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2022-03-16

Hope what you say is will turn out true!

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2022-03-10

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Should You Buy Amazon Before Its Stock Split?

2022-02-27

Something to consider

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2022-02-27

Very detailed letter to shareholder. Amazing.

Buffett Full Annual Letter：Apple is One of ‘Four Giants’ Driving the Conglomerate’s Value

2022-02-15

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2022-01-19

Wow

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In conjunction with the stock-split announcement, Amazon also upped its share repurchase program to $10 billion, from the $5 billion program that had been in place. On the announcement, Amazon shares soared nearly 7% in after-hours trading Wednesday.</p><p>So, should investors follow management&#39;s hint and buy shares ahead of the split?</p><h2>Following Alphabet&#39;s lead</h2><p>Amazon&#39;s move had been a topic of conversation among investors ever since CEO Andy Jassy took over the reins from founder Jeff Bezos last summer, and more recently after FAANG competitor <b>Alphabet</b> (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) announced its own stock split back in February.</p><p>Stock splits do not increase or decrease the value of the company, of course; they merely divide shares up into smaller, bite-size pieces. But they do make buying the stock easier for smaller shareholders who may not have $3,000 to invest. The advent of brokerages offering fractional shares has somewhat mitigated this problem for the small buyer, yet many investors still retain brokerage accounts that don&#39;t offer fractional shares. So the split could have some effect on a stock&#39;s liquidity and options activity.</p><p>Some CEOs don&#39;t like the enhanced liquidity that comes with a lower share price. Notably, Warren Buffett has never split the shares of <b>Berkshire Hathaway</b> (NYSE:BRK.A) (NYSE:BRK.B), which now go for a whopping $488,245 per Class A share! Buffett didn&#39;t want to attract short-term investors looking to make a quick buck, and more-liquid, lower-priced shares have a tendency to make bigger moves up and down with more trading activity.</p><p>That being said, Berkshire was forced to offer lower-priced Class B shares in 1996, in order to head off the formation of investment trusts that allowed smaller investors to have a &#34;piece&#34; of Berkshire -- for a fee, of course.</p><p>It appears Jeff Bezos took a page out of Buffett&#39;s playbook following the dot-com crash of the early 2000s, never splitting Amazon&#39;s stock again after it crashed more than 90% during that period.</p><h2>So why the stock split now?</h2><p>Obviously, Amazon&#39;s stock has done quite well since it last split. But as shares soared above $3,000, they&#39;ve hit a roadblock, especially compared with other high-profile tech stocks that have split during the past two years:</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/803e9b389c86bd0694f1a6688a2211e1\" tg-width=\"720\" tg-height=\"387\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"/></p><p>AMZN data by YCharts.</p><p>Could this underperformance have to do with the lower liquidity in Amazon&#39;s stock? It&#39;s hard to say, but it&#39;s possible management might be feeling some heat from employees (many of whom get paid in Amazon stock) over the stock&#39;s recent performance. Amazon has doubled its employee count since the beginning of the pandemic and is in a global war for tech talent, so a lagging stock price could affect its ability to hire top engineers.</p><p>As you can see above, shares have badly lagged the market and many of its large-cap technology peers over the past 20 months or so. Alphabet, <b>Apple</b>, <b>Tesla</b>, and <b>Nvidia</b> have each split their stock at some point over the past 20 months, with Apple and Tesla splitting in August 2020, Nvidia splitting in July 2021, and Alphabet just recently announcing its split, which has not yet taken effect.</p><p>It&#39;s not clear if this is the reason for their outperformance; investors have been wary of e-commerce stocks amid economic reopening and higher inflation. But it appears management may think this is at least part of the reason.</p><h2>Don&#39;t buy Amazon for the split, though; buy it for these reasons</h2><p>While many view Amazon as an unbridled growth stock, investors should not underestimate the company&#39;s capital allocation prowess. More than the stock split, investors should buy the stock because it appears cheap on the basis of the sum of its parts, and it looks like management feels the same way. And there are many smart people working at Amazon.</p><p>The fact that Amazon is getting aggressive with share repurchases is telling. Under Bezos, Amazon sought to spend as much money as possible on growth ventures, so the fact that management is upping share repurchases means it must see its stock as woefully undervalued.</p><p>Amazon also is coming off a massive two-year investment cycle since COVID-19 hit, but that should be winding down now as growth trends normalize. So free cash flow could skyrocket this year as Amazon spends less on building its fulfillment network, which has more than doubled since the beginning of the pandemic.</p><p>Amazon has repurchased shares before, but only rarely and in small amounts. The last repurchase was at the end of 2011 and beginning of 2012, after the stock fell some 25%. That&#39;s roughly the same plunge shares have taken recently. Investors would have been good to follow management at that time, as Amazon&#39;s stock bounced back in a big way beginning in late 2012 and beyond.</p><p><img src=\"https://g.foolcdn.com/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fg.foolcdn.com%2Feditorial%2Fimages%2F669849%2Fgettyimages-483815349.jpg&amp;w=700&amp;op=resize\" tg-width=\"700\" tg-height=\"466\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"/></p><p>Amazon Web Services could be worth more than Amazon&#39;s entire market cap. Image source: Getty Images.</p><h2>Amazon Web Services could be more valuable than all of Amazon today</h2><p>Additionally, while most think of Amazon as an e-commerce company, I&#39;d argue its Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud computing platform is the bigger reason to own the stock, and it might be worth more than all of Amazon&#39;s e-commerce operations, or even more than the company&#39;s entire market cap today.</p><p>Consider that AWS grew revenue 37% last year to $62.2 billion and operating income by roughly the same amount to $18.5 billion. However, AWS revenue and operating earnings accelerated throughout the year as economic activity picked up, with growth accelerating 40% in the fourth quarter.</p><p>Assuming 35% growth this year, AWS operating income would come to $25 billion; after tax, that would come to about $20 billion in net earnings. At a $1.4 trillion market cap, all of Amazon is trading around 70 times AWS earnings for 2022.</p><p>I have a feeling that if AWS were a separate business, it could garner a P/E ratio in that ballpark. So investors could be getting Amazon&#39;s e-commerce operations, which are also likely quite valuable, for free.</p><h2>The split should come in June</h2><p>According to the Securities and Exchange Commission filing, Amazon shareholders will have a vote on the stock split at the company&#39;s annual meeting in May, and the split should take effect sometime in early June, pending that shareholder vote. Assuming the split is a catalyst for shares to go up, I hope management spends a large portion of that $10 billion share buyback before then.</p><p>After a no-good year and a half, 2022 could be a much better year for Amazon shareholders. It&#39;s screaming buy with the stock split on the horizon.</p></body></html>","source":"fool_stock","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Should You Buy Amazon Before Its Stock Split?</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nShould You Buy Amazon Before Its Stock Split?\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2022-03-10 22:10 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/03/10/should-you-buy-amazoncom-before-its-stock-split/><strong>Motley Fool</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>Last night, Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) announced that it would be splitting its stock 20-for-1, the first time this $3,000 stock has split its shares since September 1999! In conjunction with the stock-...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/03/10/should-you-buy-amazoncom-before-its-stock-split/\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"BK4534":"瑞士信贷持仓","BK4507":"流媒体概念","BK4533":"AQR资本管理(全球第二大对冲基金)","BK4566":"资本集团","BK4535":"淡马锡持仓","BK4524":"宅经济概念","BK4538":"云计算","BK4527":"明星科技股","BK4559":"巴菲特持仓","BK4550":"红杉资本持仓","BK4579":"人工智能","BK4532":"文艺复兴科技持仓","BK4503":"景林资产持仓","BK4122":"互联网与直销零售","AMZN":"亚马逊","BK4551":"寇图资本持仓","BK4561":"索罗斯持仓","BK4581":"高盛持仓","BK4548":"巴美列捷福持仓","BK4554":"元宇宙及AR概念"},"source_url":"https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/03/10/should-you-buy-amazoncom-before-its-stock-split/","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"2218268957","content_text":"Last night, Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) announced that it would be splitting its stock 20-for-1, the first time this $3,000 stock has split its shares since September 1999! In conjunction with the stock-split announcement, Amazon also upped its share repurchase program to $10 billion, from the $5 billion program that had been in place. On the announcement, Amazon shares soared nearly 7% in after-hours trading Wednesday.So, should investors follow management's hint and buy shares ahead of the split?Following Alphabet's leadAmazon's move had been a topic of conversation among investors ever since CEO Andy Jassy took over the reins from founder Jeff Bezos last summer, and more recently after FAANG competitor Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) announced its own stock split back in February.Stock splits do not increase or decrease the value of the company, of course; they merely divide shares up into smaller, bite-size pieces. But they do make buying the stock easier for smaller shareholders who may not have $3,000 to invest. The advent of brokerages offering fractional shares has somewhat mitigated this problem for the small buyer, yet many investors still retain brokerage accounts that don't offer fractional shares. So the split could have some effect on a stock's liquidity and options activity.Some CEOs don't like the enhanced liquidity that comes with a lower share price. Notably, Warren Buffett has never split the shares of Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK.A) (NYSE:BRK.B), which now go for a whopping $488,245 per Class A share! Buffett didn't want to attract short-term investors looking to make a quick buck, and more-liquid, lower-priced shares have a tendency to make bigger moves up and down with more trading activity.That being said, Berkshire was forced to offer lower-priced Class B shares in 1996, in order to head off the formation of investment trusts that allowed smaller investors to have a \"piece\" of Berkshire -- for a fee, of course.It appears Jeff Bezos took a page out of Buffett's playbook following the dot-com crash of the early 2000s, never splitting Amazon's stock again after it crashed more than 90% during that period.So why the stock split now?Obviously, Amazon's stock has done quite well since it last split. But as shares soared above $3,000, they've hit a roadblock, especially compared with other high-profile tech stocks that have split during the past two years:AMZN data by YCharts.Could this underperformance have to do with the lower liquidity in Amazon's stock? It's hard to say, but it's possible management might be feeling some heat from employees (many of whom get paid in Amazon stock) over the stock's recent performance. Amazon has doubled its employee count since the beginning of the pandemic and is in a global war for tech talent, so a lagging stock price could affect its ability to hire top engineers.As you can see above, shares have badly lagged the market and many of its large-cap technology peers over the past 20 months or so. Alphabet, Apple, Tesla, and Nvidia have each split their stock at some point over the past 20 months, with Apple and Tesla splitting in August 2020, Nvidia splitting in July 2021, and Alphabet just recently announcing its split, which has not yet taken effect.It's not clear if this is the reason for their outperformance; investors have been wary of e-commerce stocks amid economic reopening and higher inflation. But it appears management may think this is at least part of the reason.Don't buy Amazon for the split, though; buy it for these reasonsWhile many view Amazon as an unbridled growth stock, investors should not underestimate the company's capital allocation prowess. More than the stock split, investors should buy the stock because it appears cheap on the basis of the sum of its parts, and it looks like management feels the same way. And there are many smart people working at Amazon.The fact that Amazon is getting aggressive with share repurchases is telling. Under Bezos, Amazon sought to spend as much money as possible on growth ventures, so the fact that management is upping share repurchases means it must see its stock as woefully undervalued.Amazon also is coming off a massive two-year investment cycle since COVID-19 hit, but that should be winding down now as growth trends normalize. So free cash flow could skyrocket this year as Amazon spends less on building its fulfillment network, which has more than doubled since the beginning of the pandemic.Amazon has repurchased shares before, but only rarely and in small amounts. The last repurchase was at the end of 2011 and beginning of 2012, after the stock fell some 25%. That's roughly the same plunge shares have taken recently. Investors would have been good to follow management at that time, as Amazon's stock bounced back in a big way beginning in late 2012 and beyond.Amazon Web Services could be worth more than Amazon's entire market cap. Image source: Getty Images.Amazon Web Services could be more valuable than all of Amazon todayAdditionally, while most think of Amazon as an e-commerce company, I'd argue its Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud computing platform is the bigger reason to own the stock, and it might be worth more than all of Amazon's e-commerce operations, or even more than the company's entire market cap today.Consider that AWS grew revenue 37% last year to $62.2 billion and operating income by roughly the same amount to $18.5 billion. However, AWS revenue and operating earnings accelerated throughout the year as economic activity picked up, with growth accelerating 40% in the fourth quarter.Assuming 35% growth this year, AWS operating income would come to $25 billion; after tax, that would come to about $20 billion in net earnings. At a $1.4 trillion market cap, all of Amazon is trading around 70 times AWS earnings for 2022.I have a feeling that if AWS were a separate business, it could garner a P/E ratio in that ballpark. So investors could be getting Amazon's e-commerce operations, which are also likely quite valuable, for free.The split should come in JuneAccording to the Securities and Exchange Commission filing, Amazon shareholders will have a vote on the stock split at the company's annual meeting in May, and the split should take effect sometime in early June, pending that shareholder vote. Assuming the split is a catalyst for shares to go up, I hope management spends a large portion of that $10 billion share buyback before then.After a no-good year and a half, 2022 could be a much better year for Amazon shareholders. It's screaming buy with the stock split on the horizon.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":328,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":9039123345,"gmtCreate":1645966338863,"gmtModify":1676534078216,"author":{"id":"4098320171388960","authorId":"4098320171388960","name":"dttw","avatar":"https://static.laohu8.com/default-avatar.jpg","crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"idStr":"4098320171388960","authorIdStr":"4098320171388960"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Something to consider","listText":"Something to consider","text":"Something to consider","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":7,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/9039123345","repostId":"1172565671","repostType":4,"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":285,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":9039168752,"gmtCreate":1645962523369,"gmtModify":1676534078008,"author":{"id":"4098320171388960","authorId":"4098320171388960","name":"dttw","avatar":"https://static.laohu8.com/default-avatar.jpg","crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"idStr":"4098320171388960","authorIdStr":"4098320171388960"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Very detailed letter to shareholder. Amazing.","listText":"Very detailed letter to shareholder. Amazing.","text":"Very detailed letter to shareholder. Amazing.","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":4,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/9039168752","repostId":"1125580913","repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1125580913","kind":"news","weMediaInfo":{"introduction":"Providing stock market headlines, business news, financials and earnings ","home_visible":1,"media_name":"Tiger Newspress","id":"1079075236","head_image":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/8274c5b9d4c2852bfb1c4d6ce16c68ba"},"pubTimestamp":1645926503,"share":"https://ttm.financial/m/news/1125580913?lang=&edition=fundamental","pubTime":"2022-02-27 09:48","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Buffett Full Annual Letter：Apple is One of ‘Four Giants’ Driving the Conglomerate’s Value","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1125580913","media":"Tiger Newspress","summary":"Warren Buffett released his annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders on Saturday. The 91-yea","content":"<html><head></head><body><p>Warren Buffett released his annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders on Saturday. The 91-year-old investing legend has been publishing the letter for over six decades and it has become required reading for investors around the world.</p><p>Warren Buffett said he now considers tech giant Apple as one of the four pillars driving Berkshire Hathaway, the conglomerate of mostly old-economy businesses he’s assembled over the last five decades.</p><p>In his annual letter to shareholders released on Saturday, the 91-year-old investing legend listed Apple under the heading “Our Four Giants” and even called the company the second-most important after Berkshire’s cluster of insurers, thanks to its chief executive.</p><p>“Tim Cook, Apple’s brilliant CEO, quite properly regards users of Apple products as his first love, but all of his other constituencies benefit from Tim’s managerial touch as well,” the letter stated.</p><p>Buffett made clear he is a fan of Cook’s stock repurchase strategy, and how it gives the conglomerate increased ownership of each dollar of the iPhone maker’s earnings without the investor having to lift a finger.</p><p>“Apple – our runner-up Giant as measured by its yearend market value – is a different sort of holding. Here, our ownership is a mere 5.55%, up from 5.39% a year earlier,” Buffett said in the letter. “That increase sounds like small potatoes. But consider that each 0.1% of Apple’s 2021 earnings amounted to $100 million. We spent no Berkshire funds to gain our accretion. Apple’s repurchases did the job.”</p><p>Berkshire began buying Apple stock in 2016 under the influence of Buffett’s investing deputies Todd Combs and Ted Weschler. By mid-2018, the conglomerate accumulated 5% ownership of the iPhone maker, a stake that cost $36 billion. Today, the Apple investment is now worth more than $160 billion, taking up 40% of Berkshire’s equity portfolio.</p><p>“It’s important to understand that only dividends from Apple are counted in the GAAP earnings Berkshire reports – and last year, Apple paid us $785 million of those. Yet our ‘share’ of Apple’s earnings amounted to a staggering $5.6 billion. Much of what the company retained was used to repurchase Apple shares, an act we applaud,” Buffett said.</p><p>Berkshire is Apple’s largest shareholder, outside of index and exchange-traded fund providers.</p><p>Buffett also credited his railroad business BNSF and energy segment BHE as two other giants of the conglomerate, which both registered record earnings in 2021.</p><p>“BNSF, our third Giant, continues to be the number one artery of American commerce, which makes it an indispensable asset for America as well as for Berkshire,” Buffett said. “BHE has become a utility powerhouse and a leading force in wind, solar and transmission throughout much of the United States.”</p><p><b>Read the full letter here：</b></p><p>To the Shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway Inc.:</p><p>Charlie Munger, my long-time partner, and I have the job of managing a portion of your savings. We are honored by your trust.</p><p>Our position carries with it the responsibility to report to you what we would like to know if we were the absentee owner and you were the manager. We enjoy communicating directly with you through this annual letter, and through the annual meeting as well.</p><p>Our policy is to treat all shareholders equally. Therefore, we do not hold discussions with analysts nor large institutions. Whenever possible, also, we release important communications on Saturday mornings in order to maximize the time for shareholders and the media to absorb the news before markets open on Monday.</p><p>A wealth of Berkshire facts and figures are set forth in the annual 10-K that the company regularly files with the S.E.C. and that we reproduce on pages K-1 – K-119. Some shareholders will find this detail engrossing; others will simply prefer to learn what Charlie and I believe is new or interesting at Berkshire.</p><p>Alas, there was little action of that sort in 2021. We did, though, make reasonable progress in increasing the intrinsic value of your shares. That task has been my primary duty for 57 years. And it will continue to be.</p><p><b>What You Own</b></p><p>Berkshire owns a wide variety of businesses, some in their entirety, some only in part. The second group largely consists of marketable common stocks of major American companies. Additionally, we own a few non-U.S. equities and participate in several joint ventures or other collaborative activities.</p><p>Whatever our form of ownership, our goal is to have meaningful investments in businesses with both durable economic advantages and a first-class CEO. Please note particularly that we own stocks based upon our expectations about their long-term business performance and not because we view them as vehicles for timely market moves. That point is crucial: Charlie and I are not stock-pickers; we are business-pickers.</p><p>I make many mistakes. Consequently, our extensive collection of businesses includes some enterprises that have truly extraordinary economics, many others that enjoy good economic characteristics, and a few that are marginal. One advantage of our common-stock segment is that – on occasion – it becomes easy to buy pieces of wonderful businesses at wonderful prices. That shooting-fish-in-a-barrel experience is very rare in negotiated transactions and never occurs en masse. It is also far easier to exit from a mistake when it has been made in the marketable arena.</p><h2><b>Surprise, Surprise</b></h2><p>Here are a few items about your company that often surprise even seasoned investors:</p><p>• Many people perceive Berkshire as a large and somewhat strange collection of financial assets. In truth, Berkshire owns and operates more U.S.-based “infrastructure” assets – classified on our balance sheet as property, plant and equipment – than are owned and operated by any other American corporation. That supremacy has never been our goal. It has, however, become a fact.</p><p>At yearend, those domestic infrastructure assets were carried on Berkshire’s balance sheet at $158 billion. That number increased last year and will continue to increase. Berkshire always will be building.</p><p>• Every year, your company makes substantial federal income tax payments. In 2021, for example, we paid</p><p>$3.3 billion while the U.S. Treasury reported total corporate income-tax receipts of $402 billion. Additionally, Berkshire pays substantial state and foreign taxes. “I gave at the office” is an unassailable assertion when made by Berkshire shareholders.</p><p>Berkshire’s history vividly illustrates the invisible and often unrecognized financial partnership between  government and American businesses. Our tale begins early in 1955, when Berkshire Fine Spinning and Hathaway Manufacturing agreed to merge their businesses. In their requests for shareholder approval, these venerable New England textile companies expressed high hopes for the combination.</p><p></p><p>The Hathaway solicitation, for example, assured its shareholders that “The combination of the resources and managements will result in one of the strongest and most efficient organizations in the textile industry.” That upbeat view was endorsed by the company’s advisor, Lehman Brothers (yes, that Lehman Brothers).</p><p>I’m sure it was a joyous day in both Fall River (Berkshire) and New Bedford (Hathaway) when the union was consummated. After the bands stopped playing and the bankers went home, however, the shareholders reaped a disaster.</p><p>In the nine years following the merger, Berkshire’s owners watched the company’s net worth crater from</p><p>$51.4 million to $22.1 million. In part, this decline was caused by stock repurchases, ill-advised dividends and plant shutdowns. But nine years of effort by many thousands of employees delivered an operating loss as well. Berkshire’s struggles were not unusual: The New England textile industry had silently entered an extended and non-reversible death march.</p><p>During the nine post-merger years, the U.S. Treasury suffered as well from Berkshire’s troubles. All told, the company paid the government only $337,359 in income tax during that period – a pathetic $100 per day.</p><p>Early in 1965, things changed. Berkshire installed new management that redeployed available cash and steered essentially all earnings into a variety of good businesses, most of which remained good through the years. Coupling reinvestment of earnings with the power of compounding worked its magic, and shareholders prospered.</p><p>Berkshire’s owners, it should be noted, were not the only beneficiary of that course correction. Their “silent partner,” the U.S. Treasury, proceeded to collect many tens of billions of dollars from the company in income tax payments. Remember the $100 daily? Now, Berkshire pays roughly $9 million daily to the Treasury.</p><p>In fairness to our governmental partner, our shareholders should acknowledge – indeed trumpet – the fact that Berkshire’s prosperity has been fostered mightily because the company has operated in America. Our country would have done splendidly in the years since 1965 without Berkshire. Absent our American home, however, Berkshire would never have come close to becoming what it is today. When you see the flag, say thanks.</p><p>• From an $8.6 million purchase of National Indemnity in 1967, Berkshire has become the world leader in insurance “float” – money we hold and can invest but that does not belong to us. Including a relatively small sum derived from life insurance, Berkshire’s total float has grown from $19 million when we entered the insurance business to $147 billion.</p><p>So far, this float has cost us less than nothing. Though we have experienced a number of years when insurance losses combined with operating expenses exceeded premiums, overall we have earned a modest 55-year profit from the underwriting activities that generated our float.</p><p>Of equal importance, float is very sticky. Funds attributable to our insurance operations come and go daily, but their aggregate total is immune from precipitous decline. When it comes to investing float, we can therefore think long-term.</p><p>If you are not already familiar with the concept of float, I refer you to a long explanation on page A-5. To my surprise, our float increased $9 billion last year, a buildup of value that is important to Berkshire owners though is not reflected in our GAAP (“generally-accepted accounting principles”) presentation of earnings and net worth.</p><p>Much of our huge value creation in insurance is attributable to Berkshire’s good luck in my 1986 hiring of Ajit Jain. We first met on a Saturday morning, and I quickly asked Ajit what his insurance experience had been. He replied, “None.”</p><p>I said, “Nobody’s perfect,” and hired him. That was my lucky day: Ajit actually was as perfect a choice as could have been made. Better yet, he continues to be – 35 years later.</p><p>One final thought about insurance: I believe that it is likely – but far from assured – that Berkshire’s float can be maintained without our incurring a long-term underwriting loss. I am certain, however, that there will be some years when we experience such losses, perhaps involving very large sums.</p><p>Berkshire is constructed to handle catastrophic events as no other insurer – and that priority will remain long after Charlie and I are gone.</p><h2>Our Four Giants</h2><p>Through Berkshire, our shareholders own many dozens of businesses. Some of these, in turn, have a collection of subsidiaries of their own. For example, Marmon has more than 100 individual business operations, ranging from the leasing of railroad cars to the manufacture of medical devices.</p><p>• Nevertheless, operations of our “Big Four” companies account for a very large chunk of Berkshire’s value. Leading this list is our cluster of insurers. Berkshire effectively owns 100% of this group, whose massive float value we earlier described. The invested assets of these insurers are further enlarged by the extraordinary amount of capital we invest to back up their promises.</p><p>The insurance business is made to order for Berkshire. The product will never be obsolete, and sales volume will generally increase along with both economic growth and inflation. Also, integrity and capital will forever be important. Our company can and will behave well.</p><p>There are, of course, other insurers with excellent business models and prospects. Replication of Berkshire’s operation, however, would be almost impossible.</p><p>• Apple – our runner-up Giant as measured by its yearend market value – is a different sort of holding. Here, our ownership is a mere 5.55%, up from 5.39% a year earlier. That increase sounds like small potatoes. But consider that each 0.1% of Apple’s 2021 earnings amounted to $100 million. We spent no Berkshire funds to gain our accretion. Apple’s repurchases did the job.</p><p>It’s important to understand that only dividends from Apple are counted in the GAAP earnings Berkshire reports – and last year, Apple paid us $785 million of those. Yet our “share” of Apple’s earnings amounted to a staggering $5.6 billion. Much of what the company retained was used to repurchase Apple shares, an act we applaud. Tim Cook, Apple’s brilliant CEO, quite properly regards users of Apple products as his first love, but all of his other constituencies benefit from Tim’s managerial touch as well.</p><p>• BNSF, our third Giant, continues to be the number one artery of American commerce, which makes it an indispensable asset for America as well as for Berkshire. If the many essential products BNSF carries were instead hauled by truck, America’s carbon emissions would soar.</p><p>Your railroad had record earnings of $6 billion in 2021. Here, it should be noted, we are talking about the old-fashioned sort of earnings that we favor: a figure calculated after interest, taxes, depreciation, amortization and all forms of compensation. (Our definition suggests a warning: Deceptive “adjustments” to earnings – to use a polite description – have become both more frequent and more fanciful as stocks have risen. Speaking less politely, I would say that bull markets breed bloviated bull )</p><p>BNSF trains traveled 143 million miles last year and carried 535 million tons of cargo. Both accomplishments far exceed those of any other American carrier. You can be proud of your railroad.</p><p>• BHE, our final Giant, earned a record $4 billion in 2021. That’s up more than 30-fold from the $122 million earned in 2000, the year that Berkshire first purchased a BHE stake. Now, Berkshire owns 91.1% of the company.</p><p>BHE’s record of societal accomplishment is as remarkable as its financial performance. The company had no wind or solar generation in 2000. It was then regarded simply as a relatively new and minor participant in the huge electric utility industry. Subsequently, under David Sokol’s and Greg Abel’s leadership, BHE has become a utility powerhouse (no groaning, please) and a leading force in wind, solar and transmission throughout much of the United States.</p><p>Greg’s report on these accomplishments appears on pages A-3 and A-4. The profile you will find there is not in any way one of those currently-fashionable “green-washing” stories. BHE has been faithfully detailing its plans and performance in renewables and transmissions every year since 2007.</p><p>To further review this information, visit BHE’s website at brkenergy.com. There, you will see that the company has long been making climate-conscious moves that soak up all of its earnings. More opportunities lie ahead. BHE has the management, the experience, the capital and the appetite for the huge power projects that our country needs.</p><h2>Investments</h2><p>Now let’s talk about companies we don’t control, a list that again references Apple. Below we list our fifteen largest equity holdings, several of which are selections of Berkshire’s two long-time investment managers, Todd Combs and Ted Weschler. At yearend, this valued pair had total authority in respect to $34 billion of investments, many of which do not meet the threshold value we use in the table. Also, a significant portion of the dollars that Todd and Ted manage are lodged in various pension plans of Berkshire-owned businesses, with the assets of these plans not included in this table.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/d43587e9f59c0ff76e6c04c6bf9af324\" tg-width=\"1047\" tg-height=\"530\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"/>* This is our actual purchase price and also our tax basis.</p><p>** Held by BHE; consequently, Berkshire shareholders have only a 91.1% interest in this position.</p><p>*** Includes a $10 billion investment in Occidental Petroleum, consisting of preferred stock and warrants to buy common stock, a combination now being valued at $10.7 billion.</p><p>In addition to the footnoted Occidental holding and our various common-stock positions, Berkshire also owns a 26.6% interest in Kraft Heinz (accounted for on the “equity” method, not market value, and carried at $13.1 billion) and 38.6% of Pilot Corp., a leader in travel centers that had revenues last year of $45 billion.</p><p>Since we purchased our Pilot stake in 2017, this holding has warranted “equity” accounting treatment. Early in 2023, Berkshire will purchase an additional interest in Pilot that will raise our ownership to 80% and lead to our fully consolidating Pilot’s earnings, assets and liabilities in our financial statements.</p><h2>U.S. Treasury Bills</h2><p>Berkshire’s balance sheet includes $144 billion of cash and cash equivalents (excluding the holdings of BNSF and BHE). Of this sum, $120 billion is held in U.S. Treasury bills, all maturing in less than a year. That stake leaves Berkshire financing about 12 of 1% of the publicly-held national debt.</p><p>Charlie and I have pledged that Berkshire (along with our subsidiaries other than BNSF and BHE) will always hold more than $30 billion of cash and equivalents. We want your company to be financially impregnable and never dependent on the kindness of strangers (or even that of friends). Both of us like to sleep soundly, and we want our creditors, insurance claimants and you to do so as well.</p><h2>But $144 billion?</h2><p>That imposing sum, I assure you, is not some deranged expression of patriotism. Nor have Charlie and I lost our overwhelming preference for business ownership. Indeed, I first manifested my enthusiasm for that 80 years ago, on March 11, 1942, when I purchased three shares of Cities Services preferred stock. Their cost was $114.75 and required all of my savings. (The Dow Jones Industrial Average that day closed at 99, a fact that should scream to you: Never bet against America.)</p><p>After my initial plunge, I always kept at least 80% of my net worth in equities. My favored status throughout that period was 100% – and still is. Berkshire’s current 80%-or-so position in businesses is a consequence of my failure to find entire companies or small portions thereof (that is, marketable stocks) which meet our criteria for long- term holding.</p><p>Charlie and I have endured similar cash-heavy positions from time to time in the past. These periods are never pleasant; they are also never permanent. And, fortunately, we have had a mildly attractive alternative during 2020 and 2021 for deploying capital. Read on.</p><h2>Share Repurchases</h2><p>There are three ways that we can increase the value of your investment. The first is always front and center in our minds: Increase the long-term earning power of Berkshire’s controlled businesses through internal growth or by making acquisitions. Today, internal opportunities deliver far better returns than acquisitions. The size of those opportunities, however, is small compared to Berkshire’s resources.</p><p>Our second choice is to buy non-controlling part-interests in the many good or great businesses that are publicly traded. From time to time, such possibilities are both numerous and blatantly attractive. Today, though, we find little that excites us.</p><p>That’s largely because of a truism: Long-term interest rates that are low push the prices of all productive investments upward, whether these are stocks, apartments, farms, oil wells, whatever. Other factors influence valuations as well, but interest rates will always be important.</p><p>Our final path to value creation is to repurchase Berkshire shares. Through that simple act, we increase your share of the many controlled and non-controlled businesses Berkshire owns. When the price/value equation is right, this path is the easiest and most certain way for us to increase your wealth. (Alongside the accretion of value to continuing shareholders, a couple of other parties gain: Repurchases are modestly beneficial to the seller of the repurchased shares and to society as well.)</p><p>Periodically, as alternative paths become unattractive, repurchases make good sense for Berkshire’s owners. During the past two years, we therefore repurchased 9% of the shares that were outstanding at yearend 2019 for a total cost of $51.7 billion. That expenditure left our continuing shareholders owning about 10% more of all Berkshire businesses, whether these are wholly-owned (such as BNSF and GEICO) or partly-owned (such as Coca-Cola and Moody’s).</p><p>I want to underscore that for Berkshire repurchases to make sense, our shares must offer appropriate value. We don’t want to overpay for the shares of other companies, and it would be value-destroying if we were to overpay when we are buying Berkshire. As of February 23, 2022, since yearend we repurchased additional shares at a cost of $1.2 billion. Our appetite remains large but will always remain price-dependent.</p><p>It should be noted that Berkshire’s buyback opportunities are limited because of its high-class investor base. If our shares were heavily held by short-term speculators, both price volatility and transaction volumes would materially increase. That kind of reshaping would offer us far greater opportunities for creating value by making repurchases. Nevertheless, Charlie and I far prefer the owners we have, even though their admirable buy-and-keep attitudes limit the extent to which long-term shareholders can profit from opportunistic repurchases.</p><p>Finally, one easily-overlooked value calculation specific to Berkshire: As we’ve discussed, insurance “float” of the right sort is of great value to us. As it happens, repurchases automatically increase the amount of “float” per share. That figure has increased during the past two years by 25% – going from $79,387 per “A” share to $99,497, a meaningful gain that, as noted, owes some thanks to repurchases.</p><h2>A Wonderful Man and a Wonderful Business</h2><p>Last year, Paul Andrews died. Paul was the founder and CEO of TTI, a Fort Worth-based subsidiary of Berkshire. Throughout his life – in both his business and his personal pursuits – Paul quietly displayed all the qualities that Charlie and I admire. His story should be told.</p><p>In 1971, Paul was working as a purchasing agent for General Dynamics when the roof fell in. After losing a huge defense contract, the company fired thousands of employees, including Paul.</p><p>With his first child due soon, Paul decided to bet on himself, using $500 of his savings to found Tex-Tronics (later renamed TTI). The company set itself up to distribute small electronic components, and first-year sales totaled $112,000. Today, TTI markets more than one million different items with annual volume of $7.7 billion.</p><p>But back to 2006: Paul, at 63, then found himself happy with his family, his job, and his associates. But he had one nagging worry, heightened because he had recently witnessed a friend’s early death and the disastrous results that followed for that man’s family and business. What, Paul asked himself in 2006, would happen to the many people depending on him if he should unexpectedly die?</p><p>For a year, Paul wrestled with his options. Sell to a competitor? From a strictly economic viewpoint, that course made the most sense. After all, competitors could envision lucrative “synergies” – savings that would be achieved as the acquiror slashed duplicated functions at TTI.</p><p>But . . . Such a purchaser would most certainly also retain its CFO, its legal counsel, its HR unit. Their TTI counterparts would therefore be sent packing. And ugh! If a new distribution center were to be needed, the acquirer’s home city would certainly be favored over Fort Worth.</p><p>Whatever the financial benefits, Paul quickly concluded that selling to a competitor was not for him. He next considered seeking a financial buyer, a species once labeled – aptly so – a leveraged buyout firm. Paul knew, however, that such a purchaser would be focused on an “exit strategy.” And who could know what that would be? Brooding over it all, Paul found himself having no interest in handing his 35-year-old creation over to a reseller.</p><p>When Paul met me, he explained why he had eliminated these two alternatives as buyers. He then summed up his dilemma by saying – in far more tactful phrasing than this – “After a year of pondering the alternatives, I want to sell to Berkshire because you are the only guy left.” So, I made an offer and Paul said “Yes.” One meeting; one lunch; one deal.</p><p>To say we both lived happily ever after is an understatement. When Berkshire purchased TTI, the company employed 2,387. Now the number is 8,043. A large percentage of that growth took place in Fort Worth and environs. Earnings have increased 673%.</p><p>Annually, I would call Paul and tell him his salary should be substantially increased. Annually, he would tell me, “We can talk about that next year, Warren; I’m too busy now.”</p><p>When Greg Abel and I attended Paul’s memorial service, we met children, grandchildren, long-time associates (including TTI’s first employee) and John Roach, the former CEO of a Fort Worth company Berkshire had purchased in 2000. John had steered his friend Paul to Omaha, instinctively knowing we would be a match.</p><p>At the service, Greg and I heard about the multitudes of people and organizations that Paul had silently supported. The breadth of his generosity was extraordinary – geared always to improving the lives of others, particularly those in Fort Worth.</p><p>In all ways, Paul was a class act.</p><p>* * * * * * * * * * * *</p><p>Good luck – occasionally extraordinary luck – has played its part at Berkshire. If Paul and I had not enjoyed a mutual friend – John Roach – TTI would not have found its home with us. But that ample serving of luck was only the beginning. TTI was soon to lead Berkshire to its most important acquisition.</p><p>Every fall, Berkshire directors gather for a presentation by a few of our executives. We sometimes choose the site based upon the location of a recent acquisition, by that means allowing directors to meet the new subsidiary’s CEO and learn more about the acquiree’s activities.</p><p>In the fall of 2009, we consequently selected Fort Worth so that we could visit TTI. At that time, BNSF, which also had Fort Worth as its hometown, was the third-largest holding among our marketable equities. Despite that large stake, I had never visited the railroad’s headquarters.</p><p>Deb Bosanek, my assistant, scheduled our board’s opening dinner for October 22. Meanwhile, I arranged to arrive earlier that day to meet with Matt Rose, CEO of BNSF, whose accomplishments I had long admired. When I made the date, I had no idea that our get-together would coincide with BNSF’s third-quarter earnings report, which was released late on the 22nd.</p><p>The market reacted badly to the railroad’s results. The Great Recession was in full force in the third quarter, and BNSF’s earnings reflected that slump. The economic outlook was also bleak, and Wall Street wasn’t feeling friendly to railroads – or much else.</p><p>On the following day, I again got together with Matt and suggested that Berkshire would offer the railroad a better long-term home than it could expect as a public company. I also told him the maximum price that Berkshire would pay.</p><p>Matt relayed the offer to his directors and advisors. Eleven busy days later, Berkshire and BNSF announced a firm deal. And here I’ll venture a rare prediction: BNSF will be a key asset for Berkshire and our country a century from now.</p><p>The BNSF acquisition would never have happened if Paul Andrews hadn’t sized up Berkshire as the right home for TTI.</p><h2>Thanks</h2><p>I taught my first investing class 70 years ago. Since then, I have enjoyed working almost every year with students of all ages, finally “retiring” from that pursuit in 2018.</p><p>Along the way, my toughest audience was my grandson’s fifth-grade class. The 11-year-olds were squirming in their seats and giving me blank stares until I mentioned Coca-Cola and its famous secret formula. Instantly, every hand went up, and I learned that “secrets” are catnip to kids.</p><p>Teaching, like writing, has helped me develop and clarify my own thoughts. Charlie calls this phenomenon the orangutan effect: If you sit down with an orangutan and carefully explain to it one of your cherished ideas, you may leave behind a puzzled primate, but will yourself exit thinking more clearly.</p><p>Talking to university students is far superior. I have urged that they seek employment in (1) the field and (2) with the kind of people they would select, if they had no need for money. Economic realities, I acknowledge, may interfere with that kind of search. Even so, I urge the students never to give up the quest, for when they find that sort of job, they will no longer be “working.”</p><p>Charlie and I, ourselves, followed that liberating course after a few early stumbles. We both started as part- timers at my grandfather’s grocery store, Charlie in 1940 and I in 1942. We were each assigned boring tasks and paid little, definitely not what we had in mind. Charlie later took up law, and I tried selling securities. Job satisfaction continued to elude us.</p><p>Finally, at Berkshire, we found what we love to do. With very few exceptions, we have now “worked” for many decades with people whom we like and trust. It’s a joy in life to join with managers such as Paul Andrews or the Berkshire families I told you about last year. In our home office, we employ decent and talented people – no jerks. Turnover averages, perhaps, one person per year.</p><p>I would like, however, to emphasize a further item that turns our jobs into fun and satisfaction working</p><p>for you. There is nothing more rewarding to Charlie and me than enjoying the trust of individual long-term shareholders who, for many decades, have joined us with the expectation that we would be a reliable custodian of their funds.</p><p>Obviously, we can’t select our owners, as we could do if our form of operation were a partnership. Anyone can buy shares of Berkshire today with the intention of soon reselling them. For sure, we get a few of that type of shareholder, just as we get index funds that own huge amounts of Berkshire simply because they are required to do so.</p><p>To a truly unusual degree, however, Berkshire has as owners a very large corps of individuals and families that have elected to join us with an intent approaching “til death do us part.” Often, they have trusted us with a large – some might say excessive – portion of their savings.</p><p>Berkshire, these shareholders would sometimes acknowledge, might be far from the best selection they could have made. But they would add that Berkshire would rank high among those with which they would be most comfortable. And people who are comfortable with their investments will, on average, achieve better results than those who are motivated by ever-changing headlines, chatter and promises.</p><p>Long-term individual owners are both the “partners” Charlie and I have always sought and the ones we constantly have in mind as we make decisions at Berkshire. To them we say, “It feels good to ‘work’ for you, and you have our thanks for your trust.”</p><h2>The Annual Meeting</h2><p>Clear your calendar! Berkshire will have its annual gathering of capitalists in Omaha on Friday, April 29th through Sunday, May 1st. The details regarding the weekend are laid out on pages A-1 and A-2. Omaha eagerly awaits you, as do I.</p><p>I will end this letter with a sales pitch. “Cousin” Jimmy Buffett has designed a pontoon “party” boat that is now being manufactured by Forest River, a Berkshire subsidiary. The boat will be introduced on April 29 at our Berkshire Bazaar of Bargains. And, for two days only, shareholders will be able to purchase Jimmy’s masterpiece at a 10% discount. Your bargain-hunting chairman will be buying a boat for his family’s use. Join me.</p><p>February 26, 2022</p><p>Warren E. Buffett Chairman of the Board</p></body></html>","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Buffett Full Annual Letter：Apple is One of ‘Four Giants’ Driving the Conglomerate’s Value</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nBuffett Full Annual Letter：Apple is One of ‘Four Giants’ Driving the Conglomerate’s Value\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n<a class=\"head\" href=\"https://laohu8.com/wemedia/1079075236\">\n\n\n<div class=\"h-thumb\" style=\"background-image:url(https://static.tigerbbs.com/8274c5b9d4c2852bfb1c4d6ce16c68ba);background-size:cover;\"></div>\n\n<div class=\"h-content\">\n<p class=\"h-name\">Tiger Newspress </p>\n<p class=\"h-time\">2022-02-27 09:48</p>\n</div>\n\n</a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<html><head></head><body><p>Warren Buffett released his annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders on Saturday. The 91-year-old investing legend has been publishing the letter for over six decades and it has become required reading for investors around the world.</p><p>Warren Buffett said he now considers tech giant Apple as one of the four pillars driving Berkshire Hathaway, the conglomerate of mostly old-economy businesses he’s assembled over the last five decades.</p><p>In his annual letter to shareholders released on Saturday, the 91-year-old investing legend listed Apple under the heading “Our Four Giants” and even called the company the second-most important after Berkshire’s cluster of insurers, thanks to its chief executive.</p><p>“Tim Cook, Apple’s brilliant CEO, quite properly regards users of Apple products as his first love, but all of his other constituencies benefit from Tim’s managerial touch as well,” the letter stated.</p><p>Buffett made clear he is a fan of Cook’s stock repurchase strategy, and how it gives the conglomerate increased ownership of each dollar of the iPhone maker’s earnings without the investor having to lift a finger.</p><p>“Apple – our runner-up Giant as measured by its yearend market value – is a different sort of holding. Here, our ownership is a mere 5.55%, up from 5.39% a year earlier,” Buffett said in the letter. “That increase sounds like small potatoes. But consider that each 0.1% of Apple’s 2021 earnings amounted to $100 million. We spent no Berkshire funds to gain our accretion. Apple’s repurchases did the job.”</p><p>Berkshire began buying Apple stock in 2016 under the influence of Buffett’s investing deputies Todd Combs and Ted Weschler. By mid-2018, the conglomerate accumulated 5% ownership of the iPhone maker, a stake that cost $36 billion. Today, the Apple investment is now worth more than $160 billion, taking up 40% of Berkshire’s equity portfolio.</p><p>“It’s important to understand that only dividends from Apple are counted in the GAAP earnings Berkshire reports – and last year, Apple paid us $785 million of those. Yet our ‘share’ of Apple’s earnings amounted to a staggering $5.6 billion. Much of what the company retained was used to repurchase Apple shares, an act we applaud,” Buffett said.</p><p>Berkshire is Apple’s largest shareholder, outside of index and exchange-traded fund providers.</p><p>Buffett also credited his railroad business BNSF and energy segment BHE as two other giants of the conglomerate, which both registered record earnings in 2021.</p><p>“BNSF, our third Giant, continues to be the number one artery of American commerce, which makes it an indispensable asset for America as well as for Berkshire,” Buffett said. “BHE has become a utility powerhouse and a leading force in wind, solar and transmission throughout much of the United States.”</p><p><b>Read the full letter here：</b></p><p>To the Shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway Inc.:</p><p>Charlie Munger, my long-time partner, and I have the job of managing a portion of your savings. We are honored by your trust.</p><p>Our position carries with it the responsibility to report to you what we would like to know if we were the absentee owner and you were the manager. We enjoy communicating directly with you through this annual letter, and through the annual meeting as well.</p><p>Our policy is to treat all shareholders equally. Therefore, we do not hold discussions with analysts nor large institutions. Whenever possible, also, we release important communications on Saturday mornings in order to maximize the time for shareholders and the media to absorb the news before markets open on Monday.</p><p>A wealth of Berkshire facts and figures are set forth in the annual 10-K that the company regularly files with the S.E.C. and that we reproduce on pages K-1 – K-119. Some shareholders will find this detail engrossing; others will simply prefer to learn what Charlie and I believe is new or interesting at Berkshire.</p><p>Alas, there was little action of that sort in 2021. We did, though, make reasonable progress in increasing the intrinsic value of your shares. That task has been my primary duty for 57 years. And it will continue to be.</p><p><b>What You Own</b></p><p>Berkshire owns a wide variety of businesses, some in their entirety, some only in part. The second group largely consists of marketable common stocks of major American companies. Additionally, we own a few non-U.S. equities and participate in several joint ventures or other collaborative activities.</p><p>Whatever our form of ownership, our goal is to have meaningful investments in businesses with both durable economic advantages and a first-class CEO. Please note particularly that we own stocks based upon our expectations about their long-term business performance and not because we view them as vehicles for timely market moves. That point is crucial: Charlie and I are not stock-pickers; we are business-pickers.</p><p>I make many mistakes. Consequently, our extensive collection of businesses includes some enterprises that have truly extraordinary economics, many others that enjoy good economic characteristics, and a few that are marginal. One advantage of our common-stock segment is that – on occasion – it becomes easy to buy pieces of wonderful businesses at wonderful prices. That shooting-fish-in-a-barrel experience is very rare in negotiated transactions and never occurs en masse. It is also far easier to exit from a mistake when it has been made in the marketable arena.</p><h2><b>Surprise, Surprise</b></h2><p>Here are a few items about your company that often surprise even seasoned investors:</p><p>• Many people perceive Berkshire as a large and somewhat strange collection of financial assets. In truth, Berkshire owns and operates more U.S.-based “infrastructure” assets – classified on our balance sheet as property, plant and equipment – than are owned and operated by any other American corporation. That supremacy has never been our goal. It has, however, become a fact.</p><p>At yearend, those domestic infrastructure assets were carried on Berkshire’s balance sheet at $158 billion. That number increased last year and will continue to increase. Berkshire always will be building.</p><p>• Every year, your company makes substantial federal income tax payments. In 2021, for example, we paid</p><p>$3.3 billion while the U.S. Treasury reported total corporate income-tax receipts of $402 billion. Additionally, Berkshire pays substantial state and foreign taxes. “I gave at the office” is an unassailable assertion when made by Berkshire shareholders.</p><p>Berkshire’s history vividly illustrates the invisible and often unrecognized financial partnership between  government and American businesses. Our tale begins early in 1955, when Berkshire Fine Spinning and Hathaway Manufacturing agreed to merge their businesses. In their requests for shareholder approval, these venerable New England textile companies expressed high hopes for the combination.</p><p></p><p>The Hathaway solicitation, for example, assured its shareholders that “The combination of the resources and managements will result in one of the strongest and most efficient organizations in the textile industry.” That upbeat view was endorsed by the company’s advisor, Lehman Brothers (yes, that Lehman Brothers).</p><p>I’m sure it was a joyous day in both Fall River (Berkshire) and New Bedford (Hathaway) when the union was consummated. After the bands stopped playing and the bankers went home, however, the shareholders reaped a disaster.</p><p>In the nine years following the merger, Berkshire’s owners watched the company’s net worth crater from</p><p>$51.4 million to $22.1 million. In part, this decline was caused by stock repurchases, ill-advised dividends and plant shutdowns. But nine years of effort by many thousands of employees delivered an operating loss as well. Berkshire’s struggles were not unusual: The New England textile industry had silently entered an extended and non-reversible death march.</p><p>During the nine post-merger years, the U.S. Treasury suffered as well from Berkshire’s troubles. All told, the company paid the government only $337,359 in income tax during that period – a pathetic $100 per day.</p><p>Early in 1965, things changed. Berkshire installed new management that redeployed available cash and steered essentially all earnings into a variety of good businesses, most of which remained good through the years. Coupling reinvestment of earnings with the power of compounding worked its magic, and shareholders prospered.</p><p>Berkshire’s owners, it should be noted, were not the only beneficiary of that course correction. Their “silent partner,” the U.S. Treasury, proceeded to collect many tens of billions of dollars from the company in income tax payments. Remember the $100 daily? Now, Berkshire pays roughly $9 million daily to the Treasury.</p><p>In fairness to our governmental partner, our shareholders should acknowledge – indeed trumpet – the fact that Berkshire’s prosperity has been fostered mightily because the company has operated in America. Our country would have done splendidly in the years since 1965 without Berkshire. Absent our American home, however, Berkshire would never have come close to becoming what it is today. When you see the flag, say thanks.</p><p>• From an $8.6 million purchase of National Indemnity in 1967, Berkshire has become the world leader in insurance “float” – money we hold and can invest but that does not belong to us. Including a relatively small sum derived from life insurance, Berkshire’s total float has grown from $19 million when we entered the insurance business to $147 billion.</p><p>So far, this float has cost us less than nothing. Though we have experienced a number of years when insurance losses combined with operating expenses exceeded premiums, overall we have earned a modest 55-year profit from the underwriting activities that generated our float.</p><p>Of equal importance, float is very sticky. Funds attributable to our insurance operations come and go daily, but their aggregate total is immune from precipitous decline. When it comes to investing float, we can therefore think long-term.</p><p>If you are not already familiar with the concept of float, I refer you to a long explanation on page A-5. To my surprise, our float increased $9 billion last year, a buildup of value that is important to Berkshire owners though is not reflected in our GAAP (“generally-accepted accounting principles”) presentation of earnings and net worth.</p><p>Much of our huge value creation in insurance is attributable to Berkshire’s good luck in my 1986 hiring of Ajit Jain. We first met on a Saturday morning, and I quickly asked Ajit what his insurance experience had been. He replied, “None.”</p><p>I said, “Nobody’s perfect,” and hired him. That was my lucky day: Ajit actually was as perfect a choice as could have been made. Better yet, he continues to be – 35 years later.</p><p>One final thought about insurance: I believe that it is likely – but far from assured – that Berkshire’s float can be maintained without our incurring a long-term underwriting loss. I am certain, however, that there will be some years when we experience such losses, perhaps involving very large sums.</p><p>Berkshire is constructed to handle catastrophic events as no other insurer – and that priority will remain long after Charlie and I are gone.</p><h2>Our Four Giants</h2><p>Through Berkshire, our shareholders own many dozens of businesses. Some of these, in turn, have a collection of subsidiaries of their own. For example, Marmon has more than 100 individual business operations, ranging from the leasing of railroad cars to the manufacture of medical devices.</p><p>• Nevertheless, operations of our “Big Four” companies account for a very large chunk of Berkshire’s value. Leading this list is our cluster of insurers. Berkshire effectively owns 100% of this group, whose massive float value we earlier described. The invested assets of these insurers are further enlarged by the extraordinary amount of capital we invest to back up their promises.</p><p>The insurance business is made to order for Berkshire. The product will never be obsolete, and sales volume will generally increase along with both economic growth and inflation. Also, integrity and capital will forever be important. Our company can and will behave well.</p><p>There are, of course, other insurers with excellent business models and prospects. Replication of Berkshire’s operation, however, would be almost impossible.</p><p>• Apple – our runner-up Giant as measured by its yearend market value – is a different sort of holding. Here, our ownership is a mere 5.55%, up from 5.39% a year earlier. That increase sounds like small potatoes. But consider that each 0.1% of Apple’s 2021 earnings amounted to $100 million. We spent no Berkshire funds to gain our accretion. Apple’s repurchases did the job.</p><p>It’s important to understand that only dividends from Apple are counted in the GAAP earnings Berkshire reports – and last year, Apple paid us $785 million of those. Yet our “share” of Apple’s earnings amounted to a staggering $5.6 billion. Much of what the company retained was used to repurchase Apple shares, an act we applaud. Tim Cook, Apple’s brilliant CEO, quite properly regards users of Apple products as his first love, but all of his other constituencies benefit from Tim’s managerial touch as well.</p><p>• BNSF, our third Giant, continues to be the number one artery of American commerce, which makes it an indispensable asset for America as well as for Berkshire. If the many essential products BNSF carries were instead hauled by truck, America’s carbon emissions would soar.</p><p>Your railroad had record earnings of $6 billion in 2021. Here, it should be noted, we are talking about the old-fashioned sort of earnings that we favor: a figure calculated after interest, taxes, depreciation, amortization and all forms of compensation. (Our definition suggests a warning: Deceptive “adjustments” to earnings – to use a polite description – have become both more frequent and more fanciful as stocks have risen. Speaking less politely, I would say that bull markets breed bloviated bull )</p><p>BNSF trains traveled 143 million miles last year and carried 535 million tons of cargo. Both accomplishments far exceed those of any other American carrier. You can be proud of your railroad.</p><p>• BHE, our final Giant, earned a record $4 billion in 2021. That’s up more than 30-fold from the $122 million earned in 2000, the year that Berkshire first purchased a BHE stake. Now, Berkshire owns 91.1% of the company.</p><p>BHE’s record of societal accomplishment is as remarkable as its financial performance. The company had no wind or solar generation in 2000. It was then regarded simply as a relatively new and minor participant in the huge electric utility industry. Subsequently, under David Sokol’s and Greg Abel’s leadership, BHE has become a utility powerhouse (no groaning, please) and a leading force in wind, solar and transmission throughout much of the United States.</p><p>Greg’s report on these accomplishments appears on pages A-3 and A-4. The profile you will find there is not in any way one of those currently-fashionable “green-washing” stories. BHE has been faithfully detailing its plans and performance in renewables and transmissions every year since 2007.</p><p>To further review this information, visit BHE’s website at brkenergy.com. There, you will see that the company has long been making climate-conscious moves that soak up all of its earnings. More opportunities lie ahead. BHE has the management, the experience, the capital and the appetite for the huge power projects that our country needs.</p><h2>Investments</h2><p>Now let’s talk about companies we don’t control, a list that again references Apple. Below we list our fifteen largest equity holdings, several of which are selections of Berkshire’s two long-time investment managers, Todd Combs and Ted Weschler. At yearend, this valued pair had total authority in respect to $34 billion of investments, many of which do not meet the threshold value we use in the table. Also, a significant portion of the dollars that Todd and Ted manage are lodged in various pension plans of Berkshire-owned businesses, with the assets of these plans not included in this table.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/d43587e9f59c0ff76e6c04c6bf9af324\" tg-width=\"1047\" tg-height=\"530\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"/>* This is our actual purchase price and also our tax basis.</p><p>** Held by BHE; consequently, Berkshire shareholders have only a 91.1% interest in this position.</p><p>*** Includes a $10 billion investment in Occidental Petroleum, consisting of preferred stock and warrants to buy common stock, a combination now being valued at $10.7 billion.</p><p>In addition to the footnoted Occidental holding and our various common-stock positions, Berkshire also owns a 26.6% interest in Kraft Heinz (accounted for on the “equity” method, not market value, and carried at $13.1 billion) and 38.6% of Pilot Corp., a leader in travel centers that had revenues last year of $45 billion.</p><p>Since we purchased our Pilot stake in 2017, this holding has warranted “equity” accounting treatment. Early in 2023, Berkshire will purchase an additional interest in Pilot that will raise our ownership to 80% and lead to our fully consolidating Pilot’s earnings, assets and liabilities in our financial statements.</p><h2>U.S. Treasury Bills</h2><p>Berkshire’s balance sheet includes $144 billion of cash and cash equivalents (excluding the holdings of BNSF and BHE). Of this sum, $120 billion is held in U.S. Treasury bills, all maturing in less than a year. That stake leaves Berkshire financing about 12 of 1% of the publicly-held national debt.</p><p>Charlie and I have pledged that Berkshire (along with our subsidiaries other than BNSF and BHE) will always hold more than $30 billion of cash and equivalents. We want your company to be financially impregnable and never dependent on the kindness of strangers (or even that of friends). Both of us like to sleep soundly, and we want our creditors, insurance claimants and you to do so as well.</p><h2>But $144 billion?</h2><p>That imposing sum, I assure you, is not some deranged expression of patriotism. Nor have Charlie and I lost our overwhelming preference for business ownership. Indeed, I first manifested my enthusiasm for that 80 years ago, on March 11, 1942, when I purchased three shares of Cities Services preferred stock. Their cost was $114.75 and required all of my savings. (The Dow Jones Industrial Average that day closed at 99, a fact that should scream to you: Never bet against America.)</p><p>After my initial plunge, I always kept at least 80% of my net worth in equities. My favored status throughout that period was 100% – and still is. Berkshire’s current 80%-or-so position in businesses is a consequence of my failure to find entire companies or small portions thereof (that is, marketable stocks) which meet our criteria for long- term holding.</p><p>Charlie and I have endured similar cash-heavy positions from time to time in the past. These periods are never pleasant; they are also never permanent. And, fortunately, we have had a mildly attractive alternative during 2020 and 2021 for deploying capital. Read on.</p><h2>Share Repurchases</h2><p>There are three ways that we can increase the value of your investment. The first is always front and center in our minds: Increase the long-term earning power of Berkshire’s controlled businesses through internal growth or by making acquisitions. Today, internal opportunities deliver far better returns than acquisitions. The size of those opportunities, however, is small compared to Berkshire’s resources.</p><p>Our second choice is to buy non-controlling part-interests in the many good or great businesses that are publicly traded. From time to time, such possibilities are both numerous and blatantly attractive. Today, though, we find little that excites us.</p><p>That’s largely because of a truism: Long-term interest rates that are low push the prices of all productive investments upward, whether these are stocks, apartments, farms, oil wells, whatever. Other factors influence valuations as well, but interest rates will always be important.</p><p>Our final path to value creation is to repurchase Berkshire shares. Through that simple act, we increase your share of the many controlled and non-controlled businesses Berkshire owns. When the price/value equation is right, this path is the easiest and most certain way for us to increase your wealth. (Alongside the accretion of value to continuing shareholders, a couple of other parties gain: Repurchases are modestly beneficial to the seller of the repurchased shares and to society as well.)</p><p>Periodically, as alternative paths become unattractive, repurchases make good sense for Berkshire’s owners. During the past two years, we therefore repurchased 9% of the shares that were outstanding at yearend 2019 for a total cost of $51.7 billion. That expenditure left our continuing shareholders owning about 10% more of all Berkshire businesses, whether these are wholly-owned (such as BNSF and GEICO) or partly-owned (such as Coca-Cola and Moody’s).</p><p>I want to underscore that for Berkshire repurchases to make sense, our shares must offer appropriate value. We don’t want to overpay for the shares of other companies, and it would be value-destroying if we were to overpay when we are buying Berkshire. As of February 23, 2022, since yearend we repurchased additional shares at a cost of $1.2 billion. Our appetite remains large but will always remain price-dependent.</p><p>It should be noted that Berkshire’s buyback opportunities are limited because of its high-class investor base. If our shares were heavily held by short-term speculators, both price volatility and transaction volumes would materially increase. That kind of reshaping would offer us far greater opportunities for creating value by making repurchases. Nevertheless, Charlie and I far prefer the owners we have, even though their admirable buy-and-keep attitudes limit the extent to which long-term shareholders can profit from opportunistic repurchases.</p><p>Finally, one easily-overlooked value calculation specific to Berkshire: As we’ve discussed, insurance “float” of the right sort is of great value to us. As it happens, repurchases automatically increase the amount of “float” per share. That figure has increased during the past two years by 25% – going from $79,387 per “A” share to $99,497, a meaningful gain that, as noted, owes some thanks to repurchases.</p><h2>A Wonderful Man and a Wonderful Business</h2><p>Last year, Paul Andrews died. Paul was the founder and CEO of TTI, a Fort Worth-based subsidiary of Berkshire. Throughout his life – in both his business and his personal pursuits – Paul quietly displayed all the qualities that Charlie and I admire. His story should be told.</p><p>In 1971, Paul was working as a purchasing agent for General Dynamics when the roof fell in. After losing a huge defense contract, the company fired thousands of employees, including Paul.</p><p>With his first child due soon, Paul decided to bet on himself, using $500 of his savings to found Tex-Tronics (later renamed TTI). The company set itself up to distribute small electronic components, and first-year sales totaled $112,000. Today, TTI markets more than one million different items with annual volume of $7.7 billion.</p><p>But back to 2006: Paul, at 63, then found himself happy with his family, his job, and his associates. But he had one nagging worry, heightened because he had recently witnessed a friend’s early death and the disastrous results that followed for that man’s family and business. What, Paul asked himself in 2006, would happen to the many people depending on him if he should unexpectedly die?</p><p>For a year, Paul wrestled with his options. Sell to a competitor? From a strictly economic viewpoint, that course made the most sense. After all, competitors could envision lucrative “synergies” – savings that would be achieved as the acquiror slashed duplicated functions at TTI.</p><p>But . . . Such a purchaser would most certainly also retain its CFO, its legal counsel, its HR unit. Their TTI counterparts would therefore be sent packing. And ugh! If a new distribution center were to be needed, the acquirer’s home city would certainly be favored over Fort Worth.</p><p>Whatever the financial benefits, Paul quickly concluded that selling to a competitor was not for him. He next considered seeking a financial buyer, a species once labeled – aptly so – a leveraged buyout firm. Paul knew, however, that such a purchaser would be focused on an “exit strategy.” And who could know what that would be? Brooding over it all, Paul found himself having no interest in handing his 35-year-old creation over to a reseller.</p><p>When Paul met me, he explained why he had eliminated these two alternatives as buyers. He then summed up his dilemma by saying – in far more tactful phrasing than this – “After a year of pondering the alternatives, I want to sell to Berkshire because you are the only guy left.” So, I made an offer and Paul said “Yes.” One meeting; one lunch; one deal.</p><p>To say we both lived happily ever after is an understatement. When Berkshire purchased TTI, the company employed 2,387. Now the number is 8,043. A large percentage of that growth took place in Fort Worth and environs. Earnings have increased 673%.</p><p>Annually, I would call Paul and tell him his salary should be substantially increased. Annually, he would tell me, “We can talk about that next year, Warren; I’m too busy now.”</p><p>When Greg Abel and I attended Paul’s memorial service, we met children, grandchildren, long-time associates (including TTI’s first employee) and John Roach, the former CEO of a Fort Worth company Berkshire had purchased in 2000. John had steered his friend Paul to Omaha, instinctively knowing we would be a match.</p><p>At the service, Greg and I heard about the multitudes of people and organizations that Paul had silently supported. The breadth of his generosity was extraordinary – geared always to improving the lives of others, particularly those in Fort Worth.</p><p>In all ways, Paul was a class act.</p><p>* * * * * * * * * * * *</p><p>Good luck – occasionally extraordinary luck – has played its part at Berkshire. If Paul and I had not enjoyed a mutual friend – John Roach – TTI would not have found its home with us. But that ample serving of luck was only the beginning. TTI was soon to lead Berkshire to its most important acquisition.</p><p>Every fall, Berkshire directors gather for a presentation by a few of our executives. We sometimes choose the site based upon the location of a recent acquisition, by that means allowing directors to meet the new subsidiary’s CEO and learn more about the acquiree’s activities.</p><p>In the fall of 2009, we consequently selected Fort Worth so that we could visit TTI. At that time, BNSF, which also had Fort Worth as its hometown, was the third-largest holding among our marketable equities. Despite that large stake, I had never visited the railroad’s headquarters.</p><p>Deb Bosanek, my assistant, scheduled our board’s opening dinner for October 22. Meanwhile, I arranged to arrive earlier that day to meet with Matt Rose, CEO of BNSF, whose accomplishments I had long admired. When I made the date, I had no idea that our get-together would coincide with BNSF’s third-quarter earnings report, which was released late on the 22nd.</p><p>The market reacted badly to the railroad’s results. The Great Recession was in full force in the third quarter, and BNSF’s earnings reflected that slump. The economic outlook was also bleak, and Wall Street wasn’t feeling friendly to railroads – or much else.</p><p>On the following day, I again got together with Matt and suggested that Berkshire would offer the railroad a better long-term home than it could expect as a public company. I also told him the maximum price that Berkshire would pay.</p><p>Matt relayed the offer to his directors and advisors. Eleven busy days later, Berkshire and BNSF announced a firm deal. And here I’ll venture a rare prediction: BNSF will be a key asset for Berkshire and our country a century from now.</p><p>The BNSF acquisition would never have happened if Paul Andrews hadn’t sized up Berkshire as the right home for TTI.</p><h2>Thanks</h2><p>I taught my first investing class 70 years ago. Since then, I have enjoyed working almost every year with students of all ages, finally “retiring” from that pursuit in 2018.</p><p>Along the way, my toughest audience was my grandson’s fifth-grade class. The 11-year-olds were squirming in their seats and giving me blank stares until I mentioned Coca-Cola and its famous secret formula. Instantly, every hand went up, and I learned that “secrets” are catnip to kids.</p><p>Teaching, like writing, has helped me develop and clarify my own thoughts. Charlie calls this phenomenon the orangutan effect: If you sit down with an orangutan and carefully explain to it one of your cherished ideas, you may leave behind a puzzled primate, but will yourself exit thinking more clearly.</p><p>Talking to university students is far superior. I have urged that they seek employment in (1) the field and (2) with the kind of people they would select, if they had no need for money. Economic realities, I acknowledge, may interfere with that kind of search. Even so, I urge the students never to give up the quest, for when they find that sort of job, they will no longer be “working.”</p><p>Charlie and I, ourselves, followed that liberating course after a few early stumbles. We both started as part- timers at my grandfather’s grocery store, Charlie in 1940 and I in 1942. We were each assigned boring tasks and paid little, definitely not what we had in mind. Charlie later took up law, and I tried selling securities. Job satisfaction continued to elude us.</p><p>Finally, at Berkshire, we found what we love to do. With very few exceptions, we have now “worked” for many decades with people whom we like and trust. It’s a joy in life to join with managers such as Paul Andrews or the Berkshire families I told you about last year. In our home office, we employ decent and talented people – no jerks. Turnover averages, perhaps, one person per year.</p><p>I would like, however, to emphasize a further item that turns our jobs into fun and satisfaction working</p><p>for you. There is nothing more rewarding to Charlie and me than enjoying the trust of individual long-term shareholders who, for many decades, have joined us with the expectation that we would be a reliable custodian of their funds.</p><p>Obviously, we can’t select our owners, as we could do if our form of operation were a partnership. Anyone can buy shares of Berkshire today with the intention of soon reselling them. For sure, we get a few of that type of shareholder, just as we get index funds that own huge amounts of Berkshire simply because they are required to do so.</p><p>To a truly unusual degree, however, Berkshire has as owners a very large corps of individuals and families that have elected to join us with an intent approaching “til death do us part.” Often, they have trusted us with a large – some might say excessive – portion of their savings.</p><p>Berkshire, these shareholders would sometimes acknowledge, might be far from the best selection they could have made. But they would add that Berkshire would rank high among those with which they would be most comfortable. And people who are comfortable with their investments will, on average, achieve better results than those who are motivated by ever-changing headlines, chatter and promises.</p><p>Long-term individual owners are both the “partners” Charlie and I have always sought and the ones we constantly have in mind as we make decisions at Berkshire. To them we say, “It feels good to ‘work’ for you, and you have our thanks for your trust.”</p><h2>The Annual Meeting</h2><p>Clear your calendar! Berkshire will have its annual gathering of capitalists in Omaha on Friday, April 29th through Sunday, May 1st. The details regarding the weekend are laid out on pages A-1 and A-2. Omaha eagerly awaits you, as do I.</p><p>I will end this letter with a sales pitch. “Cousin” Jimmy Buffett has designed a pontoon “party” boat that is now being manufactured by Forest River, a Berkshire subsidiary. The boat will be introduced on April 29 at our Berkshire Bazaar of Bargains. And, for two days only, shareholders will be able to purchase Jimmy’s masterpiece at a 10% discount. Your bargain-hunting chairman will be buying a boat for his family’s use. Join me.</p><p>February 26, 2022</p><p>Warren E. Buffett Chairman of the Board</p></body></html>\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"BRK.B":"伯克希尔B","BRK.A":"伯克希尔"},"source_url":"","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1125580913","content_text":"Warren Buffett released his annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders on Saturday. The 91-year-old investing legend has been publishing the letter for over six decades and it has become required reading for investors around the world.Warren Buffett said he now considers tech giant Apple as one of the four pillars driving Berkshire Hathaway, the conglomerate of mostly old-economy businesses he’s assembled over the last five decades.In his annual letter to shareholders released on Saturday, the 91-year-old investing legend listed Apple under the heading “Our Four Giants” and even called the company the second-most important after Berkshire’s cluster of insurers, thanks to its chief executive.“Tim Cook, Apple’s brilliant CEO, quite properly regards users of Apple products as his first love, but all of his other constituencies benefit from Tim’s managerial touch as well,” the letter stated.Buffett made clear he is a fan of Cook’s stock repurchase strategy, and how it gives the conglomerate increased ownership of each dollar of the iPhone maker’s earnings without the investor having to lift a finger.“Apple – our runner-up Giant as measured by its yearend market value – is a different sort of holding. Here, our ownership is a mere 5.55%, up from 5.39% a year earlier,” Buffett said in the letter. “That increase sounds like small potatoes. But consider that each 0.1% of Apple’s 2021 earnings amounted to $100 million. We spent no Berkshire funds to gain our accretion. Apple’s repurchases did the job.”Berkshire began buying Apple stock in 2016 under the influence of Buffett’s investing deputies Todd Combs and Ted Weschler. By mid-2018, the conglomerate accumulated 5% ownership of the iPhone maker, a stake that cost $36 billion. Today, the Apple investment is now worth more than $160 billion, taking up 40% of Berkshire’s equity portfolio.“It’s important to understand that only dividends from Apple are counted in the GAAP earnings Berkshire reports – and last year, Apple paid us $785 million of those. Yet our ‘share’ of Apple’s earnings amounted to a staggering $5.6 billion. Much of what the company retained was used to repurchase Apple shares, an act we applaud,” Buffett said.Berkshire is Apple’s largest shareholder, outside of index and exchange-traded fund providers.Buffett also credited his railroad business BNSF and energy segment BHE as two other giants of the conglomerate, which both registered record earnings in 2021.“BNSF, our third Giant, continues to be the number one artery of American commerce, which makes it an indispensable asset for America as well as for Berkshire,” Buffett said. “BHE has become a utility powerhouse and a leading force in wind, solar and transmission throughout much of the United States.”Read the full letter here：To the Shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway Inc.:Charlie Munger, my long-time partner, and I have the job of managing a portion of your savings. We are honored by your trust.Our position carries with it the responsibility to report to you what we would like to know if we were the absentee owner and you were the manager. We enjoy communicating directly with you through this annual letter, and through the annual meeting as well.Our policy is to treat all shareholders equally. Therefore, we do not hold discussions with analysts nor large institutions. Whenever possible, also, we release important communications on Saturday mornings in order to maximize the time for shareholders and the media to absorb the news before markets open on Monday.A wealth of Berkshire facts and figures are set forth in the annual 10-K that the company regularly files with the S.E.C. and that we reproduce on pages K-1 – K-119. Some shareholders will find this detail engrossing; others will simply prefer to learn what Charlie and I believe is new or interesting at Berkshire.Alas, there was little action of that sort in 2021. We did, though, make reasonable progress in increasing the intrinsic value of your shares. That task has been my primary duty for 57 years. And it will continue to be.What You OwnBerkshire owns a wide variety of businesses, some in their entirety, some only in part. The second group largely consists of marketable common stocks of major American companies. Additionally, we own a few non-U.S. equities and participate in several joint ventures or other collaborative activities.Whatever our form of ownership, our goal is to have meaningful investments in businesses with both durable economic advantages and a first-class CEO. Please note particularly that we own stocks based upon our expectations about their long-term business performance and not because we view them as vehicles for timely market moves. That point is crucial: Charlie and I are not stock-pickers; we are business-pickers.I make many mistakes. Consequently, our extensive collection of businesses includes some enterprises that have truly extraordinary economics, many others that enjoy good economic characteristics, and a few that are marginal. One advantage of our common-stock segment is that – on occasion – it becomes easy to buy pieces of wonderful businesses at wonderful prices. That shooting-fish-in-a-barrel experience is very rare in negotiated transactions and never occurs en masse. It is also far easier to exit from a mistake when it has been made in the marketable arena.Surprise, SurpriseHere are a few items about your company that often surprise even seasoned investors:• Many people perceive Berkshire as a large and somewhat strange collection of financial assets. In truth, Berkshire owns and operates more U.S.-based “infrastructure” assets – classified on our balance sheet as property, plant and equipment – than are owned and operated by any other American corporation. That supremacy has never been our goal. It has, however, become a fact.At yearend, those domestic infrastructure assets were carried on Berkshire’s balance sheet at $158 billion. That number increased last year and will continue to increase. Berkshire always will be building.• Every year, your company makes substantial federal income tax payments. In 2021, for example, we paid$3.3 billion while the U.S. Treasury reported total corporate income-tax receipts of $402 billion. Additionally, Berkshire pays substantial state and foreign taxes. “I gave at the office” is an unassailable assertion when made by Berkshire shareholders.Berkshire’s history vividly illustrates the invisible and often unrecognized financial partnership between  government and American businesses. Our tale begins early in 1955, when Berkshire Fine Spinning and Hathaway Manufacturing agreed to merge their businesses. In their requests for shareholder approval, these venerable New England textile companies expressed high hopes for the combination.The Hathaway solicitation, for example, assured its shareholders that “The combination of the resources and managements will result in one of the strongest and most efficient organizations in the textile industry.” That upbeat view was endorsed by the company’s advisor, Lehman Brothers (yes, that Lehman Brothers).I’m sure it was a joyous day in both Fall River (Berkshire) and New Bedford (Hathaway) when the union was consummated. After the bands stopped playing and the bankers went home, however, the shareholders reaped a disaster.In the nine years following the merger, Berkshire’s owners watched the company’s net worth crater from$51.4 million to $22.1 million. In part, this decline was caused by stock repurchases, ill-advised dividends and plant shutdowns. But nine years of effort by many thousands of employees delivered an operating loss as well. Berkshire’s struggles were not unusual: The New England textile industry had silently entered an extended and non-reversible death march.During the nine post-merger years, the U.S. Treasury suffered as well from Berkshire’s troubles. All told, the company paid the government only $337,359 in income tax during that period – a pathetic $100 per day.Early in 1965, things changed. Berkshire installed new management that redeployed available cash and steered essentially all earnings into a variety of good businesses, most of which remained good through the years. Coupling reinvestment of earnings with the power of compounding worked its magic, and shareholders prospered.Berkshire’s owners, it should be noted, were not the only beneficiary of that course correction. Their “silent partner,” the U.S. Treasury, proceeded to collect many tens of billions of dollars from the company in income tax payments. Remember the $100 daily? Now, Berkshire pays roughly $9 million daily to the Treasury.In fairness to our governmental partner, our shareholders should acknowledge – indeed trumpet – the fact that Berkshire’s prosperity has been fostered mightily because the company has operated in America. Our country would have done splendidly in the years since 1965 without Berkshire. Absent our American home, however, Berkshire would never have come close to becoming what it is today. When you see the flag, say thanks.• From an $8.6 million purchase of National Indemnity in 1967, Berkshire has become the world leader in insurance “float” – money we hold and can invest but that does not belong to us. Including a relatively small sum derived from life insurance, Berkshire’s total float has grown from $19 million when we entered the insurance business to $147 billion.So far, this float has cost us less than nothing. Though we have experienced a number of years when insurance losses combined with operating expenses exceeded premiums, overall we have earned a modest 55-year profit from the underwriting activities that generated our float.Of equal importance, float is very sticky. Funds attributable to our insurance operations come and go daily, but their aggregate total is immune from precipitous decline. When it comes to investing float, we can therefore think long-term.If you are not already familiar with the concept of float, I refer you to a long explanation on page A-5. To my surprise, our float increased $9 billion last year, a buildup of value that is important to Berkshire owners though is not reflected in our GAAP (“generally-accepted accounting principles”) presentation of earnings and net worth.Much of our huge value creation in insurance is attributable to Berkshire’s good luck in my 1986 hiring of Ajit Jain. We first met on a Saturday morning, and I quickly asked Ajit what his insurance experience had been. He replied, “None.”I said, “Nobody’s perfect,” and hired him. That was my lucky day: Ajit actually was as perfect a choice as could have been made. Better yet, he continues to be – 35 years later.One final thought about insurance: I believe that it is likely – but far from assured – that Berkshire’s float can be maintained without our incurring a long-term underwriting loss. I am certain, however, that there will be some years when we experience such losses, perhaps involving very large sums.Berkshire is constructed to handle catastrophic events as no other insurer – and that priority will remain long after Charlie and I are gone.Our Four GiantsThrough Berkshire, our shareholders own many dozens of businesses. Some of these, in turn, have a collection of subsidiaries of their own. For example, Marmon has more than 100 individual business operations, ranging from the leasing of railroad cars to the manufacture of medical devices.• Nevertheless, operations of our “Big Four” companies account for a very large chunk of Berkshire’s value. Leading this list is our cluster of insurers. Berkshire effectively owns 100% of this group, whose massive float value we earlier described. The invested assets of these insurers are further enlarged by the extraordinary amount of capital we invest to back up their promises.The insurance business is made to order for Berkshire. The product will never be obsolete, and sales volume will generally increase along with both economic growth and inflation. Also, integrity and capital will forever be important. Our company can and will behave well.There are, of course, other insurers with excellent business models and prospects. Replication of Berkshire’s operation, however, would be almost impossible.• Apple – our runner-up Giant as measured by its yearend market value – is a different sort of holding. Here, our ownership is a mere 5.55%, up from 5.39% a year earlier. That increase sounds like small potatoes. But consider that each 0.1% of Apple’s 2021 earnings amounted to $100 million. We spent no Berkshire funds to gain our accretion. Apple’s repurchases did the job.It’s important to understand that only dividends from Apple are counted in the GAAP earnings Berkshire reports – and last year, Apple paid us $785 million of those. Yet our “share” of Apple’s earnings amounted to a staggering $5.6 billion. Much of what the company retained was used to repurchase Apple shares, an act we applaud. Tim Cook, Apple’s brilliant CEO, quite properly regards users of Apple products as his first love, but all of his other constituencies benefit from Tim’s managerial touch as well.• BNSF, our third Giant, continues to be the number one artery of American commerce, which makes it an indispensable asset for America as well as for Berkshire. If the many essential products BNSF carries were instead hauled by truck, America’s carbon emissions would soar.Your railroad had record earnings of $6 billion in 2021. Here, it should be noted, we are talking about the old-fashioned sort of earnings that we favor: a figure calculated after interest, taxes, depreciation, amortization and all forms of compensation. (Our definition suggests a warning: Deceptive “adjustments” to earnings – to use a polite description – have become both more frequent and more fanciful as stocks have risen. Speaking less politely, I would say that bull markets breed bloviated bull )BNSF trains traveled 143 million miles last year and carried 535 million tons of cargo. Both accomplishments far exceed those of any other American carrier. You can be proud of your railroad.• BHE, our final Giant, earned a record $4 billion in 2021. That’s up more than 30-fold from the $122 million earned in 2000, the year that Berkshire first purchased a BHE stake. Now, Berkshire owns 91.1% of the company.BHE’s record of societal accomplishment is as remarkable as its financial performance. The company had no wind or solar generation in 2000. It was then regarded simply as a relatively new and minor participant in the huge electric utility industry. Subsequently, under David Sokol’s and Greg Abel’s leadership, BHE has become a utility powerhouse (no groaning, please) and a leading force in wind, solar and transmission throughout much of the United States.Greg’s report on these accomplishments appears on pages A-3 and A-4. The profile you will find there is not in any way one of those currently-fashionable “green-washing” stories. BHE has been faithfully detailing its plans and performance in renewables and transmissions every year since 2007.To further review this information, visit BHE’s website at brkenergy.com. There, you will see that the company has long been making climate-conscious moves that soak up all of its earnings. More opportunities lie ahead. BHE has the management, the experience, the capital and the appetite for the huge power projects that our country needs.InvestmentsNow let’s talk about companies we don’t control, a list that again references Apple. Below we list our fifteen largest equity holdings, several of which are selections of Berkshire’s two long-time investment managers, Todd Combs and Ted Weschler. At yearend, this valued pair had total authority in respect to $34 billion of investments, many of which do not meet the threshold value we use in the table. Also, a significant portion of the dollars that Todd and Ted manage are lodged in various pension plans of Berkshire-owned businesses, with the assets of these plans not included in this table.* This is our actual purchase price and also our tax basis.** Held by BHE; consequently, Berkshire shareholders have only a 91.1% interest in this position.*** Includes a $10 billion investment in Occidental Petroleum, consisting of preferred stock and warrants to buy common stock, a combination now being valued at $10.7 billion.In addition to the footnoted Occidental holding and our various common-stock positions, Berkshire also owns a 26.6% interest in Kraft Heinz (accounted for on the “equity” method, not market value, and carried at $13.1 billion) and 38.6% of Pilot Corp., a leader in travel centers that had revenues last year of $45 billion.Since we purchased our Pilot stake in 2017, this holding has warranted “equity” accounting treatment. Early in 2023, Berkshire will purchase an additional interest in Pilot that will raise our ownership to 80% and lead to our fully consolidating Pilot’s earnings, assets and liabilities in our financial statements.U.S. Treasury BillsBerkshire’s balance sheet includes $144 billion of cash and cash equivalents (excluding the holdings of BNSF and BHE). Of this sum, $120 billion is held in U.S. Treasury bills, all maturing in less than a year. That stake leaves Berkshire financing about 12 of 1% of the publicly-held national debt.Charlie and I have pledged that Berkshire (along with our subsidiaries other than BNSF and BHE) will always hold more than $30 billion of cash and equivalents. We want your company to be financially impregnable and never dependent on the kindness of strangers (or even that of friends). Both of us like to sleep soundly, and we want our creditors, insurance claimants and you to do so as well.But $144 billion?That imposing sum, I assure you, is not some deranged expression of patriotism. Nor have Charlie and I lost our overwhelming preference for business ownership. Indeed, I first manifested my enthusiasm for that 80 years ago, on March 11, 1942, when I purchased three shares of Cities Services preferred stock. Their cost was $114.75 and required all of my savings. (The Dow Jones Industrial Average that day closed at 99, a fact that should scream to you: Never bet against America.)After my initial plunge, I always kept at least 80% of my net worth in equities. My favored status throughout that period was 100% – and still is. Berkshire’s current 80%-or-so position in businesses is a consequence of my failure to find entire companies or small portions thereof (that is, marketable stocks) which meet our criteria for long- term holding.Charlie and I have endured similar cash-heavy positions from time to time in the past. These periods are never pleasant; they are also never permanent. And, fortunately, we have had a mildly attractive alternative during 2020 and 2021 for deploying capital. Read on.Share RepurchasesThere are three ways that we can increase the value of your investment. The first is always front and center in our minds: Increase the long-term earning power of Berkshire’s controlled businesses through internal growth or by making acquisitions. Today, internal opportunities deliver far better returns than acquisitions. The size of those opportunities, however, is small compared to Berkshire’s resources.Our second choice is to buy non-controlling part-interests in the many good or great businesses that are publicly traded. From time to time, such possibilities are both numerous and blatantly attractive. Today, though, we find little that excites us.That’s largely because of a truism: Long-term interest rates that are low push the prices of all productive investments upward, whether these are stocks, apartments, farms, oil wells, whatever. Other factors influence valuations as well, but interest rates will always be important.Our final path to value creation is to repurchase Berkshire shares. Through that simple act, we increase your share of the many controlled and non-controlled businesses Berkshire owns. When the price/value equation is right, this path is the easiest and most certain way for us to increase your wealth. (Alongside the accretion of value to continuing shareholders, a couple of other parties gain: Repurchases are modestly beneficial to the seller of the repurchased shares and to society as well.)Periodically, as alternative paths become unattractive, repurchases make good sense for Berkshire’s owners. During the past two years, we therefore repurchased 9% of the shares that were outstanding at yearend 2019 for a total cost of $51.7 billion. That expenditure left our continuing shareholders owning about 10% more of all Berkshire businesses, whether these are wholly-owned (such as BNSF and GEICO) or partly-owned (such as Coca-Cola and Moody’s).I want to underscore that for Berkshire repurchases to make sense, our shares must offer appropriate value. We don’t want to overpay for the shares of other companies, and it would be value-destroying if we were to overpay when we are buying Berkshire. As of February 23, 2022, since yearend we repurchased additional shares at a cost of $1.2 billion. Our appetite remains large but will always remain price-dependent.It should be noted that Berkshire’s buyback opportunities are limited because of its high-class investor base. If our shares were heavily held by short-term speculators, both price volatility and transaction volumes would materially increase. That kind of reshaping would offer us far greater opportunities for creating value by making repurchases. Nevertheless, Charlie and I far prefer the owners we have, even though their admirable buy-and-keep attitudes limit the extent to which long-term shareholders can profit from opportunistic repurchases.Finally, one easily-overlooked value calculation specific to Berkshire: As we’ve discussed, insurance “float” of the right sort is of great value to us. As it happens, repurchases automatically increase the amount of “float” per share. That figure has increased during the past two years by 25% – going from $79,387 per “A” share to $99,497, a meaningful gain that, as noted, owes some thanks to repurchases.A Wonderful Man and a Wonderful BusinessLast year, Paul Andrews died. Paul was the founder and CEO of TTI, a Fort Worth-based subsidiary of Berkshire. Throughout his life – in both his business and his personal pursuits – Paul quietly displayed all the qualities that Charlie and I admire. His story should be told.In 1971, Paul was working as a purchasing agent for General Dynamics when the roof fell in. After losing a huge defense contract, the company fired thousands of employees, including Paul.With his first child due soon, Paul decided to bet on himself, using $500 of his savings to found Tex-Tronics (later renamed TTI). The company set itself up to distribute small electronic components, and first-year sales totaled $112,000. Today, TTI markets more than one million different items with annual volume of $7.7 billion.But back to 2006: Paul, at 63, then found himself happy with his family, his job, and his associates. But he had one nagging worry, heightened because he had recently witnessed a friend’s early death and the disastrous results that followed for that man’s family and business. What, Paul asked himself in 2006, would happen to the many people depending on him if he should unexpectedly die?For a year, Paul wrestled with his options. Sell to a competitor? From a strictly economic viewpoint, that course made the most sense. After all, competitors could envision lucrative “synergies” – savings that would be achieved as the acquiror slashed duplicated functions at TTI.But . . . Such a purchaser would most certainly also retain its CFO, its legal counsel, its HR unit. Their TTI counterparts would therefore be sent packing. And ugh! If a new distribution center were to be needed, the acquirer’s home city would certainly be favored over Fort Worth.Whatever the financial benefits, Paul quickly concluded that selling to a competitor was not for him. He next considered seeking a financial buyer, a species once labeled – aptly so – a leveraged buyout firm. Paul knew, however, that such a purchaser would be focused on an “exit strategy.” And who could know what that would be? Brooding over it all, Paul found himself having no interest in handing his 35-year-old creation over to a reseller.When Paul met me, he explained why he had eliminated these two alternatives as buyers. He then summed up his dilemma by saying – in far more tactful phrasing than this – “After a year of pondering the alternatives, I want to sell to Berkshire because you are the only guy left.” So, I made an offer and Paul said “Yes.” One meeting; one lunch; one deal.To say we both lived happily ever after is an understatement. When Berkshire purchased TTI, the company employed 2,387. Now the number is 8,043. A large percentage of that growth took place in Fort Worth and environs. Earnings have increased 673%.Annually, I would call Paul and tell him his salary should be substantially increased. Annually, he would tell me, “We can talk about that next year, Warren; I’m too busy now.”When Greg Abel and I attended Paul’s memorial service, we met children, grandchildren, long-time associates (including TTI’s first employee) and John Roach, the former CEO of a Fort Worth company Berkshire had purchased in 2000. John had steered his friend Paul to Omaha, instinctively knowing we would be a match.At the service, Greg and I heard about the multitudes of people and organizations that Paul had silently supported. The breadth of his generosity was extraordinary – geared always to improving the lives of others, particularly those in Fort Worth.In all ways, Paul was a class act.* * * * * * * * * * * *Good luck – occasionally extraordinary luck – has played its part at Berkshire. If Paul and I had not enjoyed a mutual friend – John Roach – TTI would not have found its home with us. But that ample serving of luck was only the beginning. TTI was soon to lead Berkshire to its most important acquisition.Every fall, Berkshire directors gather for a presentation by a few of our executives. We sometimes choose the site based upon the location of a recent acquisition, by that means allowing directors to meet the new subsidiary’s CEO and learn more about the acquiree’s activities.In the fall of 2009, we consequently selected Fort Worth so that we could visit TTI. At that time, BNSF, which also had Fort Worth as its hometown, was the third-largest holding among our marketable equities. Despite that large stake, I had never visited the railroad’s headquarters.Deb Bosanek, my assistant, scheduled our board’s opening dinner for October 22. Meanwhile, I arranged to arrive earlier that day to meet with Matt Rose, CEO of BNSF, whose accomplishments I had long admired. When I made the date, I had no idea that our get-together would coincide with BNSF’s third-quarter earnings report, which was released late on the 22nd.The market reacted badly to the railroad’s results. The Great Recession was in full force in the third quarter, and BNSF’s earnings reflected that slump. The economic outlook was also bleak, and Wall Street wasn’t feeling friendly to railroads – or much else.On the following day, I again got together with Matt and suggested that Berkshire would offer the railroad a better long-term home than it could expect as a public company. I also told him the maximum price that Berkshire would pay.Matt relayed the offer to his directors and advisors. Eleven busy days later, Berkshire and BNSF announced a firm deal. And here I’ll venture a rare prediction: BNSF will be a key asset for Berkshire and our country a century from now.The BNSF acquisition would never have happened if Paul Andrews hadn’t sized up Berkshire as the right home for TTI.ThanksI taught my first investing class 70 years ago. Since then, I have enjoyed working almost every year with students of all ages, finally “retiring” from that pursuit in 2018.Along the way, my toughest audience was my grandson’s fifth-grade class. The 11-year-olds were squirming in their seats and giving me blank stares until I mentioned Coca-Cola and its famous secret formula. Instantly, every hand went up, and I learned that “secrets” are catnip to kids.Teaching, like writing, has helped me develop and clarify my own thoughts. Charlie calls this phenomenon the orangutan effect: If you sit down with an orangutan and carefully explain to it one of your cherished ideas, you may leave behind a puzzled primate, but will yourself exit thinking more clearly.Talking to university students is far superior. I have urged that they seek employment in (1) the field and (2) with the kind of people they would select, if they had no need for money. Economic realities, I acknowledge, may interfere with that kind of search. Even so, I urge the students never to give up the quest, for when they find that sort of job, they will no longer be “working.”Charlie and I, ourselves, followed that liberating course after a few early stumbles. We both started as part- timers at my grandfather’s grocery store, Charlie in 1940 and I in 1942. We were each assigned boring tasks and paid little, definitely not what we had in mind. Charlie later took up law, and I tried selling securities. Job satisfaction continued to elude us.Finally, at Berkshire, we found what we love to do. With very few exceptions, we have now “worked” for many decades with people whom we like and trust. It’s a joy in life to join with managers such as Paul Andrews or the Berkshire families I told you about last year. In our home office, we employ decent and talented people – no jerks. Turnover averages, perhaps, one person per year.I would like, however, to emphasize a further item that turns our jobs into fun and satisfaction workingfor you. There is nothing more rewarding to Charlie and me than enjoying the trust of individual long-term shareholders who, for many decades, have joined us with the expectation that we would be a reliable custodian of their funds.Obviously, we can’t select our owners, as we could do if our form of operation were a partnership. Anyone can buy shares of Berkshire today with the intention of soon reselling them. For sure, we get a few of that type of shareholder, just as we get index funds that own huge amounts of Berkshire simply because they are required to do so.To a truly unusual degree, however, Berkshire has as owners a very large corps of individuals and families that have elected to join us with an intent approaching “til death do us part.” Often, they have trusted us with a large – some might say excessive – portion of their savings.Berkshire, these shareholders would sometimes acknowledge, might be far from the best selection they could have made. But they would add that Berkshire would rank high among those with which they would be most comfortable. And people who are comfortable with their investments will, on average, achieve better results than those who are motivated by ever-changing headlines, chatter and promises.Long-term individual owners are both the “partners” Charlie and I have always sought and the ones we constantly have in mind as we make decisions at Berkshire. To them we say, “It feels good to ‘work’ for you, and you have our thanks for your trust.”The Annual MeetingClear your calendar! Berkshire will have its annual gathering of capitalists in Omaha on Friday, April 29th through Sunday, May 1st. The details regarding the weekend are laid out on pages A-1 and A-2. Omaha eagerly awaits you, as do I.I will end this letter with a sales pitch. “Cousin” Jimmy Buffett has designed a pontoon “party” boat that is now being manufactured by Forest River, a Berkshire subsidiary. The boat will be introduced on April 29 at our Berkshire Bazaar of Bargains. And, for two days only, shareholders will be able to purchase Jimmy’s masterpiece at a 10% discount. Your bargain-hunting chairman will be buying a boat for his family’s use. Join me.February 26, 2022Warren E. Buffett Chairman of the Board","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":229,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":9095680457,"gmtCreate":1644895390535,"gmtModify":1676533973461,"author":{"id":"4098320171388960","authorId":"4098320171388960","name":"dttw","avatar":"https://static.laohu8.com/default-avatar.jpg","crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"idStr":"4098320171388960","authorIdStr":"4098320171388960"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"👍👍","listText":"👍👍","text":"👍👍","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":0,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/9095680457","repostId":"1154163923","repostType":4,"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":133,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":9004609443,"gmtCreate":1642565256444,"gmtModify":1676533723856,"author":{"id":"4098320171388960","authorId":"4098320171388960","name":"dttw","avatar":"https://static.laohu8.com/default-avatar.jpg","crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"idStr":"4098320171388960","authorIdStr":"4098320171388960"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Wow","listText":"Wow","text":"Wow","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":3,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/9004609443","repostId":"1192944252","repostType":4,"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":200,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0}],"hots":[{"id":9039123345,"gmtCreate":1645966338863,"gmtModify":1676534078216,"author":{"id":"4098320171388960","authorId":"4098320171388960","name":"dttw","avatar":"https://static.laohu8.com/default-avatar.jpg","crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"idStr":"4098320171388960","authorIdStr":"4098320171388960"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Something to consider","listText":"Something to consider","text":"Something to consider","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":7,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/9039123345","repostId":"1172565671","repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1172565671","kind":"news","pubTimestamp":1645917232,"share":"https://ttm.financial/m/news/1172565671?lang=&edition=fundamental","pubTime":"2022-02-27 07:13","market":"us","language":"en","title":"US IPO Week Ahead: The March IPO Market Starts with a Quiet Week","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1172565671","media":"Renaissance Capital","summary":"The IPO market is expected to have another quiet week heading into March, with just one SPAC current","content":"<html><head></head><body><p>The IPO market is expected to have another quiet week heading into March, with just one SPAC currently scheduled for the week ahead.</p><p>Life sciences and sustainability-focused Valuence Merger I (VMCAU) may price, with plans to raise $200 million. The company is led by CEO Sung Yoon Woo, the founder and CEO of South Korean private equity firm Credian Partners.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/f1a7f293eb10973660ac3f11e7ca80e0\" tg-width=\"1406\" tg-height=\"252\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"/>We would normally expect to see launches as the February lull comes to a close, but new issuers are likely now waiting for the past week&#39;s market turmoil to settle. While the calendar is quiet for now, the IPO pipeline has plenty of candidates for when the market reopens.</p><p>Street research is expected for two companies, and lock-up periods will be expiring for up to four companies. For access to Street research and lock-up expiration dates, sign up for a free trial of IPO Pro.</p><h2>IPO Market Snapshot</h2><p>The Renaissance IPO Indices are market cap weighted baskets of newly public companies. As of 2/24/2022, the Renaissance IPO Index was down 23.2% year-to-date, while the S&amp;P 500 was down 9.8%. Renaissance Capital&#39;s IPO ETF (NYSE: IPO) tracks the index, and top ETF holdings include Uber Technologies (UBER) and Snowflake (SNOW). The Renaissance International IPO Index was down 19.3% year-to-date, while the ACWX was down 8.2%. Renaissance Capital’s International IPO ETF (NYSE: IPOS) tracks the index, and top ETF holdings include Volvo Car Group and Kuaishou.</p></body></html>","source":"lsy1603787993745","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>US IPO Week Ahead: The March IPO Market Starts with a Quiet Week</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nUS IPO Week Ahead: The March IPO Market Starts with a Quiet Week\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2022-02-27 07:13 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://www.renaissancecapital.com/IPO-Center/News/91188/US-IPO-Week-Ahead-The-March-IPO-market-starts-with-a-quiet-week><strong>Renaissance Capital</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>The IPO market is expected to have another quiet week heading into March, with just one SPAC currently scheduled for the week ahead.Life sciences and sustainability-focused Valuence Merger I (VMCAU) ...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://www.renaissancecapital.com/IPO-Center/News/91188/US-IPO-Week-Ahead-The-March-IPO-market-starts-with-a-quiet-week\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{".DJI":"道琼斯",".IXIC":"NASDAQ Composite",".SPX":"S&P 500 Index"},"source_url":"https://www.renaissancecapital.com/IPO-Center/News/91188/US-IPO-Week-Ahead-The-March-IPO-market-starts-with-a-quiet-week","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1172565671","content_text":"The IPO market is expected to have another quiet week heading into March, with just one SPAC currently scheduled for the week ahead.Life sciences and sustainability-focused Valuence Merger I (VMCAU) may price, with plans to raise $200 million. The company is led by CEO Sung Yoon Woo, the founder and CEO of South Korean private equity firm Credian Partners.We would normally expect to see launches as the February lull comes to a close, but new issuers are likely now waiting for the past week's market turmoil to settle. While the calendar is quiet for now, the IPO pipeline has plenty of candidates for when the market reopens.Street research is expected for two companies, and lock-up periods will be expiring for up to four companies. For access to Street research and lock-up expiration dates, sign up for a free trial of IPO Pro.IPO Market SnapshotThe Renaissance IPO Indices are market cap weighted baskets of newly public companies. As of 2/24/2022, the Renaissance IPO Index was down 23.2% year-to-date, while the S&P 500 was down 9.8%. Renaissance Capital's IPO ETF (NYSE: IPO) tracks the index, and top ETF holdings include Uber Technologies (UBER) and Snowflake (SNOW). The Renaissance International IPO Index was down 19.3% year-to-date, while the ACWX was down 8.2%. Renaissance Capital’s International IPO ETF (NYSE: IPOS) tracks the index, and top ETF holdings include Volvo Car Group and Kuaishou.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":285,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":9038759569,"gmtCreate":1646923075699,"gmtModify":1676534177491,"author":{"id":"4098320171388960","authorId":"4098320171388960","name":"dttw","avatar":"https://static.laohu8.com/default-avatar.jpg","crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"idStr":"4098320171388960","authorIdStr":"4098320171388960"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"More to come","listText":"More to come","text":"More to come","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":5,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/9038759569","repostId":"2218268957","repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"2218268957","kind":"highlight","pubTimestamp":1646921413,"share":"https://ttm.financial/m/news/2218268957?lang=&edition=fundamental","pubTime":"2022-03-10 22:10","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Should You Buy Amazon Before Its Stock Split?","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=2218268957","media":"Motley Fool","summary":"The short answer is yes, but the longer answer has nothing to do with the stock split.","content":"<html><head></head><body><p>Last night, <b>Amazon</b> (NASDAQ:AMZN) announced that it would be splitting its stock 20-for-1, the first time this $3,000 stock has split its shares since September 1999! In conjunction with the stock-split announcement, Amazon also upped its share repurchase program to $10 billion, from the $5 billion program that had been in place. On the announcement, Amazon shares soared nearly 7% in after-hours trading Wednesday.</p><p>So, should investors follow management&#39;s hint and buy shares ahead of the split?</p><h2>Following Alphabet&#39;s lead</h2><p>Amazon&#39;s move had been a topic of conversation among investors ever since CEO Andy Jassy took over the reins from founder Jeff Bezos last summer, and more recently after FAANG competitor <b>Alphabet</b> (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) announced its own stock split back in February.</p><p>Stock splits do not increase or decrease the value of the company, of course; they merely divide shares up into smaller, bite-size pieces. But they do make buying the stock easier for smaller shareholders who may not have $3,000 to invest. The advent of brokerages offering fractional shares has somewhat mitigated this problem for the small buyer, yet many investors still retain brokerage accounts that don&#39;t offer fractional shares. So the split could have some effect on a stock&#39;s liquidity and options activity.</p><p>Some CEOs don&#39;t like the enhanced liquidity that comes with a lower share price. Notably, Warren Buffett has never split the shares of <b>Berkshire Hathaway</b> (NYSE:BRK.A) (NYSE:BRK.B), which now go for a whopping $488,245 per Class A share! Buffett didn&#39;t want to attract short-term investors looking to make a quick buck, and more-liquid, lower-priced shares have a tendency to make bigger moves up and down with more trading activity.</p><p>That being said, Berkshire was forced to offer lower-priced Class B shares in 1996, in order to head off the formation of investment trusts that allowed smaller investors to have a &#34;piece&#34; of Berkshire -- for a fee, of course.</p><p>It appears Jeff Bezos took a page out of Buffett&#39;s playbook following the dot-com crash of the early 2000s, never splitting Amazon&#39;s stock again after it crashed more than 90% during that period.</p><h2>So why the stock split now?</h2><p>Obviously, Amazon&#39;s stock has done quite well since it last split. But as shares soared above $3,000, they&#39;ve hit a roadblock, especially compared with other high-profile tech stocks that have split during the past two years:</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/803e9b389c86bd0694f1a6688a2211e1\" tg-width=\"720\" tg-height=\"387\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"/></p><p>AMZN data by YCharts.</p><p>Could this underperformance have to do with the lower liquidity in Amazon&#39;s stock? It&#39;s hard to say, but it&#39;s possible management might be feeling some heat from employees (many of whom get paid in Amazon stock) over the stock&#39;s recent performance. Amazon has doubled its employee count since the beginning of the pandemic and is in a global war for tech talent, so a lagging stock price could affect its ability to hire top engineers.</p><p>As you can see above, shares have badly lagged the market and many of its large-cap technology peers over the past 20 months or so. Alphabet, <b>Apple</b>, <b>Tesla</b>, and <b>Nvidia</b> have each split their stock at some point over the past 20 months, with Apple and Tesla splitting in August 2020, Nvidia splitting in July 2021, and Alphabet just recently announcing its split, which has not yet taken effect.</p><p>It&#39;s not clear if this is the reason for their outperformance; investors have been wary of e-commerce stocks amid economic reopening and higher inflation. But it appears management may think this is at least part of the reason.</p><h2>Don&#39;t buy Amazon for the split, though; buy it for these reasons</h2><p>While many view Amazon as an unbridled growth stock, investors should not underestimate the company&#39;s capital allocation prowess. More than the stock split, investors should buy the stock because it appears cheap on the basis of the sum of its parts, and it looks like management feels the same way. And there are many smart people working at Amazon.</p><p>The fact that Amazon is getting aggressive with share repurchases is telling. Under Bezos, Amazon sought to spend as much money as possible on growth ventures, so the fact that management is upping share repurchases means it must see its stock as woefully undervalued.</p><p>Amazon also is coming off a massive two-year investment cycle since COVID-19 hit, but that should be winding down now as growth trends normalize. So free cash flow could skyrocket this year as Amazon spends less on building its fulfillment network, which has more than doubled since the beginning of the pandemic.</p><p>Amazon has repurchased shares before, but only rarely and in small amounts. The last repurchase was at the end of 2011 and beginning of 2012, after the stock fell some 25%. That&#39;s roughly the same plunge shares have taken recently. Investors would have been good to follow management at that time, as Amazon&#39;s stock bounced back in a big way beginning in late 2012 and beyond.</p><p><img src=\"https://g.foolcdn.com/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fg.foolcdn.com%2Feditorial%2Fimages%2F669849%2Fgettyimages-483815349.jpg&amp;w=700&amp;op=resize\" tg-width=\"700\" tg-height=\"466\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"/></p><p>Amazon Web Services could be worth more than Amazon&#39;s entire market cap. Image source: Getty Images.</p><h2>Amazon Web Services could be more valuable than all of Amazon today</h2><p>Additionally, while most think of Amazon as an e-commerce company, I&#39;d argue its Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud computing platform is the bigger reason to own the stock, and it might be worth more than all of Amazon&#39;s e-commerce operations, or even more than the company&#39;s entire market cap today.</p><p>Consider that AWS grew revenue 37% last year to $62.2 billion and operating income by roughly the same amount to $18.5 billion. However, AWS revenue and operating earnings accelerated throughout the year as economic activity picked up, with growth accelerating 40% in the fourth quarter.</p><p>Assuming 35% growth this year, AWS operating income would come to $25 billion; after tax, that would come to about $20 billion in net earnings. At a $1.4 trillion market cap, all of Amazon is trading around 70 times AWS earnings for 2022.</p><p>I have a feeling that if AWS were a separate business, it could garner a P/E ratio in that ballpark. So investors could be getting Amazon&#39;s e-commerce operations, which are also likely quite valuable, for free.</p><h2>The split should come in June</h2><p>According to the Securities and Exchange Commission filing, Amazon shareholders will have a vote on the stock split at the company&#39;s annual meeting in May, and the split should take effect sometime in early June, pending that shareholder vote. Assuming the split is a catalyst for shares to go up, I hope management spends a large portion of that $10 billion share buyback before then.</p><p>After a no-good year and a half, 2022 could be a much better year for Amazon shareholders. It&#39;s screaming buy with the stock split on the horizon.</p></body></html>","source":"fool_stock","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Should You Buy Amazon Before Its Stock Split?</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nShould You Buy Amazon Before Its Stock Split?\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2022-03-10 22:10 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/03/10/should-you-buy-amazoncom-before-its-stock-split/><strong>Motley Fool</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>Last night, Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) announced that it would be splitting its stock 20-for-1, the first time this $3,000 stock has split its shares since September 1999! In conjunction with the stock-...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/03/10/should-you-buy-amazoncom-before-its-stock-split/\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"BK4534":"瑞士信贷持仓","BK4507":"流媒体概念","BK4533":"AQR资本管理(全球第二大对冲基金)","BK4566":"资本集团","BK4535":"淡马锡持仓","BK4524":"宅经济概念","BK4538":"云计算","BK4527":"明星科技股","BK4559":"巴菲特持仓","BK4550":"红杉资本持仓","BK4579":"人工智能","BK4532":"文艺复兴科技持仓","BK4503":"景林资产持仓","BK4122":"互联网与直销零售","AMZN":"亚马逊","BK4551":"寇图资本持仓","BK4561":"索罗斯持仓","BK4581":"高盛持仓","BK4548":"巴美列捷福持仓","BK4554":"元宇宙及AR概念"},"source_url":"https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/03/10/should-you-buy-amazoncom-before-its-stock-split/","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"2218268957","content_text":"Last night, Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) announced that it would be splitting its stock 20-for-1, the first time this $3,000 stock has split its shares since September 1999! In conjunction with the stock-split announcement, Amazon also upped its share repurchase program to $10 billion, from the $5 billion program that had been in place. On the announcement, Amazon shares soared nearly 7% in after-hours trading Wednesday.So, should investors follow management's hint and buy shares ahead of the split?Following Alphabet's leadAmazon's move had been a topic of conversation among investors ever since CEO Andy Jassy took over the reins from founder Jeff Bezos last summer, and more recently after FAANG competitor Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) announced its own stock split back in February.Stock splits do not increase or decrease the value of the company, of course; they merely divide shares up into smaller, bite-size pieces. But they do make buying the stock easier for smaller shareholders who may not have $3,000 to invest. The advent of brokerages offering fractional shares has somewhat mitigated this problem for the small buyer, yet many investors still retain brokerage accounts that don't offer fractional shares. So the split could have some effect on a stock's liquidity and options activity.Some CEOs don't like the enhanced liquidity that comes with a lower share price. Notably, Warren Buffett has never split the shares of Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK.A) (NYSE:BRK.B), which now go for a whopping $488,245 per Class A share! Buffett didn't want to attract short-term investors looking to make a quick buck, and more-liquid, lower-priced shares have a tendency to make bigger moves up and down with more trading activity.That being said, Berkshire was forced to offer lower-priced Class B shares in 1996, in order to head off the formation of investment trusts that allowed smaller investors to have a \"piece\" of Berkshire -- for a fee, of course.It appears Jeff Bezos took a page out of Buffett's playbook following the dot-com crash of the early 2000s, never splitting Amazon's stock again after it crashed more than 90% during that period.So why the stock split now?Obviously, Amazon's stock has done quite well since it last split. But as shares soared above $3,000, they've hit a roadblock, especially compared with other high-profile tech stocks that have split during the past two years:AMZN data by YCharts.Could this underperformance have to do with the lower liquidity in Amazon's stock? It's hard to say, but it's possible management might be feeling some heat from employees (many of whom get paid in Amazon stock) over the stock's recent performance. Amazon has doubled its employee count since the beginning of the pandemic and is in a global war for tech talent, so a lagging stock price could affect its ability to hire top engineers.As you can see above, shares have badly lagged the market and many of its large-cap technology peers over the past 20 months or so. Alphabet, Apple, Tesla, and Nvidia have each split their stock at some point over the past 20 months, with Apple and Tesla splitting in August 2020, Nvidia splitting in July 2021, and Alphabet just recently announcing its split, which has not yet taken effect.It's not clear if this is the reason for their outperformance; investors have been wary of e-commerce stocks amid economic reopening and higher inflation. But it appears management may think this is at least part of the reason.Don't buy Amazon for the split, though; buy it for these reasonsWhile many view Amazon as an unbridled growth stock, investors should not underestimate the company's capital allocation prowess. More than the stock split, investors should buy the stock because it appears cheap on the basis of the sum of its parts, and it looks like management feels the same way. And there are many smart people working at Amazon.The fact that Amazon is getting aggressive with share repurchases is telling. Under Bezos, Amazon sought to spend as much money as possible on growth ventures, so the fact that management is upping share repurchases means it must see its stock as woefully undervalued.Amazon also is coming off a massive two-year investment cycle since COVID-19 hit, but that should be winding down now as growth trends normalize. So free cash flow could skyrocket this year as Amazon spends less on building its fulfillment network, which has more than doubled since the beginning of the pandemic.Amazon has repurchased shares before, but only rarely and in small amounts. The last repurchase was at the end of 2011 and beginning of 2012, after the stock fell some 25%. That's roughly the same plunge shares have taken recently. Investors would have been good to follow management at that time, as Amazon's stock bounced back in a big way beginning in late 2012 and beyond.Amazon Web Services could be worth more than Amazon's entire market cap. Image source: Getty Images.Amazon Web Services could be more valuable than all of Amazon todayAdditionally, while most think of Amazon as an e-commerce company, I'd argue its Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud computing platform is the bigger reason to own the stock, and it might be worth more than all of Amazon's e-commerce operations, or even more than the company's entire market cap today.Consider that AWS grew revenue 37% last year to $62.2 billion and operating income by roughly the same amount to $18.5 billion. However, AWS revenue and operating earnings accelerated throughout the year as economic activity picked up, with growth accelerating 40% in the fourth quarter.Assuming 35% growth this year, AWS operating income would come to $25 billion; after tax, that would come to about $20 billion in net earnings. At a $1.4 trillion market cap, all of Amazon is trading around 70 times AWS earnings for 2022.I have a feeling that if AWS were a separate business, it could garner a P/E ratio in that ballpark. So investors could be getting Amazon's e-commerce operations, which are also likely quite valuable, for free.The split should come in JuneAccording to the Securities and Exchange Commission filing, Amazon shareholders will have a vote on the stock split at the company's annual meeting in May, and the split should take effect sometime in early June, pending that shareholder vote. Assuming the split is a catalyst for shares to go up, I hope management spends a large portion of that $10 billion share buyback before then.After a no-good year and a half, 2022 could be a much better year for Amazon shareholders. It's screaming buy with the stock split on the horizon.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":328,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":9039168752,"gmtCreate":1645962523369,"gmtModify":1676534078008,"author":{"id":"4098320171388960","authorId":"4098320171388960","name":"dttw","avatar":"https://static.laohu8.com/default-avatar.jpg","crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"idStr":"4098320171388960","authorIdStr":"4098320171388960"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Very detailed letter to shareholder. Amazing.","listText":"Very detailed letter to shareholder. Amazing.","text":"Very detailed letter to shareholder. Amazing.","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":4,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/9039168752","repostId":"1125580913","repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1125580913","kind":"news","weMediaInfo":{"introduction":"Providing stock market headlines, business news, financials and earnings ","home_visible":1,"media_name":"Tiger Newspress","id":"1079075236","head_image":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/8274c5b9d4c2852bfb1c4d6ce16c68ba"},"pubTimestamp":1645926503,"share":"https://ttm.financial/m/news/1125580913?lang=&edition=fundamental","pubTime":"2022-02-27 09:48","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Buffett Full Annual Letter：Apple is One of ‘Four Giants’ Driving the Conglomerate’s Value","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1125580913","media":"Tiger Newspress","summary":"Warren Buffett released his annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders on Saturday. The 91-yea","content":"<html><head></head><body><p>Warren Buffett released his annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders on Saturday. The 91-year-old investing legend has been publishing the letter for over six decades and it has become required reading for investors around the world.</p><p>Warren Buffett said he now considers tech giant Apple as one of the four pillars driving Berkshire Hathaway, the conglomerate of mostly old-economy businesses he’s assembled over the last five decades.</p><p>In his annual letter to shareholders released on Saturday, the 91-year-old investing legend listed Apple under the heading “Our Four Giants” and even called the company the second-most important after Berkshire’s cluster of insurers, thanks to its chief executive.</p><p>“Tim Cook, Apple’s brilliant CEO, quite properly regards users of Apple products as his first love, but all of his other constituencies benefit from Tim’s managerial touch as well,” the letter stated.</p><p>Buffett made clear he is a fan of Cook’s stock repurchase strategy, and how it gives the conglomerate increased ownership of each dollar of the iPhone maker’s earnings without the investor having to lift a finger.</p><p>“Apple – our runner-up Giant as measured by its yearend market value – is a different sort of holding. Here, our ownership is a mere 5.55%, up from 5.39% a year earlier,” Buffett said in the letter. “That increase sounds like small potatoes. But consider that each 0.1% of Apple’s 2021 earnings amounted to $100 million. We spent no Berkshire funds to gain our accretion. Apple’s repurchases did the job.”</p><p>Berkshire began buying Apple stock in 2016 under the influence of Buffett’s investing deputies Todd Combs and Ted Weschler. By mid-2018, the conglomerate accumulated 5% ownership of the iPhone maker, a stake that cost $36 billion. Today, the Apple investment is now worth more than $160 billion, taking up 40% of Berkshire’s equity portfolio.</p><p>“It’s important to understand that only dividends from Apple are counted in the GAAP earnings Berkshire reports – and last year, Apple paid us $785 million of those. Yet our ‘share’ of Apple’s earnings amounted to a staggering $5.6 billion. Much of what the company retained was used to repurchase Apple shares, an act we applaud,” Buffett said.</p><p>Berkshire is Apple’s largest shareholder, outside of index and exchange-traded fund providers.</p><p>Buffett also credited his railroad business BNSF and energy segment BHE as two other giants of the conglomerate, which both registered record earnings in 2021.</p><p>“BNSF, our third Giant, continues to be the number one artery of American commerce, which makes it an indispensable asset for America as well as for Berkshire,” Buffett said. “BHE has become a utility powerhouse and a leading force in wind, solar and transmission throughout much of the United States.”</p><p><b>Read the full letter here：</b></p><p>To the Shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway Inc.:</p><p>Charlie Munger, my long-time partner, and I have the job of managing a portion of your savings. We are honored by your trust.</p><p>Our position carries with it the responsibility to report to you what we would like to know if we were the absentee owner and you were the manager. We enjoy communicating directly with you through this annual letter, and through the annual meeting as well.</p><p>Our policy is to treat all shareholders equally. Therefore, we do not hold discussions with analysts nor large institutions. Whenever possible, also, we release important communications on Saturday mornings in order to maximize the time for shareholders and the media to absorb the news before markets open on Monday.</p><p>A wealth of Berkshire facts and figures are set forth in the annual 10-K that the company regularly files with the S.E.C. and that we reproduce on pages K-1 – K-119. Some shareholders will find this detail engrossing; others will simply prefer to learn what Charlie and I believe is new or interesting at Berkshire.</p><p>Alas, there was little action of that sort in 2021. We did, though, make reasonable progress in increasing the intrinsic value of your shares. That task has been my primary duty for 57 years. And it will continue to be.</p><p><b>What You Own</b></p><p>Berkshire owns a wide variety of businesses, some in their entirety, some only in part. The second group largely consists of marketable common stocks of major American companies. Additionally, we own a few non-U.S. equities and participate in several joint ventures or other collaborative activities.</p><p>Whatever our form of ownership, our goal is to have meaningful investments in businesses with both durable economic advantages and a first-class CEO. Please note particularly that we own stocks based upon our expectations about their long-term business performance and not because we view them as vehicles for timely market moves. That point is crucial: Charlie and I are not stock-pickers; we are business-pickers.</p><p>I make many mistakes. Consequently, our extensive collection of businesses includes some enterprises that have truly extraordinary economics, many others that enjoy good economic characteristics, and a few that are marginal. One advantage of our common-stock segment is that – on occasion – it becomes easy to buy pieces of wonderful businesses at wonderful prices. That shooting-fish-in-a-barrel experience is very rare in negotiated transactions and never occurs en masse. It is also far easier to exit from a mistake when it has been made in the marketable arena.</p><h2><b>Surprise, Surprise</b></h2><p>Here are a few items about your company that often surprise even seasoned investors:</p><p>• Many people perceive Berkshire as a large and somewhat strange collection of financial assets. In truth, Berkshire owns and operates more U.S.-based “infrastructure” assets – classified on our balance sheet as property, plant and equipment – than are owned and operated by any other American corporation. That supremacy has never been our goal. It has, however, become a fact.</p><p>At yearend, those domestic infrastructure assets were carried on Berkshire’s balance sheet at $158 billion. That number increased last year and will continue to increase. Berkshire always will be building.</p><p>• Every year, your company makes substantial federal income tax payments. In 2021, for example, we paid</p><p>$3.3 billion while the U.S. Treasury reported total corporate income-tax receipts of $402 billion. Additionally, Berkshire pays substantial state and foreign taxes. “I gave at the office” is an unassailable assertion when made by Berkshire shareholders.</p><p>Berkshire’s history vividly illustrates the invisible and often unrecognized financial partnership between  government and American businesses. Our tale begins early in 1955, when Berkshire Fine Spinning and Hathaway Manufacturing agreed to merge their businesses. In their requests for shareholder approval, these venerable New England textile companies expressed high hopes for the combination.</p><p></p><p>The Hathaway solicitation, for example, assured its shareholders that “The combination of the resources and managements will result in one of the strongest and most efficient organizations in the textile industry.” That upbeat view was endorsed by the company’s advisor, Lehman Brothers (yes, that Lehman Brothers).</p><p>I’m sure it was a joyous day in both Fall River (Berkshire) and New Bedford (Hathaway) when the union was consummated. After the bands stopped playing and the bankers went home, however, the shareholders reaped a disaster.</p><p>In the nine years following the merger, Berkshire’s owners watched the company’s net worth crater from</p><p>$51.4 million to $22.1 million. In part, this decline was caused by stock repurchases, ill-advised dividends and plant shutdowns. But nine years of effort by many thousands of employees delivered an operating loss as well. Berkshire’s struggles were not unusual: The New England textile industry had silently entered an extended and non-reversible death march.</p><p>During the nine post-merger years, the U.S. Treasury suffered as well from Berkshire’s troubles. All told, the company paid the government only $337,359 in income tax during that period – a pathetic $100 per day.</p><p>Early in 1965, things changed. Berkshire installed new management that redeployed available cash and steered essentially all earnings into a variety of good businesses, most of which remained good through the years. Coupling reinvestment of earnings with the power of compounding worked its magic, and shareholders prospered.</p><p>Berkshire’s owners, it should be noted, were not the only beneficiary of that course correction. Their “silent partner,” the U.S. Treasury, proceeded to collect many tens of billions of dollars from the company in income tax payments. Remember the $100 daily? Now, Berkshire pays roughly $9 million daily to the Treasury.</p><p>In fairness to our governmental partner, our shareholders should acknowledge – indeed trumpet – the fact that Berkshire’s prosperity has been fostered mightily because the company has operated in America. Our country would have done splendidly in the years since 1965 without Berkshire. Absent our American home, however, Berkshire would never have come close to becoming what it is today. When you see the flag, say thanks.</p><p>• From an $8.6 million purchase of National Indemnity in 1967, Berkshire has become the world leader in insurance “float” – money we hold and can invest but that does not belong to us. Including a relatively small sum derived from life insurance, Berkshire’s total float has grown from $19 million when we entered the insurance business to $147 billion.</p><p>So far, this float has cost us less than nothing. Though we have experienced a number of years when insurance losses combined with operating expenses exceeded premiums, overall we have earned a modest 55-year profit from the underwriting activities that generated our float.</p><p>Of equal importance, float is very sticky. Funds attributable to our insurance operations come and go daily, but their aggregate total is immune from precipitous decline. When it comes to investing float, we can therefore think long-term.</p><p>If you are not already familiar with the concept of float, I refer you to a long explanation on page A-5. To my surprise, our float increased $9 billion last year, a buildup of value that is important to Berkshire owners though is not reflected in our GAAP (“generally-accepted accounting principles”) presentation of earnings and net worth.</p><p>Much of our huge value creation in insurance is attributable to Berkshire’s good luck in my 1986 hiring of Ajit Jain. We first met on a Saturday morning, and I quickly asked Ajit what his insurance experience had been. He replied, “None.”</p><p>I said, “Nobody’s perfect,” and hired him. That was my lucky day: Ajit actually was as perfect a choice as could have been made. Better yet, he continues to be – 35 years later.</p><p>One final thought about insurance: I believe that it is likely – but far from assured – that Berkshire’s float can be maintained without our incurring a long-term underwriting loss. I am certain, however, that there will be some years when we experience such losses, perhaps involving very large sums.</p><p>Berkshire is constructed to handle catastrophic events as no other insurer – and that priority will remain long after Charlie and I are gone.</p><h2>Our Four Giants</h2><p>Through Berkshire, our shareholders own many dozens of businesses. Some of these, in turn, have a collection of subsidiaries of their own. For example, Marmon has more than 100 individual business operations, ranging from the leasing of railroad cars to the manufacture of medical devices.</p><p>• Nevertheless, operations of our “Big Four” companies account for a very large chunk of Berkshire’s value. Leading this list is our cluster of insurers. Berkshire effectively owns 100% of this group, whose massive float value we earlier described. The invested assets of these insurers are further enlarged by the extraordinary amount of capital we invest to back up their promises.</p><p>The insurance business is made to order for Berkshire. The product will never be obsolete, and sales volume will generally increase along with both economic growth and inflation. Also, integrity and capital will forever be important. Our company can and will behave well.</p><p>There are, of course, other insurers with excellent business models and prospects. Replication of Berkshire’s operation, however, would be almost impossible.</p><p>• Apple – our runner-up Giant as measured by its yearend market value – is a different sort of holding. Here, our ownership is a mere 5.55%, up from 5.39% a year earlier. That increase sounds like small potatoes. But consider that each 0.1% of Apple’s 2021 earnings amounted to $100 million. We spent no Berkshire funds to gain our accretion. Apple’s repurchases did the job.</p><p>It’s important to understand that only dividends from Apple are counted in the GAAP earnings Berkshire reports – and last year, Apple paid us $785 million of those. Yet our “share” of Apple’s earnings amounted to a staggering $5.6 billion. Much of what the company retained was used to repurchase Apple shares, an act we applaud. Tim Cook, Apple’s brilliant CEO, quite properly regards users of Apple products as his first love, but all of his other constituencies benefit from Tim’s managerial touch as well.</p><p>• BNSF, our third Giant, continues to be the number one artery of American commerce, which makes it an indispensable asset for America as well as for Berkshire. If the many essential products BNSF carries were instead hauled by truck, America’s carbon emissions would soar.</p><p>Your railroad had record earnings of $6 billion in 2021. Here, it should be noted, we are talking about the old-fashioned sort of earnings that we favor: a figure calculated after interest, taxes, depreciation, amortization and all forms of compensation. (Our definition suggests a warning: Deceptive “adjustments” to earnings – to use a polite description – have become both more frequent and more fanciful as stocks have risen. Speaking less politely, I would say that bull markets breed bloviated bull )</p><p>BNSF trains traveled 143 million miles last year and carried 535 million tons of cargo. Both accomplishments far exceed those of any other American carrier. You can be proud of your railroad.</p><p>• BHE, our final Giant, earned a record $4 billion in 2021. That’s up more than 30-fold from the $122 million earned in 2000, the year that Berkshire first purchased a BHE stake. Now, Berkshire owns 91.1% of the company.</p><p>BHE’s record of societal accomplishment is as remarkable as its financial performance. The company had no wind or solar generation in 2000. It was then regarded simply as a relatively new and minor participant in the huge electric utility industry. Subsequently, under David Sokol’s and Greg Abel’s leadership, BHE has become a utility powerhouse (no groaning, please) and a leading force in wind, solar and transmission throughout much of the United States.</p><p>Greg’s report on these accomplishments appears on pages A-3 and A-4. The profile you will find there is not in any way one of those currently-fashionable “green-washing” stories. BHE has been faithfully detailing its plans and performance in renewables and transmissions every year since 2007.</p><p>To further review this information, visit BHE’s website at brkenergy.com. There, you will see that the company has long been making climate-conscious moves that soak up all of its earnings. More opportunities lie ahead. BHE has the management, the experience, the capital and the appetite for the huge power projects that our country needs.</p><h2>Investments</h2><p>Now let’s talk about companies we don’t control, a list that again references Apple. Below we list our fifteen largest equity holdings, several of which are selections of Berkshire’s two long-time investment managers, Todd Combs and Ted Weschler. At yearend, this valued pair had total authority in respect to $34 billion of investments, many of which do not meet the threshold value we use in the table. Also, a significant portion of the dollars that Todd and Ted manage are lodged in various pension plans of Berkshire-owned businesses, with the assets of these plans not included in this table.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/d43587e9f59c0ff76e6c04c6bf9af324\" tg-width=\"1047\" tg-height=\"530\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"/>* This is our actual purchase price and also our tax basis.</p><p>** Held by BHE; consequently, Berkshire shareholders have only a 91.1% interest in this position.</p><p>*** Includes a $10 billion investment in Occidental Petroleum, consisting of preferred stock and warrants to buy common stock, a combination now being valued at $10.7 billion.</p><p>In addition to the footnoted Occidental holding and our various common-stock positions, Berkshire also owns a 26.6% interest in Kraft Heinz (accounted for on the “equity” method, not market value, and carried at $13.1 billion) and 38.6% of Pilot Corp., a leader in travel centers that had revenues last year of $45 billion.</p><p>Since we purchased our Pilot stake in 2017, this holding has warranted “equity” accounting treatment. Early in 2023, Berkshire will purchase an additional interest in Pilot that will raise our ownership to 80% and lead to our fully consolidating Pilot’s earnings, assets and liabilities in our financial statements.</p><h2>U.S. Treasury Bills</h2><p>Berkshire’s balance sheet includes $144 billion of cash and cash equivalents (excluding the holdings of BNSF and BHE). Of this sum, $120 billion is held in U.S. Treasury bills, all maturing in less than a year. That stake leaves Berkshire financing about 12 of 1% of the publicly-held national debt.</p><p>Charlie and I have pledged that Berkshire (along with our subsidiaries other than BNSF and BHE) will always hold more than $30 billion of cash and equivalents. We want your company to be financially impregnable and never dependent on the kindness of strangers (or even that of friends). Both of us like to sleep soundly, and we want our creditors, insurance claimants and you to do so as well.</p><h2>But $144 billion?</h2><p>That imposing sum, I assure you, is not some deranged expression of patriotism. Nor have Charlie and I lost our overwhelming preference for business ownership. Indeed, I first manifested my enthusiasm for that 80 years ago, on March 11, 1942, when I purchased three shares of Cities Services preferred stock. Their cost was $114.75 and required all of my savings. (The Dow Jones Industrial Average that day closed at 99, a fact that should scream to you: Never bet against America.)</p><p>After my initial plunge, I always kept at least 80% of my net worth in equities. My favored status throughout that period was 100% – and still is. Berkshire’s current 80%-or-so position in businesses is a consequence of my failure to find entire companies or small portions thereof (that is, marketable stocks) which meet our criteria for long- term holding.</p><p>Charlie and I have endured similar cash-heavy positions from time to time in the past. These periods are never pleasant; they are also never permanent. And, fortunately, we have had a mildly attractive alternative during 2020 and 2021 for deploying capital. Read on.</p><h2>Share Repurchases</h2><p>There are three ways that we can increase the value of your investment. The first is always front and center in our minds: Increase the long-term earning power of Berkshire’s controlled businesses through internal growth or by making acquisitions. Today, internal opportunities deliver far better returns than acquisitions. The size of those opportunities, however, is small compared to Berkshire’s resources.</p><p>Our second choice is to buy non-controlling part-interests in the many good or great businesses that are publicly traded. From time to time, such possibilities are both numerous and blatantly attractive. Today, though, we find little that excites us.</p><p>That’s largely because of a truism: Long-term interest rates that are low push the prices of all productive investments upward, whether these are stocks, apartments, farms, oil wells, whatever. Other factors influence valuations as well, but interest rates will always be important.</p><p>Our final path to value creation is to repurchase Berkshire shares. Through that simple act, we increase your share of the many controlled and non-controlled businesses Berkshire owns. When the price/value equation is right, this path is the easiest and most certain way for us to increase your wealth. (Alongside the accretion of value to continuing shareholders, a couple of other parties gain: Repurchases are modestly beneficial to the seller of the repurchased shares and to society as well.)</p><p>Periodically, as alternative paths become unattractive, repurchases make good sense for Berkshire’s owners. During the past two years, we therefore repurchased 9% of the shares that were outstanding at yearend 2019 for a total cost of $51.7 billion. That expenditure left our continuing shareholders owning about 10% more of all Berkshire businesses, whether these are wholly-owned (such as BNSF and GEICO) or partly-owned (such as Coca-Cola and Moody’s).</p><p>I want to underscore that for Berkshire repurchases to make sense, our shares must offer appropriate value. We don’t want to overpay for the shares of other companies, and it would be value-destroying if we were to overpay when we are buying Berkshire. As of February 23, 2022, since yearend we repurchased additional shares at a cost of $1.2 billion. Our appetite remains large but will always remain price-dependent.</p><p>It should be noted that Berkshire’s buyback opportunities are limited because of its high-class investor base. If our shares were heavily held by short-term speculators, both price volatility and transaction volumes would materially increase. That kind of reshaping would offer us far greater opportunities for creating value by making repurchases. Nevertheless, Charlie and I far prefer the owners we have, even though their admirable buy-and-keep attitudes limit the extent to which long-term shareholders can profit from opportunistic repurchases.</p><p>Finally, one easily-overlooked value calculation specific to Berkshire: As we’ve discussed, insurance “float” of the right sort is of great value to us. As it happens, repurchases automatically increase the amount of “float” per share. That figure has increased during the past two years by 25% – going from $79,387 per “A” share to $99,497, a meaningful gain that, as noted, owes some thanks to repurchases.</p><h2>A Wonderful Man and a Wonderful Business</h2><p>Last year, Paul Andrews died. Paul was the founder and CEO of TTI, a Fort Worth-based subsidiary of Berkshire. Throughout his life – in both his business and his personal pursuits – Paul quietly displayed all the qualities that Charlie and I admire. His story should be told.</p><p>In 1971, Paul was working as a purchasing agent for General Dynamics when the roof fell in. After losing a huge defense contract, the company fired thousands of employees, including Paul.</p><p>With his first child due soon, Paul decided to bet on himself, using $500 of his savings to found Tex-Tronics (later renamed TTI). The company set itself up to distribute small electronic components, and first-year sales totaled $112,000. Today, TTI markets more than one million different items with annual volume of $7.7 billion.</p><p>But back to 2006: Paul, at 63, then found himself happy with his family, his job, and his associates. But he had one nagging worry, heightened because he had recently witnessed a friend’s early death and the disastrous results that followed for that man’s family and business. What, Paul asked himself in 2006, would happen to the many people depending on him if he should unexpectedly die?</p><p>For a year, Paul wrestled with his options. Sell to a competitor? From a strictly economic viewpoint, that course made the most sense. After all, competitors could envision lucrative “synergies” – savings that would be achieved as the acquiror slashed duplicated functions at TTI.</p><p>But . . . Such a purchaser would most certainly also retain its CFO, its legal counsel, its HR unit. Their TTI counterparts would therefore be sent packing. And ugh! If a new distribution center were to be needed, the acquirer’s home city would certainly be favored over Fort Worth.</p><p>Whatever the financial benefits, Paul quickly concluded that selling to a competitor was not for him. He next considered seeking a financial buyer, a species once labeled – aptly so – a leveraged buyout firm. Paul knew, however, that such a purchaser would be focused on an “exit strategy.” And who could know what that would be? Brooding over it all, Paul found himself having no interest in handing his 35-year-old creation over to a reseller.</p><p>When Paul met me, he explained why he had eliminated these two alternatives as buyers. He then summed up his dilemma by saying – in far more tactful phrasing than this – “After a year of pondering the alternatives, I want to sell to Berkshire because you are the only guy left.” So, I made an offer and Paul said “Yes.” One meeting; one lunch; one deal.</p><p>To say we both lived happily ever after is an understatement. When Berkshire purchased TTI, the company employed 2,387. Now the number is 8,043. A large percentage of that growth took place in Fort Worth and environs. Earnings have increased 673%.</p><p>Annually, I would call Paul and tell him his salary should be substantially increased. Annually, he would tell me, “We can talk about that next year, Warren; I’m too busy now.”</p><p>When Greg Abel and I attended Paul’s memorial service, we met children, grandchildren, long-time associates (including TTI’s first employee) and John Roach, the former CEO of a Fort Worth company Berkshire had purchased in 2000. John had steered his friend Paul to Omaha, instinctively knowing we would be a match.</p><p>At the service, Greg and I heard about the multitudes of people and organizations that Paul had silently supported. The breadth of his generosity was extraordinary – geared always to improving the lives of others, particularly those in Fort Worth.</p><p>In all ways, Paul was a class act.</p><p>* * * * * * * * * * * *</p><p>Good luck – occasionally extraordinary luck – has played its part at Berkshire. If Paul and I had not enjoyed a mutual friend – John Roach – TTI would not have found its home with us. But that ample serving of luck was only the beginning. TTI was soon to lead Berkshire to its most important acquisition.</p><p>Every fall, Berkshire directors gather for a presentation by a few of our executives. We sometimes choose the site based upon the location of a recent acquisition, by that means allowing directors to meet the new subsidiary’s CEO and learn more about the acquiree’s activities.</p><p>In the fall of 2009, we consequently selected Fort Worth so that we could visit TTI. At that time, BNSF, which also had Fort Worth as its hometown, was the third-largest holding among our marketable equities. Despite that large stake, I had never visited the railroad’s headquarters.</p><p>Deb Bosanek, my assistant, scheduled our board’s opening dinner for October 22. Meanwhile, I arranged to arrive earlier that day to meet with Matt Rose, CEO of BNSF, whose accomplishments I had long admired. When I made the date, I had no idea that our get-together would coincide with BNSF’s third-quarter earnings report, which was released late on the 22nd.</p><p>The market reacted badly to the railroad’s results. The Great Recession was in full force in the third quarter, and BNSF’s earnings reflected that slump. The economic outlook was also bleak, and Wall Street wasn’t feeling friendly to railroads – or much else.</p><p>On the following day, I again got together with Matt and suggested that Berkshire would offer the railroad a better long-term home than it could expect as a public company. I also told him the maximum price that Berkshire would pay.</p><p>Matt relayed the offer to his directors and advisors. Eleven busy days later, Berkshire and BNSF announced a firm deal. And here I’ll venture a rare prediction: BNSF will be a key asset for Berkshire and our country a century from now.</p><p>The BNSF acquisition would never have happened if Paul Andrews hadn’t sized up Berkshire as the right home for TTI.</p><h2>Thanks</h2><p>I taught my first investing class 70 years ago. Since then, I have enjoyed working almost every year with students of all ages, finally “retiring” from that pursuit in 2018.</p><p>Along the way, my toughest audience was my grandson’s fifth-grade class. The 11-year-olds were squirming in their seats and giving me blank stares until I mentioned Coca-Cola and its famous secret formula. Instantly, every hand went up, and I learned that “secrets” are catnip to kids.</p><p>Teaching, like writing, has helped me develop and clarify my own thoughts. Charlie calls this phenomenon the orangutan effect: If you sit down with an orangutan and carefully explain to it one of your cherished ideas, you may leave behind a puzzled primate, but will yourself exit thinking more clearly.</p><p>Talking to university students is far superior. I have urged that they seek employment in (1) the field and (2) with the kind of people they would select, if they had no need for money. Economic realities, I acknowledge, may interfere with that kind of search. Even so, I urge the students never to give up the quest, for when they find that sort of job, they will no longer be “working.”</p><p>Charlie and I, ourselves, followed that liberating course after a few early stumbles. We both started as part- timers at my grandfather’s grocery store, Charlie in 1940 and I in 1942. We were each assigned boring tasks and paid little, definitely not what we had in mind. Charlie later took up law, and I tried selling securities. Job satisfaction continued to elude us.</p><p>Finally, at Berkshire, we found what we love to do. With very few exceptions, we have now “worked” for many decades with people whom we like and trust. It’s a joy in life to join with managers such as Paul Andrews or the Berkshire families I told you about last year. In our home office, we employ decent and talented people – no jerks. Turnover averages, perhaps, one person per year.</p><p>I would like, however, to emphasize a further item that turns our jobs into fun and satisfaction working</p><p>for you. There is nothing more rewarding to Charlie and me than enjoying the trust of individual long-term shareholders who, for many decades, have joined us with the expectation that we would be a reliable custodian of their funds.</p><p>Obviously, we can’t select our owners, as we could do if our form of operation were a partnership. Anyone can buy shares of Berkshire today with the intention of soon reselling them. For sure, we get a few of that type of shareholder, just as we get index funds that own huge amounts of Berkshire simply because they are required to do so.</p><p>To a truly unusual degree, however, Berkshire has as owners a very large corps of individuals and families that have elected to join us with an intent approaching “til death do us part.” Often, they have trusted us with a large – some might say excessive – portion of their savings.</p><p>Berkshire, these shareholders would sometimes acknowledge, might be far from the best selection they could have made. But they would add that Berkshire would rank high among those with which they would be most comfortable. And people who are comfortable with their investments will, on average, achieve better results than those who are motivated by ever-changing headlines, chatter and promises.</p><p>Long-term individual owners are both the “partners” Charlie and I have always sought and the ones we constantly have in mind as we make decisions at Berkshire. To them we say, “It feels good to ‘work’ for you, and you have our thanks for your trust.”</p><h2>The Annual Meeting</h2><p>Clear your calendar! Berkshire will have its annual gathering of capitalists in Omaha on Friday, April 29th through Sunday, May 1st. The details regarding the weekend are laid out on pages A-1 and A-2. Omaha eagerly awaits you, as do I.</p><p>I will end this letter with a sales pitch. “Cousin” Jimmy Buffett has designed a pontoon “party” boat that is now being manufactured by Forest River, a Berkshire subsidiary. The boat will be introduced on April 29 at our Berkshire Bazaar of Bargains. And, for two days only, shareholders will be able to purchase Jimmy’s masterpiece at a 10% discount. Your bargain-hunting chairman will be buying a boat for his family’s use. Join me.</p><p>February 26, 2022</p><p>Warren E. Buffett Chairman of the Board</p></body></html>","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Buffett Full Annual Letter：Apple is One of ‘Four Giants’ Driving the Conglomerate’s Value</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nBuffett Full Annual Letter：Apple is One of ‘Four Giants’ Driving the Conglomerate’s Value\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n<a class=\"head\" href=\"https://laohu8.com/wemedia/1079075236\">\n\n\n<div class=\"h-thumb\" style=\"background-image:url(https://static.tigerbbs.com/8274c5b9d4c2852bfb1c4d6ce16c68ba);background-size:cover;\"></div>\n\n<div class=\"h-content\">\n<p class=\"h-name\">Tiger Newspress </p>\n<p class=\"h-time\">2022-02-27 09:48</p>\n</div>\n\n</a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<html><head></head><body><p>Warren Buffett released his annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders on Saturday. The 91-year-old investing legend has been publishing the letter for over six decades and it has become required reading for investors around the world.</p><p>Warren Buffett said he now considers tech giant Apple as one of the four pillars driving Berkshire Hathaway, the conglomerate of mostly old-economy businesses he’s assembled over the last five decades.</p><p>In his annual letter to shareholders released on Saturday, the 91-year-old investing legend listed Apple under the heading “Our Four Giants” and even called the company the second-most important after Berkshire’s cluster of insurers, thanks to its chief executive.</p><p>“Tim Cook, Apple’s brilliant CEO, quite properly regards users of Apple products as his first love, but all of his other constituencies benefit from Tim’s managerial touch as well,” the letter stated.</p><p>Buffett made clear he is a fan of Cook’s stock repurchase strategy, and how it gives the conglomerate increased ownership of each dollar of the iPhone maker’s earnings without the investor having to lift a finger.</p><p>“Apple – our runner-up Giant as measured by its yearend market value – is a different sort of holding. Here, our ownership is a mere 5.55%, up from 5.39% a year earlier,” Buffett said in the letter. “That increase sounds like small potatoes. But consider that each 0.1% of Apple’s 2021 earnings amounted to $100 million. We spent no Berkshire funds to gain our accretion. Apple’s repurchases did the job.”</p><p>Berkshire began buying Apple stock in 2016 under the influence of Buffett’s investing deputies Todd Combs and Ted Weschler. By mid-2018, the conglomerate accumulated 5% ownership of the iPhone maker, a stake that cost $36 billion. Today, the Apple investment is now worth more than $160 billion, taking up 40% of Berkshire’s equity portfolio.</p><p>“It’s important to understand that only dividends from Apple are counted in the GAAP earnings Berkshire reports – and last year, Apple paid us $785 million of those. Yet our ‘share’ of Apple’s earnings amounted to a staggering $5.6 billion. Much of what the company retained was used to repurchase Apple shares, an act we applaud,” Buffett said.</p><p>Berkshire is Apple’s largest shareholder, outside of index and exchange-traded fund providers.</p><p>Buffett also credited his railroad business BNSF and energy segment BHE as two other giants of the conglomerate, which both registered record earnings in 2021.</p><p>“BNSF, our third Giant, continues to be the number one artery of American commerce, which makes it an indispensable asset for America as well as for Berkshire,” Buffett said. “BHE has become a utility powerhouse and a leading force in wind, solar and transmission throughout much of the United States.”</p><p><b>Read the full letter here：</b></p><p>To the Shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway Inc.:</p><p>Charlie Munger, my long-time partner, and I have the job of managing a portion of your savings. We are honored by your trust.</p><p>Our position carries with it the responsibility to report to you what we would like to know if we were the absentee owner and you were the manager. We enjoy communicating directly with you through this annual letter, and through the annual meeting as well.</p><p>Our policy is to treat all shareholders equally. Therefore, we do not hold discussions with analysts nor large institutions. Whenever possible, also, we release important communications on Saturday mornings in order to maximize the time for shareholders and the media to absorb the news before markets open on Monday.</p><p>A wealth of Berkshire facts and figures are set forth in the annual 10-K that the company regularly files with the S.E.C. and that we reproduce on pages K-1 – K-119. Some shareholders will find this detail engrossing; others will simply prefer to learn what Charlie and I believe is new or interesting at Berkshire.</p><p>Alas, there was little action of that sort in 2021. We did, though, make reasonable progress in increasing the intrinsic value of your shares. That task has been my primary duty for 57 years. And it will continue to be.</p><p><b>What You Own</b></p><p>Berkshire owns a wide variety of businesses, some in their entirety, some only in part. The second group largely consists of marketable common stocks of major American companies. Additionally, we own a few non-U.S. equities and participate in several joint ventures or other collaborative activities.</p><p>Whatever our form of ownership, our goal is to have meaningful investments in businesses with both durable economic advantages and a first-class CEO. Please note particularly that we own stocks based upon our expectations about their long-term business performance and not because we view them as vehicles for timely market moves. That point is crucial: Charlie and I are not stock-pickers; we are business-pickers.</p><p>I make many mistakes. Consequently, our extensive collection of businesses includes some enterprises that have truly extraordinary economics, many others that enjoy good economic characteristics, and a few that are marginal. One advantage of our common-stock segment is that – on occasion – it becomes easy to buy pieces of wonderful businesses at wonderful prices. That shooting-fish-in-a-barrel experience is very rare in negotiated transactions and never occurs en masse. It is also far easier to exit from a mistake when it has been made in the marketable arena.</p><h2><b>Surprise, Surprise</b></h2><p>Here are a few items about your company that often surprise even seasoned investors:</p><p>• Many people perceive Berkshire as a large and somewhat strange collection of financial assets. In truth, Berkshire owns and operates more U.S.-based “infrastructure” assets – classified on our balance sheet as property, plant and equipment – than are owned and operated by any other American corporation. That supremacy has never been our goal. It has, however, become a fact.</p><p>At yearend, those domestic infrastructure assets were carried on Berkshire’s balance sheet at $158 billion. That number increased last year and will continue to increase. Berkshire always will be building.</p><p>• Every year, your company makes substantial federal income tax payments. In 2021, for example, we paid</p><p>$3.3 billion while the U.S. Treasury reported total corporate income-tax receipts of $402 billion. Additionally, Berkshire pays substantial state and foreign taxes. “I gave at the office” is an unassailable assertion when made by Berkshire shareholders.</p><p>Berkshire’s history vividly illustrates the invisible and often unrecognized financial partnership between  government and American businesses. Our tale begins early in 1955, when Berkshire Fine Spinning and Hathaway Manufacturing agreed to merge their businesses. In their requests for shareholder approval, these venerable New England textile companies expressed high hopes for the combination.</p><p></p><p>The Hathaway solicitation, for example, assured its shareholders that “The combination of the resources and managements will result in one of the strongest and most efficient organizations in the textile industry.” That upbeat view was endorsed by the company’s advisor, Lehman Brothers (yes, that Lehman Brothers).</p><p>I’m sure it was a joyous day in both Fall River (Berkshire) and New Bedford (Hathaway) when the union was consummated. After the bands stopped playing and the bankers went home, however, the shareholders reaped a disaster.</p><p>In the nine years following the merger, Berkshire’s owners watched the company’s net worth crater from</p><p>$51.4 million to $22.1 million. In part, this decline was caused by stock repurchases, ill-advised dividends and plant shutdowns. But nine years of effort by many thousands of employees delivered an operating loss as well. Berkshire’s struggles were not unusual: The New England textile industry had silently entered an extended and non-reversible death march.</p><p>During the nine post-merger years, the U.S. Treasury suffered as well from Berkshire’s troubles. All told, the company paid the government only $337,359 in income tax during that period – a pathetic $100 per day.</p><p>Early in 1965, things changed. Berkshire installed new management that redeployed available cash and steered essentially all earnings into a variety of good businesses, most of which remained good through the years. Coupling reinvestment of earnings with the power of compounding worked its magic, and shareholders prospered.</p><p>Berkshire’s owners, it should be noted, were not the only beneficiary of that course correction. Their “silent partner,” the U.S. Treasury, proceeded to collect many tens of billions of dollars from the company in income tax payments. Remember the $100 daily? Now, Berkshire pays roughly $9 million daily to the Treasury.</p><p>In fairness to our governmental partner, our shareholders should acknowledge – indeed trumpet – the fact that Berkshire’s prosperity has been fostered mightily because the company has operated in America. Our country would have done splendidly in the years since 1965 without Berkshire. Absent our American home, however, Berkshire would never have come close to becoming what it is today. When you see the flag, say thanks.</p><p>• From an $8.6 million purchase of National Indemnity in 1967, Berkshire has become the world leader in insurance “float” – money we hold and can invest but that does not belong to us. Including a relatively small sum derived from life insurance, Berkshire’s total float has grown from $19 million when we entered the insurance business to $147 billion.</p><p>So far, this float has cost us less than nothing. Though we have experienced a number of years when insurance losses combined with operating expenses exceeded premiums, overall we have earned a modest 55-year profit from the underwriting activities that generated our float.</p><p>Of equal importance, float is very sticky. Funds attributable to our insurance operations come and go daily, but their aggregate total is immune from precipitous decline. When it comes to investing float, we can therefore think long-term.</p><p>If you are not already familiar with the concept of float, I refer you to a long explanation on page A-5. To my surprise, our float increased $9 billion last year, a buildup of value that is important to Berkshire owners though is not reflected in our GAAP (“generally-accepted accounting principles”) presentation of earnings and net worth.</p><p>Much of our huge value creation in insurance is attributable to Berkshire’s good luck in my 1986 hiring of Ajit Jain. We first met on a Saturday morning, and I quickly asked Ajit what his insurance experience had been. He replied, “None.”</p><p>I said, “Nobody’s perfect,” and hired him. That was my lucky day: Ajit actually was as perfect a choice as could have been made. Better yet, he continues to be – 35 years later.</p><p>One final thought about insurance: I believe that it is likely – but far from assured – that Berkshire’s float can be maintained without our incurring a long-term underwriting loss. I am certain, however, that there will be some years when we experience such losses, perhaps involving very large sums.</p><p>Berkshire is constructed to handle catastrophic events as no other insurer – and that priority will remain long after Charlie and I are gone.</p><h2>Our Four Giants</h2><p>Through Berkshire, our shareholders own many dozens of businesses. Some of these, in turn, have a collection of subsidiaries of their own. For example, Marmon has more than 100 individual business operations, ranging from the leasing of railroad cars to the manufacture of medical devices.</p><p>• Nevertheless, operations of our “Big Four” companies account for a very large chunk of Berkshire’s value. Leading this list is our cluster of insurers. Berkshire effectively owns 100% of this group, whose massive float value we earlier described. The invested assets of these insurers are further enlarged by the extraordinary amount of capital we invest to back up their promises.</p><p>The insurance business is made to order for Berkshire. The product will never be obsolete, and sales volume will generally increase along with both economic growth and inflation. Also, integrity and capital will forever be important. Our company can and will behave well.</p><p>There are, of course, other insurers with excellent business models and prospects. Replication of Berkshire’s operation, however, would be almost impossible.</p><p>• Apple – our runner-up Giant as measured by its yearend market value – is a different sort of holding. Here, our ownership is a mere 5.55%, up from 5.39% a year earlier. That increase sounds like small potatoes. But consider that each 0.1% of Apple’s 2021 earnings amounted to $100 million. We spent no Berkshire funds to gain our accretion. Apple’s repurchases did the job.</p><p>It’s important to understand that only dividends from Apple are counted in the GAAP earnings Berkshire reports – and last year, Apple paid us $785 million of those. Yet our “share” of Apple’s earnings amounted to a staggering $5.6 billion. Much of what the company retained was used to repurchase Apple shares, an act we applaud. Tim Cook, Apple’s brilliant CEO, quite properly regards users of Apple products as his first love, but all of his other constituencies benefit from Tim’s managerial touch as well.</p><p>• BNSF, our third Giant, continues to be the number one artery of American commerce, which makes it an indispensable asset for America as well as for Berkshire. If the many essential products BNSF carries were instead hauled by truck, America’s carbon emissions would soar.</p><p>Your railroad had record earnings of $6 billion in 2021. Here, it should be noted, we are talking about the old-fashioned sort of earnings that we favor: a figure calculated after interest, taxes, depreciation, amortization and all forms of compensation. (Our definition suggests a warning: Deceptive “adjustments” to earnings – to use a polite description – have become both more frequent and more fanciful as stocks have risen. Speaking less politely, I would say that bull markets breed bloviated bull )</p><p>BNSF trains traveled 143 million miles last year and carried 535 million tons of cargo. Both accomplishments far exceed those of any other American carrier. You can be proud of your railroad.</p><p>• BHE, our final Giant, earned a record $4 billion in 2021. That’s up more than 30-fold from the $122 million earned in 2000, the year that Berkshire first purchased a BHE stake. Now, Berkshire owns 91.1% of the company.</p><p>BHE’s record of societal accomplishment is as remarkable as its financial performance. The company had no wind or solar generation in 2000. It was then regarded simply as a relatively new and minor participant in the huge electric utility industry. Subsequently, under David Sokol’s and Greg Abel’s leadership, BHE has become a utility powerhouse (no groaning, please) and a leading force in wind, solar and transmission throughout much of the United States.</p><p>Greg’s report on these accomplishments appears on pages A-3 and A-4. The profile you will find there is not in any way one of those currently-fashionable “green-washing” stories. BHE has been faithfully detailing its plans and performance in renewables and transmissions every year since 2007.</p><p>To further review this information, visit BHE’s website at brkenergy.com. There, you will see that the company has long been making climate-conscious moves that soak up all of its earnings. More opportunities lie ahead. BHE has the management, the experience, the capital and the appetite for the huge power projects that our country needs.</p><h2>Investments</h2><p>Now let’s talk about companies we don’t control, a list that again references Apple. Below we list our fifteen largest equity holdings, several of which are selections of Berkshire’s two long-time investment managers, Todd Combs and Ted Weschler. At yearend, this valued pair had total authority in respect to $34 billion of investments, many of which do not meet the threshold value we use in the table. Also, a significant portion of the dollars that Todd and Ted manage are lodged in various pension plans of Berkshire-owned businesses, with the assets of these plans not included in this table.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/d43587e9f59c0ff76e6c04c6bf9af324\" tg-width=\"1047\" tg-height=\"530\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"/>* This is our actual purchase price and also our tax basis.</p><p>** Held by BHE; consequently, Berkshire shareholders have only a 91.1% interest in this position.</p><p>*** Includes a $10 billion investment in Occidental Petroleum, consisting of preferred stock and warrants to buy common stock, a combination now being valued at $10.7 billion.</p><p>In addition to the footnoted Occidental holding and our various common-stock positions, Berkshire also owns a 26.6% interest in Kraft Heinz (accounted for on the “equity” method, not market value, and carried at $13.1 billion) and 38.6% of Pilot Corp., a leader in travel centers that had revenues last year of $45 billion.</p><p>Since we purchased our Pilot stake in 2017, this holding has warranted “equity” accounting treatment. Early in 2023, Berkshire will purchase an additional interest in Pilot that will raise our ownership to 80% and lead to our fully consolidating Pilot’s earnings, assets and liabilities in our financial statements.</p><h2>U.S. Treasury Bills</h2><p>Berkshire’s balance sheet includes $144 billion of cash and cash equivalents (excluding the holdings of BNSF and BHE). Of this sum, $120 billion is held in U.S. Treasury bills, all maturing in less than a year. That stake leaves Berkshire financing about 12 of 1% of the publicly-held national debt.</p><p>Charlie and I have pledged that Berkshire (along with our subsidiaries other than BNSF and BHE) will always hold more than $30 billion of cash and equivalents. We want your company to be financially impregnable and never dependent on the kindness of strangers (or even that of friends). Both of us like to sleep soundly, and we want our creditors, insurance claimants and you to do so as well.</p><h2>But $144 billion?</h2><p>That imposing sum, I assure you, is not some deranged expression of patriotism. Nor have Charlie and I lost our overwhelming preference for business ownership. Indeed, I first manifested my enthusiasm for that 80 years ago, on March 11, 1942, when I purchased three shares of Cities Services preferred stock. Their cost was $114.75 and required all of my savings. (The Dow Jones Industrial Average that day closed at 99, a fact that should scream to you: Never bet against America.)</p><p>After my initial plunge, I always kept at least 80% of my net worth in equities. My favored status throughout that period was 100% – and still is. Berkshire’s current 80%-or-so position in businesses is a consequence of my failure to find entire companies or small portions thereof (that is, marketable stocks) which meet our criteria for long- term holding.</p><p>Charlie and I have endured similar cash-heavy positions from time to time in the past. These periods are never pleasant; they are also never permanent. And, fortunately, we have had a mildly attractive alternative during 2020 and 2021 for deploying capital. Read on.</p><h2>Share Repurchases</h2><p>There are three ways that we can increase the value of your investment. The first is always front and center in our minds: Increase the long-term earning power of Berkshire’s controlled businesses through internal growth or by making acquisitions. Today, internal opportunities deliver far better returns than acquisitions. The size of those opportunities, however, is small compared to Berkshire’s resources.</p><p>Our second choice is to buy non-controlling part-interests in the many good or great businesses that are publicly traded. From time to time, such possibilities are both numerous and blatantly attractive. Today, though, we find little that excites us.</p><p>That’s largely because of a truism: Long-term interest rates that are low push the prices of all productive investments upward, whether these are stocks, apartments, farms, oil wells, whatever. Other factors influence valuations as well, but interest rates will always be important.</p><p>Our final path to value creation is to repurchase Berkshire shares. Through that simple act, we increase your share of the many controlled and non-controlled businesses Berkshire owns. When the price/value equation is right, this path is the easiest and most certain way for us to increase your wealth. (Alongside the accretion of value to continuing shareholders, a couple of other parties gain: Repurchases are modestly beneficial to the seller of the repurchased shares and to society as well.)</p><p>Periodically, as alternative paths become unattractive, repurchases make good sense for Berkshire’s owners. During the past two years, we therefore repurchased 9% of the shares that were outstanding at yearend 2019 for a total cost of $51.7 billion. That expenditure left our continuing shareholders owning about 10% more of all Berkshire businesses, whether these are wholly-owned (such as BNSF and GEICO) or partly-owned (such as Coca-Cola and Moody’s).</p><p>I want to underscore that for Berkshire repurchases to make sense, our shares must offer appropriate value. We don’t want to overpay for the shares of other companies, and it would be value-destroying if we were to overpay when we are buying Berkshire. As of February 23, 2022, since yearend we repurchased additional shares at a cost of $1.2 billion. Our appetite remains large but will always remain price-dependent.</p><p>It should be noted that Berkshire’s buyback opportunities are limited because of its high-class investor base. If our shares were heavily held by short-term speculators, both price volatility and transaction volumes would materially increase. That kind of reshaping would offer us far greater opportunities for creating value by making repurchases. Nevertheless, Charlie and I far prefer the owners we have, even though their admirable buy-and-keep attitudes limit the extent to which long-term shareholders can profit from opportunistic repurchases.</p><p>Finally, one easily-overlooked value calculation specific to Berkshire: As we’ve discussed, insurance “float” of the right sort is of great value to us. As it happens, repurchases automatically increase the amount of “float” per share. That figure has increased during the past two years by 25% – going from $79,387 per “A” share to $99,497, a meaningful gain that, as noted, owes some thanks to repurchases.</p><h2>A Wonderful Man and a Wonderful Business</h2><p>Last year, Paul Andrews died. Paul was the founder and CEO of TTI, a Fort Worth-based subsidiary of Berkshire. Throughout his life – in both his business and his personal pursuits – Paul quietly displayed all the qualities that Charlie and I admire. His story should be told.</p><p>In 1971, Paul was working as a purchasing agent for General Dynamics when the roof fell in. After losing a huge defense contract, the company fired thousands of employees, including Paul.</p><p>With his first child due soon, Paul decided to bet on himself, using $500 of his savings to found Tex-Tronics (later renamed TTI). The company set itself up to distribute small electronic components, and first-year sales totaled $112,000. Today, TTI markets more than one million different items with annual volume of $7.7 billion.</p><p>But back to 2006: Paul, at 63, then found himself happy with his family, his job, and his associates. But he had one nagging worry, heightened because he had recently witnessed a friend’s early death and the disastrous results that followed for that man’s family and business. What, Paul asked himself in 2006, would happen to the many people depending on him if he should unexpectedly die?</p><p>For a year, Paul wrestled with his options. Sell to a competitor? From a strictly economic viewpoint, that course made the most sense. After all, competitors could envision lucrative “synergies” – savings that would be achieved as the acquiror slashed duplicated functions at TTI.</p><p>But . . . Such a purchaser would most certainly also retain its CFO, its legal counsel, its HR unit. Their TTI counterparts would therefore be sent packing. And ugh! If a new distribution center were to be needed, the acquirer’s home city would certainly be favored over Fort Worth.</p><p>Whatever the financial benefits, Paul quickly concluded that selling to a competitor was not for him. He next considered seeking a financial buyer, a species once labeled – aptly so – a leveraged buyout firm. Paul knew, however, that such a purchaser would be focused on an “exit strategy.” And who could know what that would be? Brooding over it all, Paul found himself having no interest in handing his 35-year-old creation over to a reseller.</p><p>When Paul met me, he explained why he had eliminated these two alternatives as buyers. He then summed up his dilemma by saying – in far more tactful phrasing than this – “After a year of pondering the alternatives, I want to sell to Berkshire because you are the only guy left.” So, I made an offer and Paul said “Yes.” One meeting; one lunch; one deal.</p><p>To say we both lived happily ever after is an understatement. When Berkshire purchased TTI, the company employed 2,387. Now the number is 8,043. A large percentage of that growth took place in Fort Worth and environs. Earnings have increased 673%.</p><p>Annually, I would call Paul and tell him his salary should be substantially increased. Annually, he would tell me, “We can talk about that next year, Warren; I’m too busy now.”</p><p>When Greg Abel and I attended Paul’s memorial service, we met children, grandchildren, long-time associates (including TTI’s first employee) and John Roach, the former CEO of a Fort Worth company Berkshire had purchased in 2000. John had steered his friend Paul to Omaha, instinctively knowing we would be a match.</p><p>At the service, Greg and I heard about the multitudes of people and organizations that Paul had silently supported. The breadth of his generosity was extraordinary – geared always to improving the lives of others, particularly those in Fort Worth.</p><p>In all ways, Paul was a class act.</p><p>* * * * * * * * * * * *</p><p>Good luck – occasionally extraordinary luck – has played its part at Berkshire. If Paul and I had not enjoyed a mutual friend – John Roach – TTI would not have found its home with us. But that ample serving of luck was only the beginning. TTI was soon to lead Berkshire to its most important acquisition.</p><p>Every fall, Berkshire directors gather for a presentation by a few of our executives. We sometimes choose the site based upon the location of a recent acquisition, by that means allowing directors to meet the new subsidiary’s CEO and learn more about the acquiree’s activities.</p><p>In the fall of 2009, we consequently selected Fort Worth so that we could visit TTI. At that time, BNSF, which also had Fort Worth as its hometown, was the third-largest holding among our marketable equities. Despite that large stake, I had never visited the railroad’s headquarters.</p><p>Deb Bosanek, my assistant, scheduled our board’s opening dinner for October 22. Meanwhile, I arranged to arrive earlier that day to meet with Matt Rose, CEO of BNSF, whose accomplishments I had long admired. When I made the date, I had no idea that our get-together would coincide with BNSF’s third-quarter earnings report, which was released late on the 22nd.</p><p>The market reacted badly to the railroad’s results. The Great Recession was in full force in the third quarter, and BNSF’s earnings reflected that slump. The economic outlook was also bleak, and Wall Street wasn’t feeling friendly to railroads – or much else.</p><p>On the following day, I again got together with Matt and suggested that Berkshire would offer the railroad a better long-term home than it could expect as a public company. I also told him the maximum price that Berkshire would pay.</p><p>Matt relayed the offer to his directors and advisors. Eleven busy days later, Berkshire and BNSF announced a firm deal. And here I’ll venture a rare prediction: BNSF will be a key asset for Berkshire and our country a century from now.</p><p>The BNSF acquisition would never have happened if Paul Andrews hadn’t sized up Berkshire as the right home for TTI.</p><h2>Thanks</h2><p>I taught my first investing class 70 years ago. Since then, I have enjoyed working almost every year with students of all ages, finally “retiring” from that pursuit in 2018.</p><p>Along the way, my toughest audience was my grandson’s fifth-grade class. The 11-year-olds were squirming in their seats and giving me blank stares until I mentioned Coca-Cola and its famous secret formula. Instantly, every hand went up, and I learned that “secrets” are catnip to kids.</p><p>Teaching, like writing, has helped me develop and clarify my own thoughts. Charlie calls this phenomenon the orangutan effect: If you sit down with an orangutan and carefully explain to it one of your cherished ideas, you may leave behind a puzzled primate, but will yourself exit thinking more clearly.</p><p>Talking to university students is far superior. I have urged that they seek employment in (1) the field and (2) with the kind of people they would select, if they had no need for money. Economic realities, I acknowledge, may interfere with that kind of search. Even so, I urge the students never to give up the quest, for when they find that sort of job, they will no longer be “working.”</p><p>Charlie and I, ourselves, followed that liberating course after a few early stumbles. We both started as part- timers at my grandfather’s grocery store, Charlie in 1940 and I in 1942. We were each assigned boring tasks and paid little, definitely not what we had in mind. Charlie later took up law, and I tried selling securities. Job satisfaction continued to elude us.</p><p>Finally, at Berkshire, we found what we love to do. With very few exceptions, we have now “worked” for many decades with people whom we like and trust. It’s a joy in life to join with managers such as Paul Andrews or the Berkshire families I told you about last year. In our home office, we employ decent and talented people – no jerks. Turnover averages, perhaps, one person per year.</p><p>I would like, however, to emphasize a further item that turns our jobs into fun and satisfaction working</p><p>for you. There is nothing more rewarding to Charlie and me than enjoying the trust of individual long-term shareholders who, for many decades, have joined us with the expectation that we would be a reliable custodian of their funds.</p><p>Obviously, we can’t select our owners, as we could do if our form of operation were a partnership. Anyone can buy shares of Berkshire today with the intention of soon reselling them. For sure, we get a few of that type of shareholder, just as we get index funds that own huge amounts of Berkshire simply because they are required to do so.</p><p>To a truly unusual degree, however, Berkshire has as owners a very large corps of individuals and families that have elected to join us with an intent approaching “til death do us part.” Often, they have trusted us with a large – some might say excessive – portion of their savings.</p><p>Berkshire, these shareholders would sometimes acknowledge, might be far from the best selection they could have made. But they would add that Berkshire would rank high among those with which they would be most comfortable. And people who are comfortable with their investments will, on average, achieve better results than those who are motivated by ever-changing headlines, chatter and promises.</p><p>Long-term individual owners are both the “partners” Charlie and I have always sought and the ones we constantly have in mind as we make decisions at Berkshire. To them we say, “It feels good to ‘work’ for you, and you have our thanks for your trust.”</p><h2>The Annual Meeting</h2><p>Clear your calendar! Berkshire will have its annual gathering of capitalists in Omaha on Friday, April 29th through Sunday, May 1st. The details regarding the weekend are laid out on pages A-1 and A-2. Omaha eagerly awaits you, as do I.</p><p>I will end this letter with a sales pitch. “Cousin” Jimmy Buffett has designed a pontoon “party” boat that is now being manufactured by Forest River, a Berkshire subsidiary. The boat will be introduced on April 29 at our Berkshire Bazaar of Bargains. And, for two days only, shareholders will be able to purchase Jimmy’s masterpiece at a 10% discount. Your bargain-hunting chairman will be buying a boat for his family’s use. Join me.</p><p>February 26, 2022</p><p>Warren E. Buffett Chairman of the Board</p></body></html>\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"BRK.B":"伯克希尔B","BRK.A":"伯克希尔"},"source_url":"","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1125580913","content_text":"Warren Buffett released his annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders on Saturday. The 91-year-old investing legend has been publishing the letter for over six decades and it has become required reading for investors around the world.Warren Buffett said he now considers tech giant Apple as one of the four pillars driving Berkshire Hathaway, the conglomerate of mostly old-economy businesses he’s assembled over the last five decades.In his annual letter to shareholders released on Saturday, the 91-year-old investing legend listed Apple under the heading “Our Four Giants” and even called the company the second-most important after Berkshire’s cluster of insurers, thanks to its chief executive.“Tim Cook, Apple’s brilliant CEO, quite properly regards users of Apple products as his first love, but all of his other constituencies benefit from Tim’s managerial touch as well,” the letter stated.Buffett made clear he is a fan of Cook’s stock repurchase strategy, and how it gives the conglomerate increased ownership of each dollar of the iPhone maker’s earnings without the investor having to lift a finger.“Apple – our runner-up Giant as measured by its yearend market value – is a different sort of holding. Here, our ownership is a mere 5.55%, up from 5.39% a year earlier,” Buffett said in the letter. “That increase sounds like small potatoes. But consider that each 0.1% of Apple’s 2021 earnings amounted to $100 million. We spent no Berkshire funds to gain our accretion. Apple’s repurchases did the job.”Berkshire began buying Apple stock in 2016 under the influence of Buffett’s investing deputies Todd Combs and Ted Weschler. By mid-2018, the conglomerate accumulated 5% ownership of the iPhone maker, a stake that cost $36 billion. Today, the Apple investment is now worth more than $160 billion, taking up 40% of Berkshire’s equity portfolio.“It’s important to understand that only dividends from Apple are counted in the GAAP earnings Berkshire reports – and last year, Apple paid us $785 million of those. Yet our ‘share’ of Apple’s earnings amounted to a staggering $5.6 billion. Much of what the company retained was used to repurchase Apple shares, an act we applaud,” Buffett said.Berkshire is Apple’s largest shareholder, outside of index and exchange-traded fund providers.Buffett also credited his railroad business BNSF and energy segment BHE as two other giants of the conglomerate, which both registered record earnings in 2021.“BNSF, our third Giant, continues to be the number one artery of American commerce, which makes it an indispensable asset for America as well as for Berkshire,” Buffett said. “BHE has become a utility powerhouse and a leading force in wind, solar and transmission throughout much of the United States.”Read the full letter here：To the Shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway Inc.:Charlie Munger, my long-time partner, and I have the job of managing a portion of your savings. We are honored by your trust.Our position carries with it the responsibility to report to you what we would like to know if we were the absentee owner and you were the manager. We enjoy communicating directly with you through this annual letter, and through the annual meeting as well.Our policy is to treat all shareholders equally. Therefore, we do not hold discussions with analysts nor large institutions. Whenever possible, also, we release important communications on Saturday mornings in order to maximize the time for shareholders and the media to absorb the news before markets open on Monday.A wealth of Berkshire facts and figures are set forth in the annual 10-K that the company regularly files with the S.E.C. and that we reproduce on pages K-1 – K-119. Some shareholders will find this detail engrossing; others will simply prefer to learn what Charlie and I believe is new or interesting at Berkshire.Alas, there was little action of that sort in 2021. We did, though, make reasonable progress in increasing the intrinsic value of your shares. That task has been my primary duty for 57 years. And it will continue to be.What You OwnBerkshire owns a wide variety of businesses, some in their entirety, some only in part. The second group largely consists of marketable common stocks of major American companies. Additionally, we own a few non-U.S. equities and participate in several joint ventures or other collaborative activities.Whatever our form of ownership, our goal is to have meaningful investments in businesses with both durable economic advantages and a first-class CEO. Please note particularly that we own stocks based upon our expectations about their long-term business performance and not because we view them as vehicles for timely market moves. That point is crucial: Charlie and I are not stock-pickers; we are business-pickers.I make many mistakes. Consequently, our extensive collection of businesses includes some enterprises that have truly extraordinary economics, many others that enjoy good economic characteristics, and a few that are marginal. One advantage of our common-stock segment is that – on occasion – it becomes easy to buy pieces of wonderful businesses at wonderful prices. That shooting-fish-in-a-barrel experience is very rare in negotiated transactions and never occurs en masse. It is also far easier to exit from a mistake when it has been made in the marketable arena.Surprise, SurpriseHere are a few items about your company that often surprise even seasoned investors:• Many people perceive Berkshire as a large and somewhat strange collection of financial assets. In truth, Berkshire owns and operates more U.S.-based “infrastructure” assets – classified on our balance sheet as property, plant and equipment – than are owned and operated by any other American corporation. That supremacy has never been our goal. It has, however, become a fact.At yearend, those domestic infrastructure assets were carried on Berkshire’s balance sheet at $158 billion. That number increased last year and will continue to increase. Berkshire always will be building.• Every year, your company makes substantial federal income tax payments. In 2021, for example, we paid$3.3 billion while the U.S. Treasury reported total corporate income-tax receipts of $402 billion. Additionally, Berkshire pays substantial state and foreign taxes. “I gave at the office” is an unassailable assertion when made by Berkshire shareholders.Berkshire’s history vividly illustrates the invisible and often unrecognized financial partnership between  government and American businesses. Our tale begins early in 1955, when Berkshire Fine Spinning and Hathaway Manufacturing agreed to merge their businesses. In their requests for shareholder approval, these venerable New England textile companies expressed high hopes for the combination.The Hathaway solicitation, for example, assured its shareholders that “The combination of the resources and managements will result in one of the strongest and most efficient organizations in the textile industry.” That upbeat view was endorsed by the company’s advisor, Lehman Brothers (yes, that Lehman Brothers).I’m sure it was a joyous day in both Fall River (Berkshire) and New Bedford (Hathaway) when the union was consummated. After the bands stopped playing and the bankers went home, however, the shareholders reaped a disaster.In the nine years following the merger, Berkshire’s owners watched the company’s net worth crater from$51.4 million to $22.1 million. In part, this decline was caused by stock repurchases, ill-advised dividends and plant shutdowns. But nine years of effort by many thousands of employees delivered an operating loss as well. Berkshire’s struggles were not unusual: The New England textile industry had silently entered an extended and non-reversible death march.During the nine post-merger years, the U.S. Treasury suffered as well from Berkshire’s troubles. All told, the company paid the government only $337,359 in income tax during that period – a pathetic $100 per day.Early in 1965, things changed. Berkshire installed new management that redeployed available cash and steered essentially all earnings into a variety of good businesses, most of which remained good through the years. Coupling reinvestment of earnings with the power of compounding worked its magic, and shareholders prospered.Berkshire’s owners, it should be noted, were not the only beneficiary of that course correction. Their “silent partner,” the U.S. Treasury, proceeded to collect many tens of billions of dollars from the company in income tax payments. Remember the $100 daily? Now, Berkshire pays roughly $9 million daily to the Treasury.In fairness to our governmental partner, our shareholders should acknowledge – indeed trumpet – the fact that Berkshire’s prosperity has been fostered mightily because the company has operated in America. Our country would have done splendidly in the years since 1965 without Berkshire. Absent our American home, however, Berkshire would never have come close to becoming what it is today. When you see the flag, say thanks.• From an $8.6 million purchase of National Indemnity in 1967, Berkshire has become the world leader in insurance “float” – money we hold and can invest but that does not belong to us. Including a relatively small sum derived from life insurance, Berkshire’s total float has grown from $19 million when we entered the insurance business to $147 billion.So far, this float has cost us less than nothing. Though we have experienced a number of years when insurance losses combined with operating expenses exceeded premiums, overall we have earned a modest 55-year profit from the underwriting activities that generated our float.Of equal importance, float is very sticky. Funds attributable to our insurance operations come and go daily, but their aggregate total is immune from precipitous decline. When it comes to investing float, we can therefore think long-term.If you are not already familiar with the concept of float, I refer you to a long explanation on page A-5. To my surprise, our float increased $9 billion last year, a buildup of value that is important to Berkshire owners though is not reflected in our GAAP (“generally-accepted accounting principles”) presentation of earnings and net worth.Much of our huge value creation in insurance is attributable to Berkshire’s good luck in my 1986 hiring of Ajit Jain. We first met on a Saturday morning, and I quickly asked Ajit what his insurance experience had been. He replied, “None.”I said, “Nobody’s perfect,” and hired him. That was my lucky day: Ajit actually was as perfect a choice as could have been made. Better yet, he continues to be – 35 years later.One final thought about insurance: I believe that it is likely – but far from assured – that Berkshire’s float can be maintained without our incurring a long-term underwriting loss. I am certain, however, that there will be some years when we experience such losses, perhaps involving very large sums.Berkshire is constructed to handle catastrophic events as no other insurer – and that priority will remain long after Charlie and I are gone.Our Four GiantsThrough Berkshire, our shareholders own many dozens of businesses. Some of these, in turn, have a collection of subsidiaries of their own. For example, Marmon has more than 100 individual business operations, ranging from the leasing of railroad cars to the manufacture of medical devices.• Nevertheless, operations of our “Big Four” companies account for a very large chunk of Berkshire’s value. Leading this list is our cluster of insurers. Berkshire effectively owns 100% of this group, whose massive float value we earlier described. The invested assets of these insurers are further enlarged by the extraordinary amount of capital we invest to back up their promises.The insurance business is made to order for Berkshire. The product will never be obsolete, and sales volume will generally increase along with both economic growth and inflation. Also, integrity and capital will forever be important. Our company can and will behave well.There are, of course, other insurers with excellent business models and prospects. Replication of Berkshire’s operation, however, would be almost impossible.• Apple – our runner-up Giant as measured by its yearend market value – is a different sort of holding. Here, our ownership is a mere 5.55%, up from 5.39% a year earlier. That increase sounds like small potatoes. But consider that each 0.1% of Apple’s 2021 earnings amounted to $100 million. We spent no Berkshire funds to gain our accretion. Apple’s repurchases did the job.It’s important to understand that only dividends from Apple are counted in the GAAP earnings Berkshire reports – and last year, Apple paid us $785 million of those. Yet our “share” of Apple’s earnings amounted to a staggering $5.6 billion. Much of what the company retained was used to repurchase Apple shares, an act we applaud. Tim Cook, Apple’s brilliant CEO, quite properly regards users of Apple products as his first love, but all of his other constituencies benefit from Tim’s managerial touch as well.• BNSF, our third Giant, continues to be the number one artery of American commerce, which makes it an indispensable asset for America as well as for Berkshire. If the many essential products BNSF carries were instead hauled by truck, America’s carbon emissions would soar.Your railroad had record earnings of $6 billion in 2021. Here, it should be noted, we are talking about the old-fashioned sort of earnings that we favor: a figure calculated after interest, taxes, depreciation, amortization and all forms of compensation. (Our definition suggests a warning: Deceptive “adjustments” to earnings – to use a polite description – have become both more frequent and more fanciful as stocks have risen. Speaking less politely, I would say that bull markets breed bloviated bull )BNSF trains traveled 143 million miles last year and carried 535 million tons of cargo. Both accomplishments far exceed those of any other American carrier. You can be proud of your railroad.• BHE, our final Giant, earned a record $4 billion in 2021. That’s up more than 30-fold from the $122 million earned in 2000, the year that Berkshire first purchased a BHE stake. Now, Berkshire owns 91.1% of the company.BHE’s record of societal accomplishment is as remarkable as its financial performance. The company had no wind or solar generation in 2000. It was then regarded simply as a relatively new and minor participant in the huge electric utility industry. Subsequently, under David Sokol’s and Greg Abel’s leadership, BHE has become a utility powerhouse (no groaning, please) and a leading force in wind, solar and transmission throughout much of the United States.Greg’s report on these accomplishments appears on pages A-3 and A-4. The profile you will find there is not in any way one of those currently-fashionable “green-washing” stories. BHE has been faithfully detailing its plans and performance in renewables and transmissions every year since 2007.To further review this information, visit BHE’s website at brkenergy.com. There, you will see that the company has long been making climate-conscious moves that soak up all of its earnings. More opportunities lie ahead. BHE has the management, the experience, the capital and the appetite for the huge power projects that our country needs.InvestmentsNow let’s talk about companies we don’t control, a list that again references Apple. Below we list our fifteen largest equity holdings, several of which are selections of Berkshire’s two long-time investment managers, Todd Combs and Ted Weschler. At yearend, this valued pair had total authority in respect to $34 billion of investments, many of which do not meet the threshold value we use in the table. Also, a significant portion of the dollars that Todd and Ted manage are lodged in various pension plans of Berkshire-owned businesses, with the assets of these plans not included in this table.* This is our actual purchase price and also our tax basis.** Held by BHE; consequently, Berkshire shareholders have only a 91.1% interest in this position.*** Includes a $10 billion investment in Occidental Petroleum, consisting of preferred stock and warrants to buy common stock, a combination now being valued at $10.7 billion.In addition to the footnoted Occidental holding and our various common-stock positions, Berkshire also owns a 26.6% interest in Kraft Heinz (accounted for on the “equity” method, not market value, and carried at $13.1 billion) and 38.6% of Pilot Corp., a leader in travel centers that had revenues last year of $45 billion.Since we purchased our Pilot stake in 2017, this holding has warranted “equity” accounting treatment. Early in 2023, Berkshire will purchase an additional interest in Pilot that will raise our ownership to 80% and lead to our fully consolidating Pilot’s earnings, assets and liabilities in our financial statements.U.S. Treasury BillsBerkshire’s balance sheet includes $144 billion of cash and cash equivalents (excluding the holdings of BNSF and BHE). Of this sum, $120 billion is held in U.S. Treasury bills, all maturing in less than a year. That stake leaves Berkshire financing about 12 of 1% of the publicly-held national debt.Charlie and I have pledged that Berkshire (along with our subsidiaries other than BNSF and BHE) will always hold more than $30 billion of cash and equivalents. We want your company to be financially impregnable and never dependent on the kindness of strangers (or even that of friends). Both of us like to sleep soundly, and we want our creditors, insurance claimants and you to do so as well.But $144 billion?That imposing sum, I assure you, is not some deranged expression of patriotism. Nor have Charlie and I lost our overwhelming preference for business ownership. Indeed, I first manifested my enthusiasm for that 80 years ago, on March 11, 1942, when I purchased three shares of Cities Services preferred stock. Their cost was $114.75 and required all of my savings. (The Dow Jones Industrial Average that day closed at 99, a fact that should scream to you: Never bet against America.)After my initial plunge, I always kept at least 80% of my net worth in equities. My favored status throughout that period was 100% – and still is. Berkshire’s current 80%-or-so position in businesses is a consequence of my failure to find entire companies or small portions thereof (that is, marketable stocks) which meet our criteria for long- term holding.Charlie and I have endured similar cash-heavy positions from time to time in the past. These periods are never pleasant; they are also never permanent. And, fortunately, we have had a mildly attractive alternative during 2020 and 2021 for deploying capital. Read on.Share RepurchasesThere are three ways that we can increase the value of your investment. The first is always front and center in our minds: Increase the long-term earning power of Berkshire’s controlled businesses through internal growth or by making acquisitions. Today, internal opportunities deliver far better returns than acquisitions. The size of those opportunities, however, is small compared to Berkshire’s resources.Our second choice is to buy non-controlling part-interests in the many good or great businesses that are publicly traded. From time to time, such possibilities are both numerous and blatantly attractive. Today, though, we find little that excites us.That’s largely because of a truism: Long-term interest rates that are low push the prices of all productive investments upward, whether these are stocks, apartments, farms, oil wells, whatever. Other factors influence valuations as well, but interest rates will always be important.Our final path to value creation is to repurchase Berkshire shares. Through that simple act, we increase your share of the many controlled and non-controlled businesses Berkshire owns. When the price/value equation is right, this path is the easiest and most certain way for us to increase your wealth. (Alongside the accretion of value to continuing shareholders, a couple of other parties gain: Repurchases are modestly beneficial to the seller of the repurchased shares and to society as well.)Periodically, as alternative paths become unattractive, repurchases make good sense for Berkshire’s owners. During the past two years, we therefore repurchased 9% of the shares that were outstanding at yearend 2019 for a total cost of $51.7 billion. That expenditure left our continuing shareholders owning about 10% more of all Berkshire businesses, whether these are wholly-owned (such as BNSF and GEICO) or partly-owned (such as Coca-Cola and Moody’s).I want to underscore that for Berkshire repurchases to make sense, our shares must offer appropriate value. We don’t want to overpay for the shares of other companies, and it would be value-destroying if we were to overpay when we are buying Berkshire. As of February 23, 2022, since yearend we repurchased additional shares at a cost of $1.2 billion. Our appetite remains large but will always remain price-dependent.It should be noted that Berkshire’s buyback opportunities are limited because of its high-class investor base. If our shares were heavily held by short-term speculators, both price volatility and transaction volumes would materially increase. That kind of reshaping would offer us far greater opportunities for creating value by making repurchases. Nevertheless, Charlie and I far prefer the owners we have, even though their admirable buy-and-keep attitudes limit the extent to which long-term shareholders can profit from opportunistic repurchases.Finally, one easily-overlooked value calculation specific to Berkshire: As we’ve discussed, insurance “float” of the right sort is of great value to us. As it happens, repurchases automatically increase the amount of “float” per share. That figure has increased during the past two years by 25% – going from $79,387 per “A” share to $99,497, a meaningful gain that, as noted, owes some thanks to repurchases.A Wonderful Man and a Wonderful BusinessLast year, Paul Andrews died. Paul was the founder and CEO of TTI, a Fort Worth-based subsidiary of Berkshire. Throughout his life – in both his business and his personal pursuits – Paul quietly displayed all the qualities that Charlie and I admire. His story should be told.In 1971, Paul was working as a purchasing agent for General Dynamics when the roof fell in. After losing a huge defense contract, the company fired thousands of employees, including Paul.With his first child due soon, Paul decided to bet on himself, using $500 of his savings to found Tex-Tronics (later renamed TTI). The company set itself up to distribute small electronic components, and first-year sales totaled $112,000. Today, TTI markets more than one million different items with annual volume of $7.7 billion.But back to 2006: Paul, at 63, then found himself happy with his family, his job, and his associates. But he had one nagging worry, heightened because he had recently witnessed a friend’s early death and the disastrous results that followed for that man’s family and business. What, Paul asked himself in 2006, would happen to the many people depending on him if he should unexpectedly die?For a year, Paul wrestled with his options. Sell to a competitor? From a strictly economic viewpoint, that course made the most sense. After all, competitors could envision lucrative “synergies” – savings that would be achieved as the acquiror slashed duplicated functions at TTI.But . . . Such a purchaser would most certainly also retain its CFO, its legal counsel, its HR unit. Their TTI counterparts would therefore be sent packing. And ugh! If a new distribution center were to be needed, the acquirer’s home city would certainly be favored over Fort Worth.Whatever the financial benefits, Paul quickly concluded that selling to a competitor was not for him. He next considered seeking a financial buyer, a species once labeled – aptly so – a leveraged buyout firm. Paul knew, however, that such a purchaser would be focused on an “exit strategy.” And who could know what that would be? Brooding over it all, Paul found himself having no interest in handing his 35-year-old creation over to a reseller.When Paul met me, he explained why he had eliminated these two alternatives as buyers. He then summed up his dilemma by saying – in far more tactful phrasing than this – “After a year of pondering the alternatives, I want to sell to Berkshire because you are the only guy left.” So, I made an offer and Paul said “Yes.” One meeting; one lunch; one deal.To say we both lived happily ever after is an understatement. When Berkshire purchased TTI, the company employed 2,387. Now the number is 8,043. A large percentage of that growth took place in Fort Worth and environs. Earnings have increased 673%.Annually, I would call Paul and tell him his salary should be substantially increased. Annually, he would tell me, “We can talk about that next year, Warren; I’m too busy now.”When Greg Abel and I attended Paul’s memorial service, we met children, grandchildren, long-time associates (including TTI’s first employee) and John Roach, the former CEO of a Fort Worth company Berkshire had purchased in 2000. John had steered his friend Paul to Omaha, instinctively knowing we would be a match.At the service, Greg and I heard about the multitudes of people and organizations that Paul had silently supported. The breadth of his generosity was extraordinary – geared always to improving the lives of others, particularly those in Fort Worth.In all ways, Paul was a class act.* * * * * * * * * * * *Good luck – occasionally extraordinary luck – has played its part at Berkshire. If Paul and I had not enjoyed a mutual friend – John Roach – TTI would not have found its home with us. But that ample serving of luck was only the beginning. TTI was soon to lead Berkshire to its most important acquisition.Every fall, Berkshire directors gather for a presentation by a few of our executives. We sometimes choose the site based upon the location of a recent acquisition, by that means allowing directors to meet the new subsidiary’s CEO and learn more about the acquiree’s activities.In the fall of 2009, we consequently selected Fort Worth so that we could visit TTI. At that time, BNSF, which also had Fort Worth as its hometown, was the third-largest holding among our marketable equities. Despite that large stake, I had never visited the railroad’s headquarters.Deb Bosanek, my assistant, scheduled our board’s opening dinner for October 22. Meanwhile, I arranged to arrive earlier that day to meet with Matt Rose, CEO of BNSF, whose accomplishments I had long admired. When I made the date, I had no idea that our get-together would coincide with BNSF’s third-quarter earnings report, which was released late on the 22nd.The market reacted badly to the railroad’s results. The Great Recession was in full force in the third quarter, and BNSF’s earnings reflected that slump. The economic outlook was also bleak, and Wall Street wasn’t feeling friendly to railroads – or much else.On the following day, I again got together with Matt and suggested that Berkshire would offer the railroad a better long-term home than it could expect as a public company. I also told him the maximum price that Berkshire would pay.Matt relayed the offer to his directors and advisors. Eleven busy days later, Berkshire and BNSF announced a firm deal. And here I’ll venture a rare prediction: BNSF will be a key asset for Berkshire and our country a century from now.The BNSF acquisition would never have happened if Paul Andrews hadn’t sized up Berkshire as the right home for TTI.ThanksI taught my first investing class 70 years ago. Since then, I have enjoyed working almost every year with students of all ages, finally “retiring” from that pursuit in 2018.Along the way, my toughest audience was my grandson’s fifth-grade class. The 11-year-olds were squirming in their seats and giving me blank stares until I mentioned Coca-Cola and its famous secret formula. Instantly, every hand went up, and I learned that “secrets” are catnip to kids.Teaching, like writing, has helped me develop and clarify my own thoughts. Charlie calls this phenomenon the orangutan effect: If you sit down with an orangutan and carefully explain to it one of your cherished ideas, you may leave behind a puzzled primate, but will yourself exit thinking more clearly.Talking to university students is far superior. I have urged that they seek employment in (1) the field and (2) with the kind of people they would select, if they had no need for money. Economic realities, I acknowledge, may interfere with that kind of search. Even so, I urge the students never to give up the quest, for when they find that sort of job, they will no longer be “working.”Charlie and I, ourselves, followed that liberating course after a few early stumbles. We both started as part- timers at my grandfather’s grocery store, Charlie in 1940 and I in 1942. We were each assigned boring tasks and paid little, definitely not what we had in mind. Charlie later took up law, and I tried selling securities. Job satisfaction continued to elude us.Finally, at Berkshire, we found what we love to do. With very few exceptions, we have now “worked” for many decades with people whom we like and trust. It’s a joy in life to join with managers such as Paul Andrews or the Berkshire families I told you about last year. In our home office, we employ decent and talented people – no jerks. Turnover averages, perhaps, one person per year.I would like, however, to emphasize a further item that turns our jobs into fun and satisfaction workingfor you. There is nothing more rewarding to Charlie and me than enjoying the trust of individual long-term shareholders who, for many decades, have joined us with the expectation that we would be a reliable custodian of their funds.Obviously, we can’t select our owners, as we could do if our form of operation were a partnership. Anyone can buy shares of Berkshire today with the intention of soon reselling them. For sure, we get a few of that type of shareholder, just as we get index funds that own huge amounts of Berkshire simply because they are required to do so.To a truly unusual degree, however, Berkshire has as owners a very large corps of individuals and families that have elected to join us with an intent approaching “til death do us part.” Often, they have trusted us with a large – some might say excessive – portion of their savings.Berkshire, these shareholders would sometimes acknowledge, might be far from the best selection they could have made. But they would add that Berkshire would rank high among those with which they would be most comfortable. And people who are comfortable with their investments will, on average, achieve better results than those who are motivated by ever-changing headlines, chatter and promises.Long-term individual owners are both the “partners” Charlie and I have always sought and the ones we constantly have in mind as we make decisions at Berkshire. To them we say, “It feels good to ‘work’ for you, and you have our thanks for your trust.”The Annual MeetingClear your calendar! Berkshire will have its annual gathering of capitalists in Omaha on Friday, April 29th through Sunday, May 1st. The details regarding the weekend are laid out on pages A-1 and A-2. Omaha eagerly awaits you, as do I.I will end this letter with a sales pitch. “Cousin” Jimmy Buffett has designed a pontoon “party” boat that is now being manufactured by Forest River, a Berkshire subsidiary. The boat will be introduced on April 29 at our Berkshire Bazaar of Bargains. And, for two days only, shareholders will be able to purchase Jimmy’s masterpiece at a 10% discount. Your bargain-hunting chairman will be buying a boat for his family’s use. Join me.February 26, 2022Warren E. Buffett Chairman of the Board","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":229,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":9032452856,"gmtCreate":1647431685200,"gmtModify":1676534229043,"author":{"id":"4098320171388960","authorId":"4098320171388960","name":"dttw","avatar":"https://static.laohu8.com/default-avatar.jpg","crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"idStr":"4098320171388960","authorIdStr":"4098320171388960"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Hope what you say is will turn out true!","listText":"Hope what you say is will turn out true!","text":"Hope what you say is will turn out true!","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":3,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/9032452856","repostId":"2219750198","repostType":2,"repost":{"id":"2219750198","kind":"highlight","pubTimestamp":1647423480,"share":"https://ttm.financial/m/news/2219750198?lang=&edition=fundamental","pubTime":"2022-03-16 17:38","market":"us","language":"en","title":"2 Electric Vehicle Stocks With Up to 242% Upside, According to Wall Street","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=2219750198","media":"Motley Fool","summary":"Select analysts believe these electric vehicle (EV) stocks could drive investors to big gains.","content":"<html><head></head><body><p>Though there are a lot of supercharged growth opportunities for investors to choose from, the electrification of consumer vehicles and enterprise fleets is perhaps the most no-brainer opportunity to make money over the long run -- at least according to a select few Wall Street analysts.</p><p>Based on a report issued in November by Market Research Future, the aggregate market value of electric vehicles (EVs) is expected to grow by nearly 25% annually between 2022 and 2030. By the turn of the decade, it&#39;ll be nearing an estimated $1 trillion market value.  This is the type of sustainable growth that could make patient investors a lot richer.</p><p>According to the lofty price targets issued by two Wall Street analysts, these well-known electric vehicle stocks offer up to 242% upside over the next year.</p><p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/97d2c054758670280f9819157f495090\" tg-width=\"700\" tg-height=\"466\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"/><span><a href=\"https://laohu8.com/S/TWOA.U\">Two</a> Rivian R1Ts climbing a trail. Image source: Rivian Automotive.</span></p><h2>Rivian Automotive: Implied upside of 242%</h2><p>If you&#39;re looking for true home-run potential in the EV space, the hottest initial public offering of 2021, <b>Rivian Automotive</b> (NASDAQ:RIVN), is the stock to consider. Piper Sandler analyst Alexander Potter recently lowered his firm&#39;s price target on Rivian by $18 a share. Nevertheless, the new target of $130 implies up to 242% upside relative to where Rivian&#39;s shares ended this past week.</p><p>The buzz surrounding Rivian can be boiled down to three catalysts.</p><p>First, long before the company went public, it landed a mammoth order for 100,000 electric vans from e-commerce kingpin <b>Amazon</b>. This September 2019 order validated Rivian as a force to be reckoned with in the EV space, as well as (presumably) gave the company an avenue to generate plenty of future cash flow.</p><p>Second, speaking of cash, Rivian ended the year with $18.4 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and restricted cash. Building an EV company from the ground up isn&#39;t cheap. Rivian is spending $5 billion alone on a manufacturing plant in Georgia that&#39;ll begin production in 2024 and yield 400,000 EVs annually. But having more than $18 billion on hand gives Rivian a much longer runway than most EV start-ups.</p><p>The third catalyst is the uniqueness of Rivian&#39;s EV lineup. In particular, the R1T pickup is effectively a luxury truck that&#39;s catered to people who love the outdoors. With little in the way of direct competition, optimists are banking on the R1T to be a serious moneymaker. Through March 8, Rivian had taken approximately 83,000 reservations for its R1 series vehicles (R1T truck and R1S SUV).</p><p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/8796e6d5500a54d07a5d1f0c65448095\" tg-width=\"700\" tg-height=\"466\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"/><span>R1T door panels on an assembly line. Source: Rivian Automotive.</span></p><p>But reaching $130 a share could prove difficult, if not outright impossible, over the next year. Supply chain concerns that are affecting the entire auto industry are expected to keep Rivian&#39;s 2022 production around 25,000 EVs. Meanwhile, the company has estimated it would have produced closer to 50,000 EVs this year without supply chain constraints.</p><p>Rivian is also contending with public backlash following a recent announcement that it would be increasing prices on its EVs. Notably, the company tried to boost the price of the quad-motor models by $12,000 to account for higher material costs. Although it walked back price hikes for reservations made before March 1, the company genuinely risks pricing some buyers out of its vehicles with its latest increases.</p><p>Even after losing $125 billion in market value since its all-time high, Rivian still has a lot to prove.</p><p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/24b200bca596582257e91880639dc7ef\" tg-width=\"700\" tg-height=\"396\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"/><span>Lucid Air production should total 12,000 to 14,000 units in 2022. Image source: Lucid Group.</span></p><h2>Lucid Group: Implied upside of 96%</h2><p>Another EV stock with massive upside potential is <b>Lucid Group</b> (NASDAQ:LCID). According to <b>Citigroup</b> analyst Itay Michaeli, Lucid can reach $45 a share, representing upside of 96%.</p><p>What makes Lucid so intriguing to investors is its potential to become the next <b>Tesla</b>. After watching Tesla make millionaires out of early investors, everyone wants to own the next Tesla of the EV space.</p><p>The Lucid Air sedan comes with a variety of upgrade options, can produce north of 1,100 horsepower, and will set buyers back anywhere from $77,000 to around $169,000. It&#39;s every bit a luxury EV sedan, and it&#39;s a direct competitor to the Tesla Model S. Even though Tesla&#39;s focus these days is on mass-producing the more affordable Model 3, Lucid is attempting to enter the EV market by riding Tesla&#39;s coattails and capturing demand from well-to-do buyers.</p><p>Similar to Rivian, there are tangible signs of promise for Lucid Group. The company noted in its year-end report that it had more than 25,000 reservations for its luxury sedans that could total over $2.4 billion in potential future sales.</p><p>Furthermore, it ended 2021 with approximately $6.2 billion in cash. While not as much capital as Rivian, $6.2 billion in cash gives Lucid plenty of breathing room to ramp up production at its Casa Grande manufacturing plant in Arizona. The company also recently announced plans to open a manufacturing facility in Saudi Arabia that could produce up to 150,000 EVs annually.</p><p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/4dc6c746d33a8c89780dd5fcdbfa7e94\" tg-width=\"700\" tg-height=\"466\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"/><span>Image source: Lucid Group.</span></p><p>But this is another instance where hitting Wall Street&#39;s lofty price targets will prove challenging. Supply chain issues are also wreaking havoc on Lucid. The company&#39;s year-end report offered production guidance of 12,000 EVs to 14,000 EVs in 2022, which is well below a prior forecast of 20,000 EVs that were expected to be produced this year.</p><p>What&#39;s more, Lucid Group took a page out of Tesla&#39;s book (in a bad way) and pushed out the debut of its SUV, known as the Lucid Gravity. Initially expected to make its debut in 2023, the EV SUV is now expected by the first half of 2024. That&#39;s <a href=\"https://laohu8.com/S/AONE.U\">one</a> less near-term catalyst, which makes it even more unlikely that Lucid sees $45 anytime soon.</p><p>My Foolish colleague Leo Sun also pointed out that Lucid&#39;s cash pile comes with a potential pitfall. Specifically, the company issued $1.75 billion in convertible debt in December to raise cash. Bulking up its debt may not prove wise for a company that looks to be years away from profitability.</p></body></html>","source":"fool_stock","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>2 Electric Vehicle Stocks With Up to 242% Upside, According to Wall Street</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\n2 Electric Vehicle Stocks With Up to 242% Upside, According to Wall Street\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2022-03-16 17:38 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/03/16/2-electric-vehicle-stocks-242-upside-wall-street/><strong>Motley Fool</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>Though there are a lot of supercharged growth opportunities for investors to choose from, the electrification of consumer vehicles and enterprise fleets is perhaps the most no-brainer opportunity to ...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/03/16/2-electric-vehicle-stocks-242-upside-wall-street/\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"BK4534":"瑞士信贷持仓","BK4527":"明星科技股","BK4581":"高盛持仓","BK4551":"寇图资本持仓","BK4550":"红杉资本持仓","BK4555":"新能源车","BK4533":"AQR资本管理(全球第二大对冲基金)","LCID":"Lucid Group Inc","BK4099":"汽车制造商","RIVN":"Rivian Automotive, Inc.","BK4511":"特斯拉概念","BK4574":"无人驾驶","BK4548":"巴美列捷福持仓"},"source_url":"https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/03/16/2-electric-vehicle-stocks-242-upside-wall-street/","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"2219750198","content_text":"Though there are a lot of supercharged growth opportunities for investors to choose from, the electrification of consumer vehicles and enterprise fleets is perhaps the most no-brainer opportunity to make money over the long run -- at least according to a select few Wall Street analysts.Based on a report issued in November by Market Research Future, the aggregate market value of electric vehicles (EVs) is expected to grow by nearly 25% annually between 2022 and 2030. By the turn of the decade, it'll be nearing an estimated $1 trillion market value.  This is the type of sustainable growth that could make patient investors a lot richer.According to the lofty price targets issued by two Wall Street analysts, these well-known electric vehicle stocks offer up to 242% upside over the next year.Two Rivian R1Ts climbing a trail. Image source: Rivian Automotive.Rivian Automotive: Implied upside of 242%If you're looking for true home-run potential in the EV space, the hottest initial public offering of 2021, Rivian Automotive (NASDAQ:RIVN), is the stock to consider. Piper Sandler analyst Alexander Potter recently lowered his firm's price target on Rivian by $18 a share. Nevertheless, the new target of $130 implies up to 242% upside relative to where Rivian's shares ended this past week.The buzz surrounding Rivian can be boiled down to three catalysts.First, long before the company went public, it landed a mammoth order for 100,000 electric vans from e-commerce kingpin Amazon. This September 2019 order validated Rivian as a force to be reckoned with in the EV space, as well as (presumably) gave the company an avenue to generate plenty of future cash flow.Second, speaking of cash, Rivian ended the year with $18.4 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and restricted cash. Building an EV company from the ground up isn't cheap. Rivian is spending $5 billion alone on a manufacturing plant in Georgia that'll begin production in 2024 and yield 400,000 EVs annually. But having more than $18 billion on hand gives Rivian a much longer runway than most EV start-ups.The third catalyst is the uniqueness of Rivian's EV lineup. In particular, the R1T pickup is effectively a luxury truck that's catered to people who love the outdoors. With little in the way of direct competition, optimists are banking on the R1T to be a serious moneymaker. Through March 8, Rivian had taken approximately 83,000 reservations for its R1 series vehicles (R1T truck and R1S SUV).R1T door panels on an assembly line. Source: Rivian Automotive.But reaching $130 a share could prove difficult, if not outright impossible, over the next year. Supply chain concerns that are affecting the entire auto industry are expected to keep Rivian's 2022 production around 25,000 EVs. Meanwhile, the company has estimated it would have produced closer to 50,000 EVs this year without supply chain constraints.Rivian is also contending with public backlash following a recent announcement that it would be increasing prices on its EVs. Notably, the company tried to boost the price of the quad-motor models by $12,000 to account for higher material costs. Although it walked back price hikes for reservations made before March 1, the company genuinely risks pricing some buyers out of its vehicles with its latest increases.Even after losing $125 billion in market value since its all-time high, Rivian still has a lot to prove.Lucid Air production should total 12,000 to 14,000 units in 2022. Image source: Lucid Group.Lucid Group: Implied upside of 96%Another EV stock with massive upside potential is Lucid Group (NASDAQ:LCID). According to Citigroup analyst Itay Michaeli, Lucid can reach $45 a share, representing upside of 96%.What makes Lucid so intriguing to investors is its potential to become the next Tesla. After watching Tesla make millionaires out of early investors, everyone wants to own the next Tesla of the EV space.The Lucid Air sedan comes with a variety of upgrade options, can produce north of 1,100 horsepower, and will set buyers back anywhere from $77,000 to around $169,000. It's every bit a luxury EV sedan, and it's a direct competitor to the Tesla Model S. Even though Tesla's focus these days is on mass-producing the more affordable Model 3, Lucid is attempting to enter the EV market by riding Tesla's coattails and capturing demand from well-to-do buyers.Similar to Rivian, there are tangible signs of promise for Lucid Group. The company noted in its year-end report that it had more than 25,000 reservations for its luxury sedans that could total over $2.4 billion in potential future sales.Furthermore, it ended 2021 with approximately $6.2 billion in cash. While not as much capital as Rivian, $6.2 billion in cash gives Lucid plenty of breathing room to ramp up production at its Casa Grande manufacturing plant in Arizona. The company also recently announced plans to open a manufacturing facility in Saudi Arabia that could produce up to 150,000 EVs annually.Image source: Lucid Group.But this is another instance where hitting Wall Street's lofty price targets will prove challenging. Supply chain issues are also wreaking havoc on Lucid. The company's year-end report offered production guidance of 12,000 EVs to 14,000 EVs in 2022, which is well below a prior forecast of 20,000 EVs that were expected to be produced this year.What's more, Lucid Group took a page out of Tesla's book (in a bad way) and pushed out the debut of its SUV, known as the Lucid Gravity. Initially expected to make its debut in 2023, the EV SUV is now expected by the first half of 2024. That's one less near-term catalyst, which makes it even more unlikely that Lucid sees $45 anytime soon.My Foolish colleague Leo Sun also pointed out that Lucid's cash pile comes with a potential pitfall. Specifically, the company issued $1.75 billion in convertible debt in December to raise cash. Bulking up its debt may not prove wise for a company that looks to be years away from profitability.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":263,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":9004609443,"gmtCreate":1642565256444,"gmtModify":1676533723856,"author":{"id":"4098320171388960","authorId":"4098320171388960","name":"dttw","avatar":"https://static.laohu8.com/default-avatar.jpg","crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"idStr":"4098320171388960","authorIdStr":"4098320171388960"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Wow","listText":"Wow","text":"Wow","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":3,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/9004609443","repostId":"1192944252","repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1192944252","kind":"news","pubTimestamp":1642558371,"share":"https://ttm.financial/m/news/1192944252?lang=&edition=fundamental","pubTime":"2022-01-19 10:12","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Coinbase NFT Partnership: 6 Things to Know About the Coinbase-Mastercard Collaboration","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1192944252","media":"InvestorPlace","summary":"Coinbase(NASDAQ:COIN) just can’t seem to stay out of the spotlight. Today, the cryptocurrency exchan","content":"<html><head></head><body><p><b>Coinbase</b>(NASDAQ:<b><u>COIN</u></b>) just can’t seem to stay out of the spotlight. Today, the cryptocurrency exchange announced a collaboration with payment processor and card-issuer <b>Mastercard</b>(NYSE:<b><u>MA</u></b>). As a result of the collaboration, users on Coinbase’s upcoming non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace will be able to buy NFTs using a Mastercard debit or credit card. Coinbase announced its plans for an NFT marketplace late last year.</p><p>The collaboration between the two companies is meant to attract non-crypto users to the NFT world. Using a Mastercard, customers will be able to buy NFTs with fiat dollars instead of cryptocurrencies, like <b>Ethereum</b>(CCC:<b><u>ETH-USD</u></b>). In contrast, the traditional NFT marketplace requires users to convert fiat money into a cryptocurrency to buy NFTs. On top of that, the user must connect their crypto wallet with the NFT marketplace provider. Mastercard and Coinbase are working together to simplify the NFT transaction process and make it easier for the user.</p><p>Mastercard’s Vice President of Digital Assets Raj Dhamodharan, is bullish on NFTs as well, adding that:</p><blockquote>“Getting more people involved safelyand securely is perhaps the best way to help the NFT market thrive. As it does, Mastercard sees even greater potential for NFTs’ underlying tech to go beyond art and collectibles into many more areas.”</blockquote><p>With that said, investors are wondering about the implications that the collaboration could have on COIN stock. Let’s jump right in.</p><p>Coinbase Announces NFT Collaboration with Mastercard</p><ol><li>Coinbase is working with Mastercard to “classify NFTs as ‘digital goods.’” The classification seeks to attract users who may have been previously uncomfortable with purchasing NFTs.</li><li>Mastercard will use recently acquired <b>CipherTrace</b> to help improve the safety of NFT purchases.</li><li>In addition, Coinbase’s NFT marketplace, called Coinbase NFT, will allow users to buy, sell and mint NFTs. While the platform is still under development, awaiting list is currently accessible.</li><li>Coinbase rivals <b>Binance</b> and <b>FTX</b> also launched NFT marketplaces last year.</li><li>2022 could be a pivotal year for NFTs.<b>DappRadar</b> reported that NFTs generated$11.9 billion of sales in Q4 of 2021. Furthermore, DappRadar reported that the first 1o days of 2022 are “looking strong” in terms of NFT sales.</li><li>DappRadar analyst Pedro Herrera added that “Despite the volatile cryptocurrencies cycles, NFTs maintain a stagnant positive trend.”</li></ol></body></html>","source":"lsy1606302653667","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Coinbase NFT Partnership: 6 Things to Know About the Coinbase-Mastercard Collaboration</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nCoinbase NFT Partnership: 6 Things to Know About the Coinbase-Mastercard Collaboration\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2022-01-19 10:12 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://investorplace.com/2022/01/coinbase-nft-partnership-6-things-to-know-about-the-coinbase-mastercard-collaboration/><strong>InvestorPlace</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>Coinbase(NASDAQ:COIN) just can’t seem to stay out of the spotlight. Today, the cryptocurrency exchange announced a collaboration with payment processor and card-issuer Mastercard(NYSE:MA). As a result...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://investorplace.com/2022/01/coinbase-nft-partnership-6-things-to-know-about-the-coinbase-mastercard-collaboration/\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"COIN":"Coinbase Global, Inc."},"source_url":"https://investorplace.com/2022/01/coinbase-nft-partnership-6-things-to-know-about-the-coinbase-mastercard-collaboration/","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1192944252","content_text":"Coinbase(NASDAQ:COIN) just can’t seem to stay out of the spotlight. Today, the cryptocurrency exchange announced a collaboration with payment processor and card-issuer Mastercard(NYSE:MA). As a result of the collaboration, users on Coinbase’s upcoming non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace will be able to buy NFTs using a Mastercard debit or credit card. Coinbase announced its plans for an NFT marketplace late last year.The collaboration between the two companies is meant to attract non-crypto users to the NFT world. Using a Mastercard, customers will be able to buy NFTs with fiat dollars instead of cryptocurrencies, like Ethereum(CCC:ETH-USD). In contrast, the traditional NFT marketplace requires users to convert fiat money into a cryptocurrency to buy NFTs. On top of that, the user must connect their crypto wallet with the NFT marketplace provider. Mastercard and Coinbase are working together to simplify the NFT transaction process and make it easier for the user.Mastercard’s Vice President of Digital Assets Raj Dhamodharan, is bullish on NFTs as well, adding that:“Getting more people involved safelyand securely is perhaps the best way to help the NFT market thrive. As it does, Mastercard sees even greater potential for NFTs’ underlying tech to go beyond art and collectibles into many more areas.”With that said, investors are wondering about the implications that the collaboration could have on COIN stock. Let’s jump right in.Coinbase Announces NFT Collaboration with MastercardCoinbase is working with Mastercard to “classify NFTs as ‘digital goods.’” The classification seeks to attract users who may have been previously uncomfortable with purchasing NFTs.Mastercard will use recently acquired CipherTrace to help improve the safety of NFT purchases.In addition, Coinbase’s NFT marketplace, called Coinbase NFT, will allow users to buy, sell and mint NFTs. While the platform is still under development, awaiting list is currently accessible.Coinbase rivals Binance and FTX also launched NFT marketplaces last year.2022 could be a pivotal year for NFTs.DappRadar reported that NFTs generated$11.9 billion of sales in Q4 of 2021. Furthermore, DappRadar reported that the first 1o days of 2022 are “looking strong” in terms of NFT sales.DappRadar analyst Pedro Herrera added that “Despite the volatile cryptocurrencies cycles, NFTs maintain a stagnant positive trend.”","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":200,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":9095680457,"gmtCreate":1644895390535,"gmtModify":1676533973461,"author":{"id":"4098320171388960","authorId":"4098320171388960","name":"dttw","avatar":"https://static.laohu8.com/default-avatar.jpg","crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"idStr":"4098320171388960","authorIdStr":"4098320171388960"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"👍👍","listText":"👍👍","text":"👍👍","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":0,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/9095680457","repostId":"1154163923","repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1154163923","kind":"news","pubTimestamp":1644892423,"share":"https://ttm.financial/m/news/1154163923?lang=&edition=fundamental","pubTime":"2022-02-15 10:33","market":"us","language":"en","title":"George Soros Just Revealed He Bought Rivian Stock, Should You?","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1154163923","media":"Motley Fool","summary":"Key PointsA lower price may still not make an investment today a bargain.In a 13F filing with the Se","content":"<html><head></head><body><p>Key Points</p><ul><li>A lower price may still not make an investment today a bargain.</li></ul><p>In a 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Friday, the investment fund run by billionaire investor George Soros revealed a stake in electric vehicle (EV) start-up <a href=\"https://laohu8.com/S/RIVN\"><b>Rivian Automotive</b></a> obtained in the fourth quarter of 2021.</p><p>Soros Fund Management disclosed it held slightly fewer than 20 million shares of Rivian by the end of 2021. That stake was worth more than $2 billion at the time, but the stock has so far plummeted in 2022. That means investors today could get Rivian shares at an almost 40% discount to where Soros bought in. Some investors are jumping in today thinking that&#39;s a bargain, but it&#39;s worth taking a closer look.</p><p>Thoughthe stock popped today on the newsof Soros&#39; investment, Rivian shares are still down more than 36% year to date. Retail investors may feel like they are getting a nice discount compared to the Wall Street titan. After all, Soros is currently down about $700 million on that investment even after today&#39;s share-price pop.</p><p>And George Soros isn&#39;t the only large investor in Rivian. <b>Amazon</b> and <b>Ford Motor</b> recorded gains of $11.8 billion and $8.2 billion, respectively, in their fourth-quarter reports from investments made in Rivian prior to its initial public offering (IPO). Amazon didn&#39;t just take a stake in Rivian for investment gains, however. The company is also planning to receive up to 100,000 of Rivian&#39;s electric delivery vans to aid its quest toward a zero emissions fleet.</p><p>But even with the 2022 plunge in Rivian shares, the company is still valued with amarket capof nearly $60 billion. That valuation comes after the company announced it only shipped about 1,000 vehicles as of Dec. 31, 2021. Rivian is clearly priced for success as it aims to start manufacturing at scale and shipping its electric delivery vans, pickup trucks, and SUVs.</p><p>Investors should be prepared for volatility and potential setbacks even with a long-term outlook. The next update from the company to monitor its progress will come on March 10 when it reports its first-quarter financial results.</p></body></html>","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>George Soros Just Revealed He Bought Rivian Stock, Should You?</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nGeorge Soros Just Revealed He Bought Rivian Stock, Should You?\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2022-02-15 10:33 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/02/14/george-soros-just-revealed-he-bought-rivian-stock/><strong>Motley Fool</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>Key PointsA lower price may still not make an investment today a bargain.In a 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Friday, the investment fund run by billionaire investor ...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/02/14/george-soros-just-revealed-he-bought-rivian-stock/\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"RIVN":"Rivian Automotive, Inc."},"source_url":"https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/02/14/george-soros-just-revealed-he-bought-rivian-stock/","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1154163923","content_text":"Key PointsA lower price may still not make an investment today a bargain.In a 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Friday, the investment fund run by billionaire investor George Soros revealed a stake in electric vehicle (EV) start-up Rivian Automotive obtained in the fourth quarter of 2021.Soros Fund Management disclosed it held slightly fewer than 20 million shares of Rivian by the end of 2021. That stake was worth more than $2 billion at the time, but the stock has so far plummeted in 2022. That means investors today could get Rivian shares at an almost 40% discount to where Soros bought in. Some investors are jumping in today thinking that's a bargain, but it's worth taking a closer look.Thoughthe stock popped today on the newsof Soros' investment, Rivian shares are still down more than 36% year to date. Retail investors may feel like they are getting a nice discount compared to the Wall Street titan. After all, Soros is currently down about $700 million on that investment even after today's share-price pop.And George Soros isn't the only large investor in Rivian. Amazon and Ford Motor recorded gains of $11.8 billion and $8.2 billion, respectively, in their fourth-quarter reports from investments made in Rivian prior to its initial public offering (IPO). Amazon didn't just take a stake in Rivian for investment gains, however. The company is also planning to receive up to 100,000 of Rivian's electric delivery vans to aid its quest toward a zero emissions fleet.But even with the 2022 plunge in Rivian shares, the company is still valued with amarket capof nearly $60 billion. That valuation comes after the company announced it only shipped about 1,000 vehicles as of Dec. 31, 2021. Rivian is clearly priced for success as it aims to start manufacturing at scale and shipping its electric delivery vans, pickup trucks, and SUVs.Investors should be prepared for volatility and potential setbacks even with a long-term outlook. The next update from the company to monitor its progress will come on March 10 when it reports its first-quarter financial results.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":133,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0}],"lives":[]}