CNBC news anchor Becky Quick interviews Warren Buffett in early-2019.

James Campbell

2019-04-07 13:39:00 Sun ET

CNBC news anchor Becky Quick interviews Warren Buffett in early-2019. Buffett explains the fact that book value fluctuations are a metric that has lost relevance for Berkshire Hathaway over time. At least 3 circumstances lead to this outcome. First, Berkshire has gradually morphed from a company whose assets concentrate in marketable stocks into a unique public corporation whose major value resides in operating businesses. From a fundamental viewpoint, equity stakes represent key parts of corporate stock ownership and control as investors favor liquidity over managerial rent protection.

Second, the new U.S. accounting rules require the current collection of operating companies to be part of book value at a dollar sum far below their current market value. This gross undervaluation may mislead the typical retail investor.

Third, it is likely for Berkshire to reconsider significant share repurchases that take place at share prices above book value (but below the Buffett estimate of intrinsic value). Each share buyback boosts intrinsic value and also constrains the potential uptick of book value.

This combination of circumstances causes the book-value scorecard to become out of touch with economic reality. Buffett hence focuses on the Berkshire market capitalization, and this alternative better reflects business performance in practice.

 


If any of our AYA Analytica financial health memos (FHM), blog posts, ebooks, newsletters, and notifications etc, or any other form of online content curation, involves potential copyright concerns, please feel free to contact us at service@ayafintech.network so that we can remove relevant content in response to any such request within a reasonable time frame.

Blog+More

Former Bank of England Governor Mervyn King provides his deep substantive analysis of the Global Financial Crisis of 2008-2009.

Monica McNeil

2023-03-07 11:29:00 Tuesday ET

Former Bank of England Governor Mervyn King provides his deep substantive analysis of the Global Financial Crisis of 2008-2009.

Former Bank of England Governor Mervyn King provides his deep substantive analysis of the Global Financial Crisis of 2008-2009. Mervyn King (2017) &nb

+See More

Due to U.S. tariffs, Apple, Nintendo, and Samsung start to consider making tech products in Vietnam instead of China.

Jonah Whanau

2019-09-03 14:29:00 Tuesday ET

Due to U.S. tariffs, Apple, Nintendo, and Samsung start to consider making tech products in Vietnam instead of China.

Due to U.S. tariffs and other cloudy causes of economic policy uncertainty, Apple, Nintendo, and Samsung start to consider making tech products in Vietnam i

+See More

What are the mainstream technological advances in the global auto industry?

Chanel Holden

2024-04-30 09:30:00 Tuesday ET

What are the mainstream technological advances in the global auto industry?

With clean and green energy resources and electric vehicles, the global auto industry now navigates at a newer and faster pace. Both BYD and Tesla have

+See More

Federal Reserve raises the interest rate again in mid-2018 in response to 2% inflation and wage growth.

John Fourier

2018-07-09 09:39:00 Monday ET

Federal Reserve raises the interest rate again in mid-2018 in response to 2% inflation and wage growth.

The Federal Reserve raises the interest rate again in mid-2018 in response to 2% inflation and wage growth. The current neutral interest rate hike neither b

+See More

Agile business firms beat the odds by building faster institutional reflexes to anticipate plausible economic scenarios.

Fiona Sydney

2020-09-03 10:26:00 Thursday ET

Agile business firms beat the odds by building faster institutional reflexes to anticipate plausible economic scenarios.

Agile business firms beat the odds by building faster institutional reflexes to anticipate plausible economic scenarios. Christopher Worley, Thomas Willi

+See More

House Judiciary Committee summons senior executive reps of the tech titans to assess online platforms and their market power.

Peter Prince

2019-08-18 11:33:00 Sunday ET

House Judiciary Committee summons senior executive reps of the tech titans to assess online platforms and their market power.

House Judiciary Committee summons senior executive reps of the tech titans to assess online platforms and their market power. These companies are Facebook,

+See More