Warren Buffett has warned Berkshire Hathaway shareholders that his sprawling $905 billion conglomerate has virtually “no chance of eye-popping performance” in the years ahead, laying bare the challenges his successors will face.
The so-called Oracle of Omaha said in his annual letter on Saturday that there are very few deals that offer the kind of transformative impact that past acquisitions have had, such as the purchase of insurers Geico and National Indemnity or the BNSF railroad.
“There remain only a handful of companies in this country capable of truly moving the Berkshire needle, and they have been endlessly cherry-picked by us and others,” he said. “Outside the United States, there are essentially no candidates that represent meaningful options for deploying capital in Berkshire.”
It’s a problem Buffett has kept under control for nearly a decade as Berkshire’s growing operations and cash levels have worsened.
The company has spent billions of dollars in recent years acquiring truck stop operator Pilot Flying J and insurance conglomerate Alleghany, adding them to a portfolio that includes ice cream supplier Dairy Queen and utility giant Berkshire Hathaway Energy.
But these outlays have only made a small dent in Berkshire’s liquidity, which continues to rise. It reached a record $167.6 billion at the end of 2023, up $39 billion over the year.
“Size helped us, although increased buying competition was also a factor,” Buffett said. “For a while we had a lot of candidates to evaluate. If I lost one – and I lost a lot – another always came along. Those days are long gone from us.”
The 93-year-old Buffett, who lost his longtime investment partner Charlie Munger last year, said Berkshire should continue to “do a little better” than the average U.S. company “and, more importantly, it should also operate with substantially lower risk of permanent losses.” loss of capital”.
He added: “Anything beyond ‘slightly better,’ though, is wishful thinking.”
The passing of Berkshire’s acerbic vice chairman has turned investors’ attention to the company’s prospects without Buffett at the helm. Greg Abel, Buffett’s anointed successor, and Todd Combs and Ted Weschler, his investment deputies, are lined up to lead the giant.
They have a tough act to follow. Since 1964, Berkshire shares have returned 4.4 million, far outpacing the benchmark S&P 500’s 31,233% gain.
Buffett’s letters, along with his comments at annual meetings and hundreds of interviews over the years, form a sort of handbook for the people who will one day sit at the top of Berkshire and the board that will govern it.
He stressed on Saturday that “extreme fiscal conservatism,” which has long been a guiding principle of the conglomerate, will undoubtedly persist.
“One rule of investing in Berkshire has not changed and will not change: Never risk permanent loss of capital,” he wrote. “Thanks to the American tailwind and the power of compound interest, the arena in which we operate has been – and will be – rewarding if you make a couple of good decisions in your lifetime and avoid serious mistakes.”
He added that Berkshire will continue to seize opportunities when they arise, as the company did in early 2022 when it invested more than $50 billion in stocks as the market sold off.
“Panic won’t happen often, but it will happen,” he said. “Berkshire’s ability to respond immediately to market breakthroughs with both large sums and certainty of performance may provide us with an occasional large-scale opportunity.”
However, the company faces much tougher competition than at the turn of the century, when private equity had far less firepower. Buffett complained of excessive valuations as markets hit records and buyout shops paid ever-higher multiples to win acquisitions. During those times, Berkshire largely sat on its hands.
Berkshire has become a big investor in its own shares and routinely resorts to buybacks when it can’t find attractive investments in the public markets. The company said it repurchased $2.2 billion worth of shares in the fourth quarter, bringing its total for the year to more than $9 billion.
Since Munger died, the duty to choose when to execute such buybacks now falls squarely on Buffett. The company did not name either Combs or Weschler for a role that Buffett previously shared with the late vice president.
Buffett used his letter to remember Munger as the architect of modern Berkshire Hathaway, describing the 99-year-old’s relationship with him as “part big brother, part loving father.”
“In the physical world, great buildings are tied to their architect, while those who poured the concrete or installed the windows are soon forgotten,” Buffett said. “Berkshire has become a great company. Even though I have long been in charge of the construction team, Charlie should always be given credit for being the architect.
Munger was instrumental in changing Buffett’s investing approach, helping him abandon a “cigar butt” style of investing: buying low-priced stocks that might have the equivalent of just one more roll left. Bargain hunting was a style Buffett learned under the tutelage of investment great Benjamin Graham, the father of value investing.
With Munger’s encouragement he instead began investing in fairly priced but well-managed businesses.
“Charlie became my partner in managing Berkshire and repeatedly brought me back to normal when my old habits surfaced,” Buffett said.
Berkshire also reported its annual results on Saturday, showing net income of $96.2 billion. Buffett believes this figure is “worse than useless,” given that accounting rules require the company to include quarterly swings in the value of its $354 billion stock portfolio in its profits.
Excluding these unrealized gains, Berkshire reported that operating profits rose 21% from the prior year to $37.4 billion for 2023. In the fourth quarter, operating profits rose 28% to $8.5 billions of dollars.
The gains were fueled by strong results from Berkshire’s insurance unit, including Geico, as well as higher interest rates. The company’s portfolio of short-term Treasury securities and cash generated more than $115 million in interest income for Berkshire’s insurance unit each week last year — or about $6.1 billion — eclipsing the 5 $.5 billion earned in dividends on stocks.
Buffett struggled to find good investments on the open market and remained a net seller of stocks in the fourth quarter. Berkshire has sold more shares than it bought in each of the last five quarters, offloading about $24 billion in stock in 2023.
The company’s investment decisions are closely scrutinized for clues to Buffett’s market view, and his inaction is often interpreted as an interpretation that he believes some corners of the U.S. stock market are overvalued.
“At Berkshire, we particularly favor rare businesses that can deploy additional capital at high returns in the future,” he said Saturday. “Owning just one of these companies – and simply sitting still – can generate wealth almost beyond measure.”
Despite his strong overall performance, Buffett spent part of his letter complaining about missteps. The company is embroiled in high-profile litigation that could cost it more than $10 billion, with its utility — where Berkshire vice chairman Abel has spent much of his career — at the center of the storm.
His electric company PacifiCorp, which operates in Oregon and California, paid $631 million in wildfire settlements last year. The unit has taken on $2.4 billion in claims related to fires in 2020 and 2022 so far and has warned that its overall losses could soar, with people seeking around $8 billion in the two states. Berkshire warned that the figure could double or triple.
The energy division is also home to Berkshire real estate broker HomeServices of America, which is facing 11 antitrust lawsuits over how it and other brokers have charged commissions. The U.S. real estate industry suffered a major blow last year when a court found the country’s largest operators liable for nearly $1.8 billion in damages.
HomeServices appealed that decision, but said it believes damages could be tripled under federal law to up to $5.4 billion.