You would have thought you were at a rock concert! More than 35,000 excited people standing in line on a dreary day in Omaha. Then milling into an auditorium at the convention hall, ready to sit for 5-6 hours to hear a CEO speak. Yes; a CEO!
That’s the kind of crowd that Warren Buffett, Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, Inc. draws to his annual meeting each year. I’ve been a Buffett fan my entire career, and I was delighted to join his other ‘groupies’ to attend one of his meetings a few years ago. And I was not disappointed. In his folksy style, he and his right-hand man, Charlie Munger, spent most of the day answering questions from the crowd, and then roaming the exhibit hall where every subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway displayed its wares (even stepping aside once to play his ukulele!). Added to that, the company offered tours to several of its subsidiaries, and provided a barbeque for meeting attendees.
It’s almost unheard of for a CEO to be so deeply involved with his investors. But it’s all part and parcel of Buffett’s ‘folksy’ style.
Buffett is commonly referred to ‘the world’s greatest investor’. His nickname is the ‘Oracle of Omaha’ because investors and money managers parse his every action and comment to try and determine his thoughts on the markets and individual stocks.
And why wouldn’t they? Buffett began buying shares in Berkshire Hathaway in 1962. Berkshire Hathaway began life in 1888, as the Hathaway Manufacturing Company, a cotton miller, founded by China trader, Horatio Hathaway. In the 1950s, the business merged with Berkshire Fine Spinning Associates, another milling company that had been in business since the early 19th century. But the combined company—along with the rest of the U.S. textile sector—fell on hard times, closing a number of plants and laying off workers by the end of the decade. The stock price didn’t fare so well, either, and in stepped Buffett, who thought the company was severely undervalued, and began loading up on shares at an average price of $7.60 per share.
Over the next three years, Buffett continued accumulating shares, and by 1965, he held a majority stake in the company. And while retaining a foothold in the textile industry, began buying stakes in other businesses. He bought into his first insurance companies in 1967, and then used their cash flow to gradually turn Berkshire Hathaway into an investment vehicle, purchasing significant numbers of shares in other companies.
As the U.S. textile industry faded, Buffett had to finally admit defeat in that sector, discontinuing that segment by 1985. But the remaining company thrived. and took over management and control of the company in 1965. His total average cost per share by this time was $14.86. Today, Berkshire’s class A shares closed at $ 329,799.00—not bad!
Buffett’s investing prowess has served the company well, and himself, as well, enabling him to build his personal fortune to about $86 billion.
He’s made his share of mistakes, which I’ll talk about in a little while, but he is one of the most astute investors of all time. The types of companies in which he invests have not changed substantially since he first took control of Berkshire. Most are consumer-driven companies whose products could be found in the supermarket or the local mall.
So, what does he know that you don’t?
As it turns out, the answer to that question is, a lot. You see, Buffett has said that he reads 5—6 hours a day, perusing five newspapers and up to 500 pages of corporate reports. Most of us don’t have that kind of time, and even if we did, we probably wouldn’t be interested in spending it in that way.
But you don’t have to turn yourself into a Buffett clone to benefit from his wisdom. That’s because over his 78 years of investing (he started at age 11, with the purchase of stock in oil service company, Cities Service—now Citgo, at $38 a share), he hasn’t shied away from sharing his thoughts and processes that are the foundation of his success as an investor.
But before I share that specific checklist, let’s talk about Buffett’s background, so you can understand more fully his strategies.
Graham and Buffett—Legendary Value/Fundamental Investors
Buffett learned about investing from his Columbia University teacher, Benjamin Graham, the father of security analysis.
In 1934, at merely 40 years of age, Benjamin Graham (with his colleague, David Dodd) co-authored Security Analysis, the primer for Value Investing. Many editions later, the book has become the bible of security analysts nationwide.
Graham felt that too many investors were speculators—buying or selling simply because a stock or the market went up or down, investing in “hot” stocks, and margin buying—all trends of the era in which he grew up. He saw—with his own eyes—the debacle of the ‘29 crash, the bank closings, and the utter loss of confidence in Wall Street. He knew that investors had lost sight of the reason that the stock market was established: To fund corporate expansion. He decided that to restore confidence, investors would have to change their thinking, and advised that, “if an investor wanted to enjoy a reasonable chance for continued better-than-average results, he must follow policies which are inherently sound and promising and are not popular on Wall Street.”
His definition of an investment: “Upon thorough analysis, an investment promises safety of principal and an adequate return.” Anything else was mere speculation.
In other words, Graham proposed that the foundation of sound investing should not change with the whims of trends or the winds of time, but should be altered only as a result of important economic and financial changes. Such events might include changes in interest rates, inflation, the trend toward conglomeration of corporations, or significant bankruptcies—all occurrences which might alter the way a stock is to be valued. That’s quite a different train of thought than what was then espoused by the “professionals.” You might imagine how popular that advice was with the Wall Street crowd!
Graham further stood the investment community on its head when he stated that “the rate of return should not depend on the old and sound principle that it should be more or less proportionate to the degree of risk an investor is ready to run. Instead, it should be dependent on the amount of intelligent effort the investor is willing and able to bring to bear on his task.” Heresy on Wall Street — Graham was actually telling investors they could figure it out for themselves—they didn’t need the pros!
And Graham was most definitely not a market timer. He stated that “the only principle of timing that has ever worked well consistently is to buy common stocks at such times as they are cheap by analysis, and to sell them at such times as they are dear, or at least no longer cheap, by analysis.” In other words: It’s the company that counts, period.
He felt that a good investment should be a company that was worth considerably more than what its stock was selling for. He calculated this “value” of a company by estimating its future earnings as well as taking into account the worth of its assets; in other words, what the value of this business would be to someone interested in buying it.
And even though there were analysts (then as now) building mountains out of molehills with reams of ratios to analyze a single company, Graham felt that just a few—the most important— criteria would do the job.
Graham especially liked to invest in companies whose earnings were reasonably stable, with good growth prospects. Additionally, he required that they be conservatively financed, large companies that paid dividends, with price-earnings ratios of less than 25. And he found legions of such companies—many selling for less than their net working capital (current assets – current liabilities). But for some reason, the stock market and the market pros were underestimating, or undervaluing, the potential of the companies’ earnings, resulting in an “undervalued” stock price.
Graham’s success was legendary. During his most active years—from 1936 to 1956—he consistently posted annual returns of 20% plus, while the S&P 500’s performance ran around 14%.
And his legend lives on in Warren Buffett. While Benjamin Graham introduced Value Investing to the investment community, his student Warren Buffett actually formed a company whose sole purpose is to “value invest.” Buffet’s Berkshire-Hathaway is essentially a portfolio of the stocks of businesses he has bought over the past 57 years. As shown in the box below, you can see that his stock picks are widely-diversified, but almost to a company, easy to define and to understand.
Companies Owned by Berkshire Hathaway
Source: http://berkshirehathaway.com/subs/sublinks.html
But Buffett wasn’t satisfied that he had learned everything he needed to know about investing from Graham. So, along the way, he has expanded on Graham’s version of Value Investing.
Like Graham, Buffett looks for those companies that are undervalued, in terms of today’s numbers. He certainly looks at future earnings but doesn’t rely solely on them to make a buying decision. He expresses this concept by saying, “Never count on making a good sale. Have the purchase price be so attractive that even a mediocre sale gives good results.” His secret to Wall Street riches is simple: “You try to be greedy when others are fearful, and you try to be very fearful when others are greedy.” Alternatively stated: Don’t follow the crowd.
As I said above, Buffett feels that research is the key; nothing beats old-fashioned elbow grease and he spends hours every day doing just that. He disregards “hot tips,” sets his goals and targets for the company at the time he buys the stock, and believes that too much diversification—what he calls the Noah School of Investing, or buying two of everything—is not prudent. In fact, Buffett tends to take rather large positions in the companies that he owns in his Berkshire-Hathaway group, and keeps his portfolio fairly lean, in terms of the number of companies.
That focus on a smaller group of investments led to one additional criteria that Buffett added to Graham’s model and ultimately made his trademark—he believes in really getting to know the companies in which he invests. That means personal visits and conducting ongoing communication with the decision-makers. But Buffett takes that step even further. He also gets to know the company’s customers, suppliers, and its competitors.
Another expansion of Graham’s strategy is Buffett’s addition of qualitative factors to the investment equation. While Graham certainly considered whether or not management was strong, efficient, and cost-conscious and that the company’s products seemed worthwhile, Buffett also looks at more intangible qualities, such as franchise or brand name value. For example, before he bought Disney stock for the first time, he factored in the value of Disney’s huge movie library, which did not show up in Disney’s financial statements at that time.
This led to Buffett changing Graham’s concept of the worth of a business, by adding such intangibles to a company’s book value, which is basically defined as a company’s assets minus its liabilities, or the capital that has gone into a business, plus retained profits. Together, the actual balance sheet figures plus the intangibles add up to the “intrinsic value” of the company.
And lastly, Buffett enlarged Graham’s definition of risk to include the risk of paying more than a business would prove to be worth.
Buffett has often been maligned in the media for his conservative investing practices. In the late ‘60s, he was attacked for staying out of the “hot” electronics sector and retaining his old-line retail stocks. But he had the last laugh then, just as he had during the recent technology boom.
And Buffett has the juice to back up his strategy. Since he took control of Berkshire Hathaway in 1964, the stock has generated 24.9% annualized returns—more than double that of the S&P 500, as you’ll see in his annual returns in the box below.
Berkshire Hathaway Yearly Returns
| Year | Price | Yearly Returns |
| 1976 | 89 | |
| 1977 | 128 | 44% |
| 1978 | 152 | 19% |
| 1979 | 320 | 111% |
| 1980 | 425 | 33% |
| 1981 | 560 | 32% |
| 1982 | 775 | 38% |
| 1983 | 1,310 | 69% |
| 1984 | 1,275 | -3% |
| 1985 | 2,470 | 94% |
| 1986 | 2,820 | 14% |
| 1987 | 2,950 | 5% |
| 1988 | 4,700 | 59% |
| 1989 | 8,675 | 85% |
| 1990 | 6,675 | -23% |
| 1991 | 9,050 | 36% |
| 1992 | 11,750 | 30% |
| 1993 | 16,325 | 39% |
| 1994 | 20,400 | 25% |
| 1995 | 32,100 | 57% |
| 1996 | 34,100 | 6% |
| 1997 | 46,000 | 35% |
| 1998 | 70,000 | 52% |
| 1999 | 56,100 | -20% |
| 2000 | 71,000 | 27% |
| 2001 | 75,600 | 6% |
| 2002 | 72,750 | -4% |
| 2003 | 84,250 | 16% |
| 2004 | 87,900 | 4% |
| 2005 | 88,620 | 1% |
| 2006 | 1,09,900 | 24% |
| 2007 | 1,41,600 | 29% |
| 2008 | 1,19,800 | -15% |
| 2009 | 99,200 | -17% |
| 2010 | 1,20,450 | 21% |
| 2011 | 1,14,755 | -5% |
| 2012 | 1,34,060 | 17% |
| 2013 | 1,77,900 | 33% |
| 2014 | 2,26,000 | 27% |
| 2015 | 1,97,800 | -12% |
| 2016 | 2,44,121 | 23% |
| 2017 | 2,97,600 | 22% |
| 2018 | 3,04,057 | 2% |
Source: https://kunaldesai.blog/berkshire-hathaway-returns/
Buffett’s Winning Ways
Buffett’s investing strategy is well-known, and you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to understand it. It consists of a handful of investing maxims that have served him well for 78 years. Let’s talk about them.
Invest in Yourself First
This is Buffett’s #1 tip, and why he is a life-long learner. As a child, Buffett has commented that he read every book on investing in the Omaha public library—some of them twice. He has said, “One easy way to become worth 50% more than you are now at least is to hone your communication skills—both written and verbal.” As Buffett notes, this is an investment that “you can’t beat, can’t be taxed and not even inflation can take away from you.”
As a young man, Buffett was so terrified to speak in public that he would throw up beforehand. So, he set out to rectify that by spending $100 to enroll in a Dale Carnegie course. And he has claimed the course changed his life: “If I hadn’t done that, my whole life would be different. So, in my office, you will not see the degree I got at the University of Nebraska. You will not see the master’s degree I got from Columbia University; but you’ll see the award certificate I got from the Dale Carnegie course.”
His advice to all: “Address whatever you feel your weaknesses are, and do it now. Whatever you want to learn more, start doing it today. Don’t put if off to your old age. You’ll have a more rewarding life not only in terms of how much money you make, but how much fun you have out of life. You’ll make more friends the more interesting person you are.”
When you Buy a Stock, you are Buying Part of a Business
When Buffett buys a stock, he thinks of it as buying the entire company, at its enterprise value—the price you would pay for it if you could buy the whole company at current prices.
He adopted that concept from Benjamin Graham. As Graham reasoned in “The Intelligent Investor,” “buying stock makes you a part owner of a business, someone who should not be concerned about short-term fluctuations in stock prices.”
Buffett even goes so far as to include thirteen owner-related business principles in his Berkshire Hathaway “Owner’s Manual” for shareholders: berkshirehathaway.com/ownman.pdf. In his first tenet, he notes, “Charlie Munger and I think of our shareholders as owner-partners, and of ourselves as managing partners.”
Invest in Companies that you Understand
Buffett is often quoted as saying, ‘Don’t buy any stock you can’t explain to your grandmother’. That fits into his strategy of only buying businesses or stocks that are ‘within his circle of competence’—companies he can easily and fully understand and that have stable or predictable products for the next 10–15 years. He wants to know how a business operates, how it makes money, and if its business model and profits are sustainable far into the future, before buying its stock.
He took a lot of heat during the technology heyday, when he was called a ‘has-been’ for not jumping on the technology bandwagon. But we know who got the last laugh, don’t we?
Buy a Wonderful Company at a Fair Price, not a Fair Company at a Wonderful Price
This rule relates to Buffett’s intrinsic value proposition, buying stocks with a large “margin of safety”—investments that currently sell significantly below their intrinsic value. When you buy companies for less than you think they are worth, it helps to limit any potential losses in case you overestimated intrinsic value (a value trap), or some unforeseen circumstances dims a company’s potential.
Buffet has this to say about intrinsic value: “Intrinsic value is an all-important concept that offers the only logical approach to evaluating the relative attractiveness of investments and businesses. Intrinsic value can be defined simply: It is the discounted value of the cash that can be taken out of a business during its remaining life.
“The calculation of intrinsic value, though, is not so simple. As our definition suggests, intrinsic value is an estimate rather than a precise figure, and it is additionally an estimate that must be changed if interest rates move or forecasts of future cash flows are revised. Two people looking at the same set of facts, moreover—and this would apply even to Charlie and me—will almost inevitably come up with at least slightly different intrinsic value figures. That is one reason we never give you our estimates of intrinsic value. What our annual reports do supply, though, are the facts that we ourselves use to calculate this value.”
To put it into a more usable format, here is how Buffett explained his formulation for intrinsic value at his 2007 annual meeting: “Let’s say you decide you want to buy a farm and you make calculations that you can make $70/acre as the owner. How much will you pay [per acre for that farm]? Do you assume agriculture will get better so you can increase yields? Do you assume prices will go up? You might decide you wanted a 7%, so you’d pay $1,000/acre. If it’s for sale at $800, you buy, but if it’s at $1,200, you don’t.”
Clear as mud, right? Many analysts have spent years trying to figure out exactly how Buffett determines intrinsic value. We do know this: to determine intrinsic value, Buffett analyzes a variety of business fundamentals including earnings, revenues, and assets. If the intrinsic value is at least 25% higher than the company’s market cap, Buffett views that as a value proposition.
Buffett’s Favorite Holding Period = Forever
That’s not exactly true, as Buffett does occasionally sell some—or all—of a stock, but he continues to adhere to the long-term investing principles he learned from Ben Graham, and, for the most part, Buffett remains a buy-and-hold investor.
His strategy is to search for businesses with competitive advantages—not just today—but for decades into the future. He looks for companies with pricing power, strategic assets, and powerful brands, that have the ability to not only weather—but outperform in good and challenging times. Last year, in a CNBC interview, he likened long-term investing to buying a farm: He said, “Nobody buys a farm based on whether they think it’s going to rain next year; they buy it because they think it’s a good investment over 10 or 20 years.” And he famously told his shareholders in 1996, “If you aren’t willing to own a stock for 10 years, don’t even think about owning it for 10 minutes.”
He has held his top 10 holding for an average of 7 ½ years. And he’s had his shares of Coca-Cola, Wells Fargo & Company (WFC), and American Express Company (AXP) for more than 25 years.
Compounding is the Key
Buffett doesn’t play short-term. He keeps his money invested as he understands the power of exponential growth—in share appreciation and in rising and accumulated dividends. And that means that instead of taking his dividends when they are paid, he just reinvests them. Buffett bought his first stock at 11, but he has said that some 99% of his wealth has been earned since he turned 50 years old. That’s because the accumulation of dividends has accelerated his earnings; he is earning money not just from the appreciation of the original shares he purchased, but also from the additional shares that his reinvested dividends have purchased.
Let’s look at an example:
Warren Buffett bought more than $1 billion of Coca-Cola (KO) shares in 1988, about 6.2% of the company, which made it the #1 position in his portfolio. He added to his position in 1994, bringing his total share count to about 100 million, and he hasn’t sold even one share since then. He has let the dividends accumulate and the share price appreciate. His cost basis for his shares is $1.299 billion. Today, he owns 400 million shares and his stake in Coke is equal to about $21.7 billion, now his third largest holding. That’s a $1,570% return!
Don’t be Reactionary; Focus on the Right News
He’s often said he doesn’t pay attention to the news or current events when making his investment decisions, thereby avoiding knee-jerk reactions. Instead, he focuses on price and value, believing in ‘staying the course’ and ‘trusting your original plan.”
He advises investors to avoid reacting emotionally. It’s easy to get overwhelmed with the constant barrage of information being thrown at us every day, soothsayers spouting off every minute on television and radio, encouraging short-term trading, and often inciting panic in investors. It’s not always easy to filter out if they are saying anything important to your investing strategy. Most of it is just noise that causes investors to be afraid or to get greedy. Buffett says don’t be either.
Learn from your Mistakes, and Move On
As I said earlier, even Buffett makes mistakes. But he makes sure that he learns from them to keep from making the same error again. A company can recover from a mistake, he says, but “you gotta make sure that it’s still a fundamentally good business” if you decide to stay with it.
Buffett Slip-Ups:
Overpaying for Kraft, now Kraft-Heinz (KHC). After a dividend cut and an SEC probe were announced near the beginning of 2019, his holdings in the stock were down $4.3 billion. That investigation is still ongoing, and the stock remains in the doldrums. However, Buffet says he has no intention of selling his shares, as he continues to believe in the company’s long-term value.
Buying Berkshire Hathaway. Buffett calls it “the dumbest stock he ever bought”. It was a failing textile company when he got his hands on it, and he thought he would profit when more mills closed. The company tried to cheat him; he got mad and took control; tried to run it for 20 more years; and finally gave that part of the business up—but at a cost he estimates of $200 billion.
Investing in Tesco and holding the shares too long. At the end of 2012, Berkshire owned 415 million shares of this grocer in the United Kingdom. In 2014, Tesco overstated its profits and its shares tanked. Buffett sold some shares that year, pocketing $43 million, but held the rest, which cost Berkshire $444 million, after-taxes.
Buying too much ConocoPhillips Stock. Buffett admits his biggest mistake here was not consulting any of his oil experts, including Charlie Munger, before jumping into this stock. In 2008—near peak oil and gas prices—he spent $7 billion, which decreased in value to some $4.4 billion at the end of that year.
Purchasing US Airways Stock. Although the company was saved by merging, and it looks like Buffett eventually recouped his investment, he still regrets buying $358 million of US Airways stock in 1989.
But, by far, Buffett says his biggest mistakes were the opportunities he passed up, like:
- Amazon (AMZN). Although he now owns the stock, he regrets not buying it sooner.
- Not Buying the Dallas-Fort Worth NBC Station. He could have had it for $35 million in the early 1970’s, but he passed. It was valued at $800 million, he told his shareholders in his 2007 letter.
- Google, now Alphabet (GOOG and GOOGL). He says he should have bought it when his Geico subsidiary was paying Google $10 per click
He admits to many more mistakes, which led him to establish these two tenets about mistakes: 1) If you have cash, never invest for the sake of investing, and 2) don’t regret your mistakes. You’ll only know if you missed out on a great investment opportunity once that opportunity has unfolded.
Is Management Rational and Candid with Shareholders?
You can’t really define or analyze quality, but seeking quality of management in his investments is one of Buffett’s cardinal rules. Here is how he does it:
First, he asks: “Is management rational?” Does it spend shareholders’ money rationally, making the right decisions when it comes to reinvesting (retaining) earnings or returning profits to shareholders as dividends? This goes against the grain of most people, managers or not. It’s easy to take the usual route, be greedy; keep the profit for yourself; and build a nice empire. But the smart tactic is to maximize shareholder value by properly and efficiently utilizing the company’s cash flow. Buffett likes companies that give money back to their shareholders in the form of dividends and share buybacks.
Second, is management honest with their shareholders? You can learn a lot by just reading the Letter to Shareholders at the beginning of a company’s annual report. Most companies are great at bragging about their successes in this letter, but the letters that separate good versus excellent managers will also admit their mistakes. Buffett says they should also report their financial results “in a way that helps investors make smart investment decisions.” They must answer three key questions: “1) Approximately how much the company is worth; 2) What is the likelihood that it can meet its future obligations; 3) How good a job are its managers doing, given the hand they have been dealt?”
And lastly, Buffett wants to know if management resists the institutional imperative. He doesn’t want companies that take action just so they look like they are doing something. And he shies away from those that do nothing but imitate their competitors’ strategies and tactics. He’s looking for stand-outs—innovators.
Focus on ROE and High Profit Margins
Most analysts’ primary focus is on a company’s earnings per share, but Buffett likes return on equity (ROE) better. Here is his reasoning: Companies, generally, retain some portion of their previous year’s earnings as a way to increase their equity base. He doesn’t think there’s anything special, “about a company that increases EPS by 10% if, at the same time, it is growing its earning base by 10%.”
ROE is simply net income divided by shareholder’s equity and compares a company’s financial performance (over time) with that of its competition, in order to determine if it has a sustainable competitive advantage. When Buffett calculates ROE, he focuses strictly on performance, excluding all capital gains and losses and extraordinary times from earnings.
He also likes companies who generate high ROE’s but are not leveraged to the hilt. And that depends a lot on what’s normal for the industry in which a business operates, so it will vary from company to company.
In general, a sustained high rate of return on capital, the better the business.
Extending Buffett’s definition of ROE gets us to what he calls Owner Earnings, specifically “the value of a company is simply the total of the net cash flows (owner earnings) expected to occur over the life of the business, minus any reinvestment of earnings.”
His definition of owner earnings: “These represent (a) reported earnings plus (b) depreciation, depletion, amortization, and certain other non-cash charges...less (c) the average annual amount of capitalized expenditures for plant and equipment, etc. that the business requires to fully maintain its long-term competitive position and its unit volume.”
Fortunately, these numbers can all be found in a company’s financial statements. And Buffett adds this, “All of this points up the absurdity of the ‘cash flow’ numbers that are often set forth in Wall Street reports. These numbers routinely include (a) plus (b)—but do not subtract (c).”
Buffett also insists on a company with healthy profit margins (net income divided by revenues). Profit margins illustrate if a company is being run efficiently, keeping its costs in line so that more money flows through to the bottom line.
Buffett is known to be pretty strict about his managers’ containing costs. He says, ‘The really good manager does not wake up in the morning and say, ‘This is the day I’m going to cut costs,’ any more than he wakes up and decides to practice breathing.’”
Lastly, Buffett talks about the One-Dollar Premise, or his premise that “every dollar of retrained earnings should, over time, generate at least one dollar of market value.”
It all comes down to making a profit and reinvesting that profit over time to build value and maximize shareholder returns. After all, return on capital and reinvesting drive future earnings, which—all other things being equal—should boost long-term stock performance.
And one last thought on investing from Buffett: “Generally speaking, if you get a chance to buy a wonderful business—and by that, I would mean one that has economic characteristics that lead you to believe, with a high degree of certainty, that they will be earning unusual returns on capital over time—unusually high—and, better yet, if they get the chance to employ more capital at—again, at high rates of return—that’s the best of all businesses. And you probably should stretch a little.”
These tenets comprise the strategy behind Warren Buffett’s investing success. I’ll leave you with some more of his ideas—the companies that he doesn’t own outright, but in which he has significant holdings.
Berkshire Hathaway Investments (as of September 30, 2019)
Symbol | Holdings | Mkt. price | Value | Stake | |
| American Airlines Group Inc | AAL | 43,700,000 | $27.24 | $1,190,388,000 | 10.0% |
| Apple Inc. | AAPL | 248,838,679 | $265.58 | $66,086,576,369 | 5.6% |
| Amazon.com, Inc. | AMZN | 537,300 | $1,740.48 | $935,159,904 | 0.1% |
| American Express Company | AXP | 151,610,700 | $118.28 | $17,932,513,596 | 18.5% |
| Axalta Coating Systems Ltd | AXTA | 24,264,000 | $30.05 | $729,133,200 | 10.3% |
| Bank of America Corp | BAC | 947,760,000 | $33.09 | $31,361,378,400 | 10.5% |
| Bank of New York Mellon Corp | BK | 80,937,250 | $49.27 | $3,987,778,308 | 8.8% |
| Charter Communications Inc | CHTR | 5,426,609 | $467.27 | $2,535,691,587 | 2.5% |
| Costco Wholesale Corporation | COST | 4,333,363 | $293.10 | $1,270,108,695 | 1.0% |
| Delta Air Lines, Inc. | DAL | 70,910,456 | $55.88 | $3,962,476,281 | 11.0% |
| Davita Inc | DVA | 38,565,570 | $72.51 | $2,796,389,481 | 29.7% |
| Globe Life Inc | GL | 6,353,727 | $102.09 | $648,651,989 | 5.9% |
| General Motors Company | GM | 72,269,696 | $35.31 | $2,551,842,966 | 5.1% |
| Goldman Sachs Group Inc | GS | 18,353,635 | $217.14 | $3,985,308,304 | 5.2% |
| Johnson & Johnson | JNJ | 327,100 | $139.56 | $45,650,076 | 0.0% |
| JPMorgan Chase & Co. | JPM | 59,514,932 | $133.06 | $7,919,056,852 | 1.9% |
| Kraft Heinz Co | KHC | 325,634,818 | $31.25 | $10,176,088,063 | 26.7% |
| Coca-Cola Co | KO | 400,000,000 | $54.19 | $21,676,000,000 | 9.3% |
| Liberty Global PLC Class A | LBTYA | 19,791,000 | $22.21 | $439,558,110 | 10.9% |
| Liberty Global PLC Class C | LBTYK | 7,346,968 | $21.11 | $155,094,494 | 1.7% |
| Liberty Latin America Ltd Class A | LILA | 2,714,854 | $17.08 | $46,369,706 | 5.4% |
| Liberty Latin America Ltd Class C | LILAK | 1,284,020 | $17.15 | $22,020,943 | 1.0% |
| Liberty Sirius XM Group Series A | LSXMA | 14,860,360 | $48.08 | $714,486,109 | 14.4% |
| Liberty Sirius XM Group Series C | LSXMK | 31,090,985 | $47.84 | $1,487,392,722 | 15.3% |
| Southwest Airlines Co | LUV | 53,649,213 | $55.53 | $2,979,140,798 | 10.2% |
| Mastercard Inc | MA | 4,934,756 | $289.85 | $1,430,339,027 | 0.5% |
| Moody’s Corporation | MCO | 24,669,778 | $229.36 | $5,658,260,282 | 13.1% |
| MONDELEZ INTERNATIONAL INC Common Stock | MDLZ | 578,000 | $53.81 | $31,102,180 | 0.0% |
| M&T Bank Corporation | MTB | 5,382,040 | $165.06 | $888,359,522 | 4.1% |
| Occidental Petroleum Corporation | OXY | 7,467,508 | $37.98 | $283,615,954 | 0.3% |
| Procter & Gamble Co | PG | 315,400 | $124.62 | $39,305,148 | 0.0% |
| PNC Financial Services Group Inc | PNC | 8,671,054 | $152.20 | $1,319,734,419 | 2.0% |
| Phillips 66 | PSX | 5,182,637 | $112.54 | $583,253,968 | 1.2% |
| RH | RH | 1,207,844 | $233.17 | $281,632,985 | 0.2% |
| Restaurant Brands International Inc | QSR | 8,438,225 | $66.31 | $559,538,700 | 1.6% |
| Sirius XM Holdings Inc | SIRI | 136,275,729 | $6.86 | $934,851,501 | 3.1% |
| StoneCo Ltd | STNE | 14,166,748 | $38.32 | $542,869,783 | 4.3% |
| Store Capital Corp | STOR | 18,621,674 | $40.02 | $745,239,393 | 7.9% |
| Suncor Energy Inc. | SU | 10,758,000 | $30.96 | $333,067,680 | 0.7% |
| Synchrony Financial | SYF | 20,803,000 | $37.49 | $779,904,470 | 3.2% |
| Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd | TEVA | 43,249,295 | $9.82 | $424,708,077 | 4.0% |
| Travelers Companies Inc | TRV | 5,958,391 | $134.31 | $800,271,495 | 2.3% |
| United Airlines Holdings Inc | UAL | 21,938,642 | $87.86 | $1,927,529,086 | 8.7% |
| United Parcel Service, Inc. | UPS | 59,400 | $115.01 | $6,831,594 | 0.0% |
| U.S. Bancorp | USB | 132,459,618 | $59.60 | $7,894,593,233 | 8.5% |
| Visa Inc | V | 10,562,460 | $181.89 | $1,921,205,849 | 0.5% |
| Verisign, Inc. | VRSN | 12,952,745 | $185.57 | $2,403,640,890 | 11.0% |
| Wells Fargo & Co | WFC | 378,369,018 | $53.23 | $20,140,582,828 | 8.9% |
| TOTAL | 3,503,097,197 | $235,564,693,018 |
Source: https://www.cnbc.com/berkshire-hathaway-portfolio/