Berkshire Hathaway 2014 Annual Letter & Report - Notes



The Book Value (BV) of Berkshire Hathaway per 2014 AR (released 2/2015) is $146,186 per BRK.A share or $97.46 per BRK.B share compared to $134,973 per BRK.A share or $89.98 per BRK.B share as of last year. The stock currently trades at $147.41 or 151.25% of BV - the premium over book value has gone up substantially over the last year as that percentage was at 128.67% ($115.78 share price) this time last year. Buffett’s repurchase criterion is 120% of BV or $116.95. The premium to book value has widened as the stock returned 27% over the last year compared to book value growth of 8.3%. Net earnings are at $12,092 per BRK.A share for a ttm-PE of 18.29. This is compared to a ttm-PE of 14.66 last year and 16.93 the year before.

Historical BV Growth: CAGR 1965-2014 at 19.4% vs 9.9% for S&P500. For 2014, BV-growth was 8.3% for Berkshire Hathaway compared to 13.7% for S&P 500.

Earnings: $12,092 in 2014 vs $11,850 in 2013 and $8,977 in 2012 per BRK.A share.  2% YOY increased compared to 32% YOY last year. The increases are attributable to impressive cash generation of its operating entities. It was also helped by realized investment gains (after tax) of $3.3B in 2014, $4.3B in 2013, and $2.2B in 2012. PE is 18.29 including investment gains - at this time last year, PE was at 14.66.  Roughly a third of Berkshire earnings are realized gains historically and so the last few years have shown a divergence on that count. 

Intrinsic Business Value:  The two quantitative components of value:
  1. Per-share investments grew 8.4% to $140,120 in 2014 - lower compared to 13.6% for 2013. CAGR since 1970 is at 19% but was only 6.6% in the 2000-2010 time period - long-term growth is stunning but lumpy over shorter timeframes, and 
  2. Pre-tax earnings from businesses other than insurance and investments increased 19% to $10,847 - higher compared to 12.8% for 2013. CAGR since 1970 is at 20.6% and 20.5% in the 2000-2010 time period.
The third is a measure of the efficacy with which retained earnings will be deployed in the future - the subjective component.

Growing operating earnings is the main focus. Berkshire did a few deals whereby ownership stakes in businesses were exchanged for parts of operating businesses: Phillips 66 and Graham Holdings shares were exchanged in tax-free transactions. Also, they have a contract with Procter and Gamble to acquire Duracell the same way.

Plans to continue building Berkshire’s per-share intrinsic value by:

  1.  Focusing on increasing earning power at subsidiaries both organically and through bolt-on acquisitions,
  2.  Growth of equity investments,
  3.  Repurchasing when there is meaningful discount to intrinsic value,
  4.  Making acquisitions while rarely issuing new shares.
Earnings at the non-insurance businesses: Pre-tax earnings at $17.5B in 2014 compared to $15.5B in 2013. One bad news: $6B capex projected for BNSF in 2015.

“Powerhouse Five” - Berkshire Hathaway Energy (BHE - formerly MidAmerican Energy), BNSF, IMC (Iscar), Lubrizol, and Marmon - $12.5B of the earnings is from these five businesses.

This year, they contracted for 31 bolt-on acquisitions - to cost $7.8B in aggregate - Duracell to close H2 2015 and to be placed under Marmon.

BHE & BNSF are capital intensive with a huge amount of regulated assets partially funded by long-term debt. The debt coverage is very good (8:1 for BNSF currently) even under worst-case assumptions about economic conditions - further, the coverage ratios are based on pre-tax earnings - EBITDA to interest is the commonly used measure but that is flawed as it ignores the capital-intensive nature of the business.

Manufacturing, service & retail operations: ROC at 18.7% after-tax on $24B of tangible assets.

Finance Products - ~31K homes sold - $13B mortgage portfolio. Leasing businesses benefit as manufacturing is in-house in some cases: this reduces the cost-of-inventory compared to retail pricing which will filter over to the income statement (smaller annual depreciation charges) in coming years.

Underwriting profit at the insurance businesses stood at $2.7B for 2014.

Van Tuyl Automotive dealerships acquisition: ambition is to grow it to multiples the size of $9B of sales at Van Tuyl currently.

3G Capital Partnerships: Successful Heinz partnership and participation in the Tim Hortons acquisition by Burger King in a financing role. They are also conducive to more partnerships with 3G, Mars, Leucadia, and others.

Co-Managers: Todd Combs and Ted Weschler invested $7B each and they outperformed Buffett in 2013. For 2014, their roles were expanded to also include running businesses - they took over as Chairman of one business each - combined, those businesses are very small earning around $100M annually - Buffett’s way of developing a deep-bench!

Long-term economic goal: maximize average rate of gain in intrinsic business value on a per share basis. Preference is to own a diversified group of businesses with consistent above-average ROC and second choice is to own parts of such businesses.

Look-through earnings relevance: “Undistributed earnings of our investees, in aggregate, have been fully as beneficial to Berkshire as if they had been distributed to us”. So,
  1. It is preferable to purchase $2 of earnings that are not reportable rather than $1 of reportable earnings for the same acquisition cost, and
  2. Look-through earnings realistically portray yearly gain from operations.
“Big-four investments” (AXP, KO, IBM, WFC) - Berkshire’s share of their earnings was $4.7B - this is compared to the $1.6B dividends that is reported. But, since these are excellent businesses, the unreported $3.1B in earnings are as valuable as the $1.6B reported.
Use of leverage: “We use debt sparingly and, when we do borrow, we attempt to structure our loans on a long-term fixed-rate basis”

Selling businesses: No interest in selling good businesses Berkshire owns. Sub-par businesses are also not sold as long as they are able to generate at-least some cash and managers/labor relations are good. Capex decisions for the latter are made in a much more cautious fashion compared to the former - it is unlikely that sub-par businesses will see increased profitability with increased spending.

BV growth vs S&P 500 Performance Comparison: While this comparison is shown in the first page of the Annual Letter, it has become less meaningful over time. The reasoning has to do with how Berkshire’s business structure has evolved: equity holdings tend to move with S&P 500 and that is now a much smaller portion of overall value. Also S&P 500 gains are reported at 100% while Berkshire’s realized gains get reported at 65% because of taxes.

Also, there is another major shortcoming with this comparison: The carrying value of the businesses that are controlled by Berkshire is much more than their carrying value and so the BV far understates Berkshire’s Intrinsic Value. But, IV by definition (discounted value of cash that can be taken out during the remaining lifetime) is an estimate and so is not quoted in any of the releases.

Below is a YoY comparison of Berkshire Hathaway's largest equity investments:



Exxon Mobil (XOM) and Tesco plc (TSCDY) are not in the list as they were both sold-out. Phillips 66 (PSX) is not in the list as the shares held were exchanged for an operating business acquired from PSX in a tax-free-transaction. Davita HealthCare Partners (DVA), Deere & Company (DE), and USG Corporation (USG) are new to this list this year as those holdings and their values have grown to be among his top investments - not because they are new positions.

Below is a comparison of Berkshire Hathaway's asset distribution in the "Insurance & Other" area for the last five years: 



The equity exposure is at just over 53% - it is near the highs reached last year. So, it is apparent that Buffett is not that concerned about valuation of his holdings despite the increases in the last few years. 

Expects stocks to outperform with lesser risk over the long-term: Vast out-performance of stocks versus other securities (treasuries, etc.) historically can be traced back to the fact that currency-denominated-securities are far less volatile but higher risk (purchasing power reduction of currencies over time constantly works against you). This is the opposite of what is taught in business schools - volatility is synonymous with risk. Vast majority of investors should have a long-term (lifetime) orientation - the focus should be on increasing purchasing power over time - for that, partial ownerships in a diversified set of businesses (stocks) purchased over time is far less risky compared to currency-denominated options. 

Conglomerate Advantage: Conglomerates receive a bad rap mainly because of CEO dishonesty and/or incompetence: many CEOs go for easy ways out - buying low-quality businesses with low-PE and projecting per-share-earnings growth is a classic but deeply flawed strategy. If done right, conglomerates can develop a deep competitive advantage over time: the CEO does the role of capital allocator amongst the various businesses and his focus is on doing it in the most optimal way - compare that to a declining business where it is much more difficult to redeploy capital (would involve admitting mistakes made, firing associates and probably the current CEO as well, etc.) into unrelated businesses (would involve hiring expensive “money shufflers” - hiring experts in the field, investment bankers, lawyers, accountants, etc.).
  
Warren Buffett's writings (pdfs) are a treasure trove of information and are a very good option for anyone starting out on individual investing. In this year’s letter Warren Buffett recommended two books: 
To learn more about how to profit from a strategy of cloning super-investors, check out our book Profiting from Hedge Funds: Winning Strategies for the Little Guy.


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