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

AT&T wins court approval to take over Time Warner with a trademark $85 billion bid despite the Trump prior dissent due to antitrust concerns.

Chanel Holden

2018-06-07 10:36:00 Thursday ET

AT&T wins court approval to take over Time Warner with a trademark $85 billion bid despite the Trump prior dissent due to antitrust concerns.

AT&T wins court approval to take over Time Warner with a trademark $85 billion bid despite the Trump administration prior dissent due to antitrust conce

+See More

Stock Synopsis: Top China Internet companies continue to enjoy global reach, business model monetization, and new improvements in sales and profits.

Dan Rochefort

2024-10-27 07:56:01 Sunday ET

Stock Synopsis: Top China Internet companies continue to enjoy global reach, business model monetization, and new improvements in sales and profits.

Stock Synopsis: China Internet tech titans continue to grow amid greater competition. We launch our unique coverage of top 25 China Internet stocks. In t

+See More

David Solomon succeeds Lloyd Blankfein as the new CEO of Goldman Sachs.

Fiona Sydney

2018-03-09 08:33:00 Friday ET

David Solomon succeeds Lloyd Blankfein as the new CEO of Goldman Sachs.

David Solomon succeeds Lloyd Blankfein as the new CEO of Goldman Sachs. Unlike his predecessors Lloyd Blankfein and Gary Cohn, Solomon has been an investmen

+See More

We can decipher valuable lessons from the annual letters to shareholders written by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.

Becky Berkman

2019-07-19 18:40:00 Friday ET

We can decipher valuable lessons from the annual letters to shareholders written by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.

We can decipher valuable lessons from the annual letters to shareholders written by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. Amazon is highly customer-centric because the wor

+See More

AYA finbuzz podcast offers fresh insights into the latest stock market topics and economic trends for better stock investment decisions.

Amy Hamilton

2019-08-31 14:39:00 Saturday ET

AYA finbuzz podcast offers fresh insights into the latest stock market topics and economic trends for better stock investment decisions.

AYA Analytica finbuzz podcast channel on YouTube August 2019 In this podcast, we discuss several topical issues as of August 2019: (1) Warren B

+See More

U.S. Treasury's proposal for financial deregulation aims to remove key aspects of the Dodd-Frank Act.

Rose Prince

2017-08-25 13:36:00 Friday ET

U.S. Treasury's proposal for financial deregulation aims to remove key aspects of the Dodd-Frank Act.

The U.S. Treasury's June 2017 grand proposal for financial deregulation aims to remove several aspects of the Dodd-Frank Act 2010 such as annual macro s

+See More