally.”
Buffett Acquired Nebraska Furniture Mart on Handshake with One-Page Agreement
“They shook hands on the deal. No lawyers, no audit, no inventory count. They later put their agreement in writing in a one-page document.”
Bragg: Holding Berkshire Hathaway targeting a 10% to 12% return
“We're buying Buffett for a 10 or 11 or 12% return. We're not looking for 20 or 25%. We just like to buy good, solid investments and, ah, and let them grow.”
Gaynor: I've bought Berkshire and Markel consistently since 1990
“The great algorithm in life is do more of what's working. So I bought the first share of Berkshire in 1990. I can't remember what the last time I bought more of it was, but within the last year or two. So I've consistently bought that stock. For years. Done th…”