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

Warwick macroeconomic expert Roger Farmer proposes paying for social welfare programs with no tax hikes.

Jonah Whanau

2019-07-05 09:32:00 Friday ET

Warwick macroeconomic expert Roger Farmer proposes paying for social welfare programs with no tax hikes.

Warwick macroeconomic expert Roger Farmer proposes paying for social welfare programs with no tax hikes. The U.S. government pension and Medicare liabilitie

+See More

The Trump $1.5 trillion hefty tax cuts and $1 trillion infrastructure expenditures may speed up the Federal Reserve interest rate hike.

Joseph Corr

2018-03-15 07:41:00 Thursday ET

The Trump $1.5 trillion hefty tax cuts and $1 trillion infrastructure expenditures may speed up the Federal Reserve interest rate hike.

The Trump administration's $1.5 trillion hefty tax cuts and $1 trillion infrastructure expenditures may speed up the Federal Reserve interest rate hike

+See More

Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un meet, talk, and shake hands in the historic U.S.-North-Korean peace summit in Singapore.

Daphne Basel

2018-06-06 09:39:00 Wednesday ET

Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un meet, talk, and shake hands in the historic U.S.-North-Korean peace summit in Singapore.

Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un meet, talk, and shake hands in the historic peace summit between America and North Korea in Singapore. At the start of the bila

+See More

Addendum on empirical tests of multi-factor models for asset return prediction

Rose Prince

2022-03-05 09:27:00 Saturday ET

Addendum on empirical tests of multi-factor models for asset return prediction

Addendum on empirical tests of multi-factor models for asset return prediction Fama and French (2015) propose an empirical five-factor asset pricing mode

+See More

Nobel Laureate Paul Milgrom explains the U.S. incentive auction of wireless spectrum allocation from TV broadcasters to telecoms.

Rose Prince

2023-11-21 11:32:00 Tuesday ET

Nobel Laureate Paul Milgrom explains the U.S. incentive auction of wireless spectrum allocation from TV broadcasters to telecoms.

Nobel Laureate Paul Milgrom explains the U.S. incentive auction of wireless spectrum allocation from TV broadcasters to telecoms. Paul Milgrom (2019)

+See More

The U.S. federal government debt has risen from less than 40% of total GDP about a decade ago to 78% as of May 2018.

John Fourier

2018-06-01 07:30:00 Friday ET

The U.S. federal government debt has risen from less than 40% of total GDP about a decade ago to 78% as of May 2018.

The U.S. federal government debt has risen from less than 40% of total GDP about a decade ago to 78% as of May 2018. The Congressional Budget Office predict

+See More