Berkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting Is Saturday. Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About._老虎社区_美港股上老虎

Berkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting Is Saturday. Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About.

MarketWatch2021-04-26

Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and ...

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6fba50d8
·2021-04-27
Nice
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GabbieTeo
·2021-04-27
Follow WSB!
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2
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- koolgal:
  Very excited!
  2021-04-30
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BC1970
·2021-04-27
Good company
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Jieshenggoh
·2021-04-27
OK
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Winkingbear
·2021-04-27
I love Berkshire
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4
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- Ski58:
  Hahahh nIce
  2021-04-27
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Jimmy365
·2021-04-27
Ookok
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1
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HYYOONG
·2021-04-27
Like and comment please! Appreciated!
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6
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- Jimmy365:
  Okokokok
  2021-04-27
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- Acella:
  😀
  2021-04-27
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SimonGoh
·2021-04-27
...
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6
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- Jimmy365:
  Okokok
  2021-04-27
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VSkemama
·2021-04-27
Market to the moon....huat ah....like and comment to huat
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2
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Topwong
·2021-04-27
👍🏻👍🏻
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3
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- Topwong:
  Follow the pro
  2021-04-27
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SuperAngel
·2021-04-27
👍🏻
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1
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US_watchlist
·2021-04-27
Great
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1
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简单就好没错
·2021-04-27
For big capital like BH, to keep 20%+ is quite good enough, But for small capital holder, it’s normal to persue a higher return while take more risk
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mad276
·2021-04-27
Looking forward to this
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MamaA
·2021-04-27
Always interesting to listen in to Berkshire AGM
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陈河马
·2021-04-27
Wow
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Pokpok
·2021-04-27
Hi
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Giffyy
·2021-04-27
Nice
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Mintcandy
·2021-04-26
Mmm
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KelvinChan
·2021-04-26
Wow
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Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About.\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-04-26 22:49 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews><strong>MarketWatch</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and ...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews\">网页链接</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","isBrief":false,"type":0,"news_type":1,"symbol":null,"symbol_name":null,"start_time":0,"source_url":"https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews","article_id":"1184991623","we_media_id":null,"thumbnails":[],"rights":null,"url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1184991623","pubTimestamp":1619448590,"sourceInfo":{"source_id":"lsy1603348471595","name":"MarketWatch"},"weMediaInfo":null,"summary":"Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyba","collect":0,"end_time":0,"defaultTopTitle":"marketwatch.com","property":[],"viewcount":null,"language":"en","relate_stocks":{},"translate_title":"伯克希尔B的年会是周六。以下是沃伦巴菲特可能会被问及的问题。","themeId":null,"isJumpTheme":false,"ttsUrl":null,"symbols_score_info":{"BRK.A":0.9,"BRK.B":0.9},"content_text":"Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and topics like Bitcoin and the SPAC mania at the company’s annual meeting on Saturday.\nThe meeting, normally in Omaha, will take place virtually from Los Angeles, enabling longtime vice chairman Charlie Munger, 97, to join the 90-year-old Buffett for 3½ hours of shareholder questions starting at 1:30 p.m. Eastern time.\nBuffett is hoping to resume the Omaha extravaganza, which he calls a “Woodstock for Capitalists,” in 2022. The outspoken Munger, who didn’t participate in last year’s meeting, is popular with the Berkshire faithful. Buffett has run Berkshire for 56 years.\nBerkshire shareholders will likely be in a good mood with the stock on a roll this year. The class A shares hit a record Monday and are up 0.9% to $412,365 on the session. The class B stock is up 0.7% to $273.96 Monday. The class A stock is up 18% this year, comfortably ahead of the S&P 500’s 12% total return, after badly lagging behind the index in both 2019 and 2020.\nBerkshire’s aggressive stock repurchase program will probably be a major topic at the meeting. Investors are interested in Buffett’s current appetite for buybacks given the stock’s rally this year.\nThe company ramped up its buybacks in the second half of 2020, with about $9 billion repurchased in each of the final two quarters of 2020, up from a total of nearly $7 billion in the first half of the year.\nBefore the meeting on Saturday, Berkshire will release its first-quarter earnings, and investors will be focused on the buyback. The company’s operating profits are expected to be up 6%, to $2.55 a class B share, according to FactSet.\nBarron’shas estimated that Berkshire bought back about $5 billion of stock from year-end through early March based on the share count disclosed in the recent proxy statement. Investors will look to see how much more stock Berkshire repurchased during the rest of March as the share price rose. Our guess is that Berkshire probably didn’t match the fourth-quarter total of $9 billion in the first quarter.\n“I’m interested to see their enthusiasm for the buyback program given the performance of the stock,” says James Shanahan, an Edward Jones analyst, referring to Buffett and Munger.\nBuffett has said Berkshire will be price conscious about buybacks, but has not provided any specifics.\nShanahan sees a rise in the book value to $296,000 a class A share on March 31 from $287,000 at year-end 2020. The stock now trades for about 1.4 times that March 31 estimate, up from a low of around 1.1 times book a year ago and close to the five-year average.\nThere could also be shareholder questions about climate change and diversity at Berkshire. The company has recommended that shareholders reject proposals about providing more disclosure about both issues.\nBuffett is likely to weigh in on the current investment landscape.\nHe wasn’t aggressive on making new investments in 2020, as Berkshire sold a net $8 billion of stocks, including a group of airlines, and stakes inJPMorgan Chase(JPM) andGoldman Sachs Group(GS).\nThis disappointed many holders who hoped Buffett would have been a big buyer of stocks during the selloff and follow his maxim to be “fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”\nBerkshire did establish sizable stakes inVerizon Communications(VZ) andChevron(CVX). Buffett may be asked about those purchases and the outlook for bank stocks and the overall market, which is now trading at lofty valuation, with the S&P 500 at around 23 times projected 2021 earnings.\nBerkshire has also been quiet on acquisitions with only one notable deal in 2020, a roughly $10 billion purchase ofDominion Energy’s(D) natural-gas pipeline business by Berkshire Hathaway’s big utility unit, Berkshire Hathaway Energy.\nBuffett has long sought to land what he has called an “elephant,” or a large acquisition, but that has proven elusive. Berkshire’s only big deal in the past decade was its $33 billion purchase of Precision Castparts in 2016. The deal for the aircraft-parts maker hasn’t gone well, with the company hit by the aerospace downturn in 2020, forcing Berkshire to take a roughly $11 billion write-down. Amid an improving aerospace market, Buffett might be queried about the outlook for Precision Castparts.\nBuffett has complained in the past that aggressive private-equity firms have made it tough for Berkshire to land big deals. Now, the acquisition environment is even tougher amid record stock prices and a big new buyer of private companies in SPACs, or special-purpose acquisition companies, that have raised about $100 billion this year alone to pursue deals.\n“It’s unlikely there will be a major acquisition soon,” Shanahan says. Berkshire handicaps itself by refusing to participate in corporate auctions. Buffett prefers old-style handshake deals and tells potential sellers that Berkshire’s generally hands-off approach to its dozens of subsidiaries makes it an ideal home for their businesses.\nInvestors may ask Buffett about trends in the reinsurance business, an important part of Berkshire’s big property and casualty insurance operations. Pricing has been improving in the P&C market. Investors also may query him about Berkshire’s Geico unit, which has been losing ground to its chief auto-insurance rival,Progressive(PGR) in the past year. Geico and Progressive are the two best-run auto insurers in the country and now rank second and third, respectively, behind State Farm.\nIn a surprise move, Berkshire decided to name one of Buffett’s top investment lieutenants, Todd Combs, as CEO of Geico at the start of 2020. Investors may want to know how long Combs plans to stay at Geico.\nThere also may be questions about the investment performance of Combs and Ted Weschler, who together run an estimated 10% of Berkshire’s $295 billion equity investment portfolio. The two are a good bet to run the entire equity portfolio in the post-Buffett era.\nAnother topic is likely to be the railroad industry given the bidding war forKansas City Southern(KSU) by two leading Canadian railroads. Berkshire owns Burlington Northern Santa Fe, one of the big four railroads in the country. Berkshire is unlikely to get involved in the contest for Kansas City Southern.\nBNSF is probably the single most valuable division within Berkshire and would be worth close to $150 billion, in line with its public rivalUnion Pacific(UNP), if it were a stand-alone company. Berkshire is now valued at around $625 billion.\nBuffett has been a prominent Bitcoin skeptic, having called it “rat poison squared” and not a legitimate asset class. Shareholders may ask what he thinks now that Bitcoin has soared.\nAlso on hand to answer questions will be Berkshire’s vice chairmen, Ajit Jain and Greg Abel, who head Berkshire’s insurance and non-insurance operations, respectively.Barron’shas identified Abel as the most likely successor to Buffett as CEO.\nSome investors—andBarron’s—would like to see Jain, Abel, Combs, and Weschler get more exposure at the meeting as the likely next generation of leadership at Berkshire. But Buffett is a creature of habit and he likes the Warren and Charlie show. So that’s what it will be.","kind":null,"is_publish_news":true,"is_publish_highlight":true,"is_publish_live":false,"is_publish_wemedia":null,"editions":null,"column":"","sentiment":"0","news_tag":"","news_rank":0,"symbols":[],"gpt_button":1},"commentList":[{"id":377087024,"gmtCreate":1619484807868,"gmtModify":1634212408267,"author":{"id":"3581772577454351","authorId":"3581772577454351","name":"6fba50d8","avatar":"https://community-static.tradeup.com/news/default-avatar.jpg","vip":1,"crmLevel":1,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"idStr":"3581772577454351","authorIdStr":"3581772577454351"},"htmlText":"Nice","listText":"Nice","text":"Nice","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":0,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/377087024","repostId":1184991623,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1184991623","pubTimestamp":1619448590,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/1184991623?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-04-26 22:49","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Berkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting Is Saturday. Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About.","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1184991623","media":"MarketWatch","summary":"Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyba","content":"<p>Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and topics like Bitcoin and the SPAC mania at the company’s annual meeting on Saturday.</p>\n<p>The meeting, normally in Omaha, will take place virtually from Los Angeles, enabling longtime vice chairman Charlie Munger, 97, to join the 90-year-old Buffett for 3½ hours of shareholder questions starting at 1:30 p.m. Eastern time.</p>\n<p>Buffett is hoping to resume the Omaha extravaganza, which he calls a “Woodstock for Capitalists,” in 2022. The outspoken Munger, who didn’t participate in last year’s meeting, is popular with the Berkshire faithful. Buffett has run Berkshire for 56 years.</p>\n<p>Berkshire shareholders will likely be in a good mood with the stock on a roll this year. The class A shares hit a record Monday and are up 0.9% to $412,365 on the session. The class B stock is up 0.7% to $273.96 Monday. The class A stock is up 18% this year, comfortably ahead of the S&amp;P 500’s 12% total return, after badly lagging behind the index in both 2019 and 2020.</p>\n<p>Berkshire’s aggressive stock repurchase program will probably be a major topic at the meeting. Investors are interested in Buffett’s current appetite for buybacks given the stock’s rally this year.</p>\n<p>The company ramped up its buybacks in the second half of 2020, with about $9 billion repurchased in each of the final two quarters of 2020, up from a total of nearly $7 billion in the first half of the year.</p>\n<p>Before the meeting on Saturday, Berkshire will release its first-quarter earnings, and investors will be focused on the buyback. The company’s operating profits are expected to be up 6%, to $2.55 a class B share, according to FactSet.</p>\n<p><i>Barron’s</i>has estimated that Berkshire bought back about $5 billion of stock from year-end through early March based on the share count disclosed in the recent proxy statement. Investors will look to see how much more stock Berkshire repurchased during the rest of March as the share price rose. Our guess is that Berkshire probably didn’t match the fourth-quarter total of $9 billion in the first quarter.</p>\n<p>“I’m interested to see their enthusiasm for the buyback program given the performance of the stock,” says James Shanahan, an Edward Jones analyst, referring to Buffett and Munger.</p>\n<p>Buffett has said Berkshire will be price conscious about buybacks, but has not provided any specifics.</p>\n<p>Shanahan sees a rise in the book value to $296,000 a class A share on March 31 from $287,000 at year-end 2020. The stock now trades for about 1.4 times that March 31 estimate, up from a low of around 1.1 times book a year ago and close to the five-year average.</p>\n<p>There could also be shareholder questions about climate change and diversity at Berkshire. The company has recommended that shareholders reject proposals about providing more disclosure about both issues.</p>\n<p>Buffett is likely to weigh in on the current investment landscape.</p>\n<p>He wasn’t aggressive on making new investments in 2020, as Berkshire sold a net $8 billion of stocks, including a group of airlines, and stakes inJPMorgan Chase(JPM) andGoldman Sachs Group(GS).</p>\n<p>This disappointed many holders who hoped Buffett would have been a big buyer of stocks during the selloff and follow his maxim to be “fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”</p>\n<p>Berkshire did establish sizable stakes inVerizon Communications(VZ) andChevron(CVX). Buffett may be asked about those purchases and the outlook for bank stocks and the overall market, which is now trading at lofty valuation, with the S&amp;P 500 at around 23 times projected 2021 earnings.</p>\n<p>Berkshire has also been quiet on acquisitions with only one notable deal in 2020, a roughly $10 billion purchase ofDominion Energy’s(D) natural-gas pipeline business by Berkshire Hathaway’s big utility unit, Berkshire Hathaway Energy.</p>\n<p>Buffett has long sought to land what he has called an “elephant,” or a large acquisition, but that has proven elusive. Berkshire’s only big deal in the past decade was its $33 billion purchase of Precision Castparts in 2016. The deal for the aircraft-parts maker hasn’t gone well, with the company hit by the aerospace downturn in 2020, forcing Berkshire to take a roughly $11 billion write-down. Amid an improving aerospace market, Buffett might be queried about the outlook for Precision Castparts.</p>\n<p>Buffett has complained in the past that aggressive private-equity firms have made it tough for Berkshire to land big deals. Now, the acquisition environment is even tougher amid record stock prices and a big new buyer of private companies in SPACs, or special-purpose acquisition companies, that have raised about $100 billion this year alone to pursue deals.</p>\n<p>“It’s unlikely there will be a major acquisition soon,” Shanahan says. Berkshire handicaps itself by refusing to participate in corporate auctions. Buffett prefers old-style handshake deals and tells potential sellers that Berkshire’s generally hands-off approach to its dozens of subsidiaries makes it an ideal home for their businesses.</p>\n<p>Investors may ask Buffett about trends in the reinsurance business, an important part of Berkshire’s big property and casualty insurance operations. Pricing has been improving in the P&amp;C market. Investors also may query him about Berkshire’s Geico unit, which has been losing ground to its chief auto-insurance rival,Progressive(PGR) in the past year. Geico and Progressive are the two best-run auto insurers in the country and now rank second and third, respectively, behind State Farm.</p>\n<p>In a surprise move, Berkshire decided to name one of Buffett’s top investment lieutenants, Todd Combs, as CEO of Geico at the start of 2020. Investors may want to know how long Combs plans to stay at Geico.</p>\n<p>There also may be questions about the investment performance of Combs and Ted Weschler, who together run an estimated 10% of Berkshire’s $295 billion equity investment portfolio. The two are a good bet to run the entire equity portfolio in the post-Buffett era.</p>\n<p>Another topic is likely to be the railroad industry given the bidding war forKansas City Southern(KSU) by two leading Canadian railroads. Berkshire owns Burlington Northern Santa Fe, one of the big four railroads in the country. Berkshire is unlikely to get involved in the contest for Kansas City Southern.</p>\n<p>BNSF is probably the single most valuable division within Berkshire and would be worth close to $150 billion, in line with its public rivalUnion Pacific(UNP), if it were a stand-alone company. Berkshire is now valued at around $625 billion.</p>\n<p>Buffett has been a prominent Bitcoin skeptic, having called it “rat poison squared” and not a legitimate asset class. Shareholders may ask what he thinks now that Bitcoin has soared.</p>\n<p>Also on hand to answer questions will be Berkshire’s vice chairmen, Ajit Jain and Greg Abel, who head Berkshire’s insurance and non-insurance operations, respectively.<i>Barron’s</i>has identified Abel as the most likely successor to Buffett as CEO.</p>\n<p>Some investors—and<i>Barron’s</i>—would like to see Jain, Abel, Combs, and Weschler get more exposure at the meeting as the likely next generation of leadership at Berkshire. But Buffett is a creature of habit and he likes the Warren and Charlie show. So that’s what it will be.</p>","source":"lsy1603348471595","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>Berkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting Is Saturday. Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About.</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\">\nBerkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting Is Saturday. Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About.\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-04-26 22:49 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews><strong>MarketWatch</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and ...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"BRK.A":"伯克希尔","BRK.B":"伯克希尔B"},"source_url":"https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1184991623","content_text":"Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and topics like Bitcoin and the SPAC mania at the company’s annual meeting on Saturday.\nThe meeting, normally in Omaha, will take place virtually from Los Angeles, enabling longtime vice chairman Charlie Munger, 97, to join the 90-year-old Buffett for 3½ hours of shareholder questions starting at 1:30 p.m. Eastern time.\nBuffett is hoping to resume the Omaha extravaganza, which he calls a “Woodstock for Capitalists,” in 2022. The outspoken Munger, who didn’t participate in last year’s meeting, is popular with the Berkshire faithful. Buffett has run Berkshire for 56 years.\nBerkshire shareholders will likely be in a good mood with the stock on a roll this year. The class A shares hit a record Monday and are up 0.9% to $412,365 on the session. The class B stock is up 0.7% to $273.96 Monday. The class A stock is up 18% this year, comfortably ahead of the S&P 500’s 12% total return, after badly lagging behind the index in both 2019 and 2020.\nBerkshire’s aggressive stock repurchase program will probably be a major topic at the meeting. Investors are interested in Buffett’s current appetite for buybacks given the stock’s rally this year.\nThe company ramped up its buybacks in the second half of 2020, with about $9 billion repurchased in each of the final two quarters of 2020, up from a total of nearly $7 billion in the first half of the year.\nBefore the meeting on Saturday, Berkshire will release its first-quarter earnings, and investors will be focused on the buyback. The company’s operating profits are expected to be up 6%, to $2.55 a class B share, according to FactSet.\nBarron’shas estimated that Berkshire bought back about $5 billion of stock from year-end through early March based on the share count disclosed in the recent proxy statement. Investors will look to see how much more stock Berkshire repurchased during the rest of March as the share price rose. Our guess is that Berkshire probably didn’t match the fourth-quarter total of $9 billion in the first quarter.\n“I’m interested to see their enthusiasm for the buyback program given the performance of the stock,” says James Shanahan, an Edward Jones analyst, referring to Buffett and Munger.\nBuffett has said Berkshire will be price conscious about buybacks, but has not provided any specifics.\nShanahan sees a rise in the book value to $296,000 a class A share on March 31 from $287,000 at year-end 2020. The stock now trades for about 1.4 times that March 31 estimate, up from a low of around 1.1 times book a year ago and close to the five-year average.\nThere could also be shareholder questions about climate change and diversity at Berkshire. The company has recommended that shareholders reject proposals about providing more disclosure about both issues.\nBuffett is likely to weigh in on the current investment landscape.\nHe wasn’t aggressive on making new investments in 2020, as Berkshire sold a net $8 billion of stocks, including a group of airlines, and stakes inJPMorgan Chase(JPM) andGoldman Sachs Group(GS).\nThis disappointed many holders who hoped Buffett would have been a big buyer of stocks during the selloff and follow his maxim to be “fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”\nBerkshire did establish sizable stakes inVerizon Communications(VZ) andChevron(CVX). Buffett may be asked about those purchases and the outlook for bank stocks and the overall market, which is now trading at lofty valuation, with the S&P 500 at around 23 times projected 2021 earnings.\nBerkshire has also been quiet on acquisitions with only one notable deal in 2020, a roughly $10 billion purchase ofDominion Energy’s(D) natural-gas pipeline business by Berkshire Hathaway’s big utility unit, Berkshire Hathaway Energy.\nBuffett has long sought to land what he has called an “elephant,” or a large acquisition, but that has proven elusive. Berkshire’s only big deal in the past decade was its $33 billion purchase of Precision Castparts in 2016. The deal for the aircraft-parts maker hasn’t gone well, with the company hit by the aerospace downturn in 2020, forcing Berkshire to take a roughly $11 billion write-down. Amid an improving aerospace market, Buffett might be queried about the outlook for Precision Castparts.\nBuffett has complained in the past that aggressive private-equity firms have made it tough for Berkshire to land big deals. Now, the acquisition environment is even tougher amid record stock prices and a big new buyer of private companies in SPACs, or special-purpose acquisition companies, that have raised about $100 billion this year alone to pursue deals.\n“It’s unlikely there will be a major acquisition soon,” Shanahan says. Berkshire handicaps itself by refusing to participate in corporate auctions. Buffett prefers old-style handshake deals and tells potential sellers that Berkshire’s generally hands-off approach to its dozens of subsidiaries makes it an ideal home for their businesses.\nInvestors may ask Buffett about trends in the reinsurance business, an important part of Berkshire’s big property and casualty insurance operations. Pricing has been improving in the P&C market. Investors also may query him about Berkshire’s Geico unit, which has been losing ground to its chief auto-insurance rival,Progressive(PGR) in the past year. Geico and Progressive are the two best-run auto insurers in the country and now rank second and third, respectively, behind State Farm.\nIn a surprise move, Berkshire decided to name one of Buffett’s top investment lieutenants, Todd Combs, as CEO of Geico at the start of 2020. Investors may want to know how long Combs plans to stay at Geico.\nThere also may be questions about the investment performance of Combs and Ted Weschler, who together run an estimated 10% of Berkshire’s $295 billion equity investment portfolio. The two are a good bet to run the entire equity portfolio in the post-Buffett era.\nAnother topic is likely to be the railroad industry given the bidding war forKansas City Southern(KSU) by two leading Canadian railroads. Berkshire owns Burlington Northern Santa Fe, one of the big four railroads in the country. Berkshire is unlikely to get involved in the contest for Kansas City Southern.\nBNSF is probably the single most valuable division within Berkshire and would be worth close to $150 billion, in line with its public rivalUnion Pacific(UNP), if it were a stand-alone company. Berkshire is now valued at around $625 billion.\nBuffett has been a prominent Bitcoin skeptic, having called it “rat poison squared” and not a legitimate asset class. Shareholders may ask what he thinks now that Bitcoin has soared.\nAlso on hand to answer questions will be Berkshire’s vice chairmen, Ajit Jain and Greg Abel, who head Berkshire’s insurance and non-insurance operations, respectively.Barron’shas identified Abel as the most likely successor to Buffett as CEO.\nSome investors—andBarron’s—would like to see Jain, Abel, Combs, and Weschler get more exposure at the meeting as the likely next generation of leadership at Berkshire. But Buffett is a creature of habit and he likes the Warren and Charlie show. So that’s what it will be.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"langContent":"EN"},{"id":374782632,"gmtCreate":1619481298826,"gmtModify":1634273139506,"author":{"id":"3554875446114741","authorId":"3554875446114741","name":"GabbieTeo","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/866f3a126be2fa4bacd2d1e9086f1b51","vip":1,"crmLevel":5,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"idStr":"3554875446114741","authorIdStr":"3554875446114741"},"htmlText":"Follow WSB!&nbsp;","listText":"Follow WSB!&nbsp;","text":"Follow WSB!","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":2,"commentSize":1,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/374782632","repostId":1184991623,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1184991623","pubTimestamp":1619448590,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/1184991623?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-04-26 22:49","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Berkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting Is Saturday. Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About.","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1184991623","media":"MarketWatch","summary":"Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyba","content":"<p>Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and topics like Bitcoin and the SPAC mania at the company’s annual meeting on Saturday.</p>\n<p>The meeting, normally in Omaha, will take place virtually from Los Angeles, enabling longtime vice chairman Charlie Munger, 97, to join the 90-year-old Buffett for 3½ hours of shareholder questions starting at 1:30 p.m. Eastern time.</p>\n<p>Buffett is hoping to resume the Omaha extravaganza, which he calls a “Woodstock for Capitalists,” in 2022. The outspoken Munger, who didn’t participate in last year’s meeting, is popular with the Berkshire faithful. Buffett has run Berkshire for 56 years.</p>\n<p>Berkshire shareholders will likely be in a good mood with the stock on a roll this year. The class A shares hit a record Monday and are up 0.9% to $412,365 on the session. The class B stock is up 0.7% to $273.96 Monday. The class A stock is up 18% this year, comfortably ahead of the S&amp;P 500’s 12% total return, after badly lagging behind the index in both 2019 and 2020.</p>\n<p>Berkshire’s aggressive stock repurchase program will probably be a major topic at the meeting. Investors are interested in Buffett’s current appetite for buybacks given the stock’s rally this year.</p>\n<p>The company ramped up its buybacks in the second half of 2020, with about $9 billion repurchased in each of the final two quarters of 2020, up from a total of nearly $7 billion in the first half of the year.</p>\n<p>Before the meeting on Saturday, Berkshire will release its first-quarter earnings, and investors will be focused on the buyback. The company’s operating profits are expected to be up 6%, to $2.55 a class B share, according to FactSet.</p>\n<p><i>Barron’s</i>has estimated that Berkshire bought back about $5 billion of stock from year-end through early March based on the share count disclosed in the recent proxy statement. Investors will look to see how much more stock Berkshire repurchased during the rest of March as the share price rose. Our guess is that Berkshire probably didn’t match the fourth-quarter total of $9 billion in the first quarter.</p>\n<p>“I’m interested to see their enthusiasm for the buyback program given the performance of the stock,” says James Shanahan, an Edward Jones analyst, referring to Buffett and Munger.</p>\n<p>Buffett has said Berkshire will be price conscious about buybacks, but has not provided any specifics.</p>\n<p>Shanahan sees a rise in the book value to $296,000 a class A share on March 31 from $287,000 at year-end 2020. The stock now trades for about 1.4 times that March 31 estimate, up from a low of around 1.1 times book a year ago and close to the five-year average.</p>\n<p>There could also be shareholder questions about climate change and diversity at Berkshire. The company has recommended that shareholders reject proposals about providing more disclosure about both issues.</p>\n<p>Buffett is likely to weigh in on the current investment landscape.</p>\n<p>He wasn’t aggressive on making new investments in 2020, as Berkshire sold a net $8 billion of stocks, including a group of airlines, and stakes inJPMorgan Chase(JPM) andGoldman Sachs Group(GS).</p>\n<p>This disappointed many holders who hoped Buffett would have been a big buyer of stocks during the selloff and follow his maxim to be “fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”</p>\n<p>Berkshire did establish sizable stakes inVerizon Communications(VZ) andChevron(CVX). Buffett may be asked about those purchases and the outlook for bank stocks and the overall market, which is now trading at lofty valuation, with the S&amp;P 500 at around 23 times projected 2021 earnings.</p>\n<p>Berkshire has also been quiet on acquisitions with only one notable deal in 2020, a roughly $10 billion purchase ofDominion Energy’s(D) natural-gas pipeline business by Berkshire Hathaway’s big utility unit, Berkshire Hathaway Energy.</p>\n<p>Buffett has long sought to land what he has called an “elephant,” or a large acquisition, but that has proven elusive. Berkshire’s only big deal in the past decade was its $33 billion purchase of Precision Castparts in 2016. The deal for the aircraft-parts maker hasn’t gone well, with the company hit by the aerospace downturn in 2020, forcing Berkshire to take a roughly $11 billion write-down. Amid an improving aerospace market, Buffett might be queried about the outlook for Precision Castparts.</p>\n<p>Buffett has complained in the past that aggressive private-equity firms have made it tough for Berkshire to land big deals. Now, the acquisition environment is even tougher amid record stock prices and a big new buyer of private companies in SPACs, or special-purpose acquisition companies, that have raised about $100 billion this year alone to pursue deals.</p>\n<p>“It’s unlikely there will be a major acquisition soon,” Shanahan says. Berkshire handicaps itself by refusing to participate in corporate auctions. Buffett prefers old-style handshake deals and tells potential sellers that Berkshire’s generally hands-off approach to its dozens of subsidiaries makes it an ideal home for their businesses.</p>\n<p>Investors may ask Buffett about trends in the reinsurance business, an important part of Berkshire’s big property and casualty insurance operations. Pricing has been improving in the P&amp;C market. Investors also may query him about Berkshire’s Geico unit, which has been losing ground to its chief auto-insurance rival,Progressive(PGR) in the past year. Geico and Progressive are the two best-run auto insurers in the country and now rank second and third, respectively, behind State Farm.</p>\n<p>In a surprise move, Berkshire decided to name one of Buffett’s top investment lieutenants, Todd Combs, as CEO of Geico at the start of 2020. Investors may want to know how long Combs plans to stay at Geico.</p>\n<p>There also may be questions about the investment performance of Combs and Ted Weschler, who together run an estimated 10% of Berkshire’s $295 billion equity investment portfolio. The two are a good bet to run the entire equity portfolio in the post-Buffett era.</p>\n<p>Another topic is likely to be the railroad industry given the bidding war forKansas City Southern(KSU) by two leading Canadian railroads. Berkshire owns Burlington Northern Santa Fe, one of the big four railroads in the country. Berkshire is unlikely to get involved in the contest for Kansas City Southern.</p>\n<p>BNSF is probably the single most valuable division within Berkshire and would be worth close to $150 billion, in line with its public rivalUnion Pacific(UNP), if it were a stand-alone company. Berkshire is now valued at around $625 billion.</p>\n<p>Buffett has been a prominent Bitcoin skeptic, having called it “rat poison squared” and not a legitimate asset class. Shareholders may ask what he thinks now that Bitcoin has soared.</p>\n<p>Also on hand to answer questions will be Berkshire’s vice chairmen, Ajit Jain and Greg Abel, who head Berkshire’s insurance and non-insurance operations, respectively.<i>Barron’s</i>has identified Abel as the most likely successor to Buffett as CEO.</p>\n<p>Some investors—and<i>Barron’s</i>—would like to see Jain, Abel, Combs, and Weschler get more exposure at the meeting as the likely next generation of leadership at Berkshire. But Buffett is a creature of habit and he likes the Warren and Charlie show. So that’s what it will be.</p>","source":"lsy1603348471595","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>Berkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting Is Saturday. Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About.</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\">\nBerkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting Is Saturday. Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About.\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-04-26 22:49 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews><strong>MarketWatch</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and ...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"BRK.A":"伯克希尔","BRK.B":"伯克希尔B"},"source_url":"https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1184991623","content_text":"Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and topics like Bitcoin and the SPAC mania at the company’s annual meeting on Saturday.\nThe meeting, normally in Omaha, will take place virtually from Los Angeles, enabling longtime vice chairman Charlie Munger, 97, to join the 90-year-old Buffett for 3½ hours of shareholder questions starting at 1:30 p.m. Eastern time.\nBuffett is hoping to resume the Omaha extravaganza, which he calls a “Woodstock for Capitalists,” in 2022. The outspoken Munger, who didn’t participate in last year’s meeting, is popular with the Berkshire faithful. Buffett has run Berkshire for 56 years.\nBerkshire shareholders will likely be in a good mood with the stock on a roll this year. The class A shares hit a record Monday and are up 0.9% to $412,365 on the session. The class B stock is up 0.7% to $273.96 Monday. The class A stock is up 18% this year, comfortably ahead of the S&P 500’s 12% total return, after badly lagging behind the index in both 2019 and 2020.\nBerkshire’s aggressive stock repurchase program will probably be a major topic at the meeting. Investors are interested in Buffett’s current appetite for buybacks given the stock’s rally this year.\nThe company ramped up its buybacks in the second half of 2020, with about $9 billion repurchased in each of the final two quarters of 2020, up from a total of nearly $7 billion in the first half of the year.\nBefore the meeting on Saturday, Berkshire will release its first-quarter earnings, and investors will be focused on the buyback. The company’s operating profits are expected to be up 6%, to $2.55 a class B share, according to FactSet.\nBarron’shas estimated that Berkshire bought back about $5 billion of stock from year-end through early March based on the share count disclosed in the recent proxy statement. Investors will look to see how much more stock Berkshire repurchased during the rest of March as the share price rose. Our guess is that Berkshire probably didn’t match the fourth-quarter total of $9 billion in the first quarter.\n“I’m interested to see their enthusiasm for the buyback program given the performance of the stock,” says James Shanahan, an Edward Jones analyst, referring to Buffett and Munger.\nBuffett has said Berkshire will be price conscious about buybacks, but has not provided any specifics.\nShanahan sees a rise in the book value to $296,000 a class A share on March 31 from $287,000 at year-end 2020. The stock now trades for about 1.4 times that March 31 estimate, up from a low of around 1.1 times book a year ago and close to the five-year average.\nThere could also be shareholder questions about climate change and diversity at Berkshire. The company has recommended that shareholders reject proposals about providing more disclosure about both issues.\nBuffett is likely to weigh in on the current investment landscape.\nHe wasn’t aggressive on making new investments in 2020, as Berkshire sold a net $8 billion of stocks, including a group of airlines, and stakes inJPMorgan Chase(JPM) andGoldman Sachs Group(GS).\nThis disappointed many holders who hoped Buffett would have been a big buyer of stocks during the selloff and follow his maxim to be “fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”\nBerkshire did establish sizable stakes inVerizon Communications(VZ) andChevron(CVX). Buffett may be asked about those purchases and the outlook for bank stocks and the overall market, which is now trading at lofty valuation, with the S&P 500 at around 23 times projected 2021 earnings.\nBerkshire has also been quiet on acquisitions with only one notable deal in 2020, a roughly $10 billion purchase ofDominion Energy’s(D) natural-gas pipeline business by Berkshire Hathaway’s big utility unit, Berkshire Hathaway Energy.\nBuffett has long sought to land what he has called an “elephant,” or a large acquisition, but that has proven elusive. Berkshire’s only big deal in the past decade was its $33 billion purchase of Precision Castparts in 2016. The deal for the aircraft-parts maker hasn’t gone well, with the company hit by the aerospace downturn in 2020, forcing Berkshire to take a roughly $11 billion write-down. Amid an improving aerospace market, Buffett might be queried about the outlook for Precision Castparts.\nBuffett has complained in the past that aggressive private-equity firms have made it tough for Berkshire to land big deals. Now, the acquisition environment is even tougher amid record stock prices and a big new buyer of private companies in SPACs, or special-purpose acquisition companies, that have raised about $100 billion this year alone to pursue deals.\n“It’s unlikely there will be a major acquisition soon,” Shanahan says. Berkshire handicaps itself by refusing to participate in corporate auctions. Buffett prefers old-style handshake deals and tells potential sellers that Berkshire’s generally hands-off approach to its dozens of subsidiaries makes it an ideal home for their businesses.\nInvestors may ask Buffett about trends in the reinsurance business, an important part of Berkshire’s big property and casualty insurance operations. Pricing has been improving in the P&C market. Investors also may query him about Berkshire’s Geico unit, which has been losing ground to its chief auto-insurance rival,Progressive(PGR) in the past year. Geico and Progressive are the two best-run auto insurers in the country and now rank second and third, respectively, behind State Farm.\nIn a surprise move, Berkshire decided to name one of Buffett’s top investment lieutenants, Todd Combs, as CEO of Geico at the start of 2020. Investors may want to know how long Combs plans to stay at Geico.\nThere also may be questions about the investment performance of Combs and Ted Weschler, who together run an estimated 10% of Berkshire’s $295 billion equity investment portfolio. The two are a good bet to run the entire equity portfolio in the post-Buffett era.\nAnother topic is likely to be the railroad industry given the bidding war forKansas City Southern(KSU) by two leading Canadian railroads. Berkshire owns Burlington Northern Santa Fe, one of the big four railroads in the country. Berkshire is unlikely to get involved in the contest for Kansas City Southern.\nBNSF is probably the single most valuable division within Berkshire and would be worth close to $150 billion, in line with its public rivalUnion Pacific(UNP), if it were a stand-alone company. Berkshire is now valued at around $625 billion.\nBuffett has been a prominent Bitcoin skeptic, having called it “rat poison squared” and not a legitimate asset class. Shareholders may ask what he thinks now that Bitcoin has soared.\nAlso on hand to answer questions will be Berkshire’s vice chairmen, Ajit Jain and Greg Abel, who head Berkshire’s insurance and non-insurance operations, respectively.Barron’shas identified Abel as the most likely successor to Buffett as CEO.\nSome investors—andBarron’s—would like to see Jain, Abel, Combs, and Weschler get more exposure at the meeting as the likely next generation of leadership at Berkshire. But Buffett is a creature of habit and he likes the Warren and Charlie show. So that’s what it will be.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"comments":[{"id":4182446,"gmtCreate":1619785352183,"gmtModify":1635507130590,"authorId":3559581955535845,"author":{"id":3559581955535845,"idStr":"3559581955535845","authorId":3559581955535845,"name":"koolgal","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/c05274d88ffc0434623e57350c52c70a","vip":2,"crmLevel":6,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"individualDisplayBadges":[]},"repliedAuthorId":0,"objectId":374782632,"type":1,"supId":0,"prevId":0,"content":"Very excited!","text":"Very excited!","html":"Very excited!"}],"langContent":"EN"},{"id":374704490,"gmtCreate":1619480049310,"gmtModify":1634273172161,"author":{"id":"3554847287681495","authorId":"3554847287681495","name":"BC1970","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/0ddbf1d90da79b3d2d9ce69edd1f06d5","vip":1,"crmLevel":6,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"idStr":"3554847287681495","authorIdStr":"3554847287681495"},"htmlText":"Good company","listText":"Good company","text":"Good company","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":0,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/374704490","repostId":1184991623,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1184991623","pubTimestamp":1619448590,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/1184991623?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-04-26 22:49","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Berkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting Is Saturday. Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About.","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1184991623","media":"MarketWatch","summary":"Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyba","content":"<p>Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and topics like Bitcoin and the SPAC mania at the company’s annual meeting on Saturday.</p>\n<p>The meeting, normally in Omaha, will take place virtually from Los Angeles, enabling longtime vice chairman Charlie Munger, 97, to join the 90-year-old Buffett for 3½ hours of shareholder questions starting at 1:30 p.m. Eastern time.</p>\n<p>Buffett is hoping to resume the Omaha extravaganza, which he calls a “Woodstock for Capitalists,” in 2022. The outspoken Munger, who didn’t participate in last year’s meeting, is popular with the Berkshire faithful. Buffett has run Berkshire for 56 years.</p>\n<p>Berkshire shareholders will likely be in a good mood with the stock on a roll this year. The class A shares hit a record Monday and are up 0.9% to $412,365 on the session. The class B stock is up 0.7% to $273.96 Monday. The class A stock is up 18% this year, comfortably ahead of the S&amp;P 500’s 12% total return, after badly lagging behind the index in both 2019 and 2020.</p>\n<p>Berkshire’s aggressive stock repurchase program will probably be a major topic at the meeting. Investors are interested in Buffett’s current appetite for buybacks given the stock’s rally this year.</p>\n<p>The company ramped up its buybacks in the second half of 2020, with about $9 billion repurchased in each of the final two quarters of 2020, up from a total of nearly $7 billion in the first half of the year.</p>\n<p>Before the meeting on Saturday, Berkshire will release its first-quarter earnings, and investors will be focused on the buyback. The company’s operating profits are expected to be up 6%, to $2.55 a class B share, according to FactSet.</p>\n<p><i>Barron’s</i>has estimated that Berkshire bought back about $5 billion of stock from year-end through early March based on the share count disclosed in the recent proxy statement. Investors will look to see how much more stock Berkshire repurchased during the rest of March as the share price rose. Our guess is that Berkshire probably didn’t match the fourth-quarter total of $9 billion in the first quarter.</p>\n<p>“I’m interested to see their enthusiasm for the buyback program given the performance of the stock,” says James Shanahan, an Edward Jones analyst, referring to Buffett and Munger.</p>\n<p>Buffett has said Berkshire will be price conscious about buybacks, but has not provided any specifics.</p>\n<p>Shanahan sees a rise in the book value to $296,000 a class A share on March 31 from $287,000 at year-end 2020. The stock now trades for about 1.4 times that March 31 estimate, up from a low of around 1.1 times book a year ago and close to the five-year average.</p>\n<p>There could also be shareholder questions about climate change and diversity at Berkshire. The company has recommended that shareholders reject proposals about providing more disclosure about both issues.</p>\n<p>Buffett is likely to weigh in on the current investment landscape.</p>\n<p>He wasn’t aggressive on making new investments in 2020, as Berkshire sold a net $8 billion of stocks, including a group of airlines, and stakes inJPMorgan Chase(JPM) andGoldman Sachs Group(GS).</p>\n<p>This disappointed many holders who hoped Buffett would have been a big buyer of stocks during the selloff and follow his maxim to be “fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”</p>\n<p>Berkshire did establish sizable stakes inVerizon Communications(VZ) andChevron(CVX). Buffett may be asked about those purchases and the outlook for bank stocks and the overall market, which is now trading at lofty valuation, with the S&amp;P 500 at around 23 times projected 2021 earnings.</p>\n<p>Berkshire has also been quiet on acquisitions with only one notable deal in 2020, a roughly $10 billion purchase ofDominion Energy’s(D) natural-gas pipeline business by Berkshire Hathaway’s big utility unit, Berkshire Hathaway Energy.</p>\n<p>Buffett has long sought to land what he has called an “elephant,” or a large acquisition, but that has proven elusive. Berkshire’s only big deal in the past decade was its $33 billion purchase of Precision Castparts in 2016. The deal for the aircraft-parts maker hasn’t gone well, with the company hit by the aerospace downturn in 2020, forcing Berkshire to take a roughly $11 billion write-down. Amid an improving aerospace market, Buffett might be queried about the outlook for Precision Castparts.</p>\n<p>Buffett has complained in the past that aggressive private-equity firms have made it tough for Berkshire to land big deals. Now, the acquisition environment is even tougher amid record stock prices and a big new buyer of private companies in SPACs, or special-purpose acquisition companies, that have raised about $100 billion this year alone to pursue deals.</p>\n<p>“It’s unlikely there will be a major acquisition soon,” Shanahan says. Berkshire handicaps itself by refusing to participate in corporate auctions. Buffett prefers old-style handshake deals and tells potential sellers that Berkshire’s generally hands-off approach to its dozens of subsidiaries makes it an ideal home for their businesses.</p>\n<p>Investors may ask Buffett about trends in the reinsurance business, an important part of Berkshire’s big property and casualty insurance operations. Pricing has been improving in the P&amp;C market. Investors also may query him about Berkshire’s Geico unit, which has been losing ground to its chief auto-insurance rival,Progressive(PGR) in the past year. Geico and Progressive are the two best-run auto insurers in the country and now rank second and third, respectively, behind State Farm.</p>\n<p>In a surprise move, Berkshire decided to name one of Buffett’s top investment lieutenants, Todd Combs, as CEO of Geico at the start of 2020. Investors may want to know how long Combs plans to stay at Geico.</p>\n<p>There also may be questions about the investment performance of Combs and Ted Weschler, who together run an estimated 10% of Berkshire’s $295 billion equity investment portfolio. The two are a good bet to run the entire equity portfolio in the post-Buffett era.</p>\n<p>Another topic is likely to be the railroad industry given the bidding war forKansas City Southern(KSU) by two leading Canadian railroads. Berkshire owns Burlington Northern Santa Fe, one of the big four railroads in the country. Berkshire is unlikely to get involved in the contest for Kansas City Southern.</p>\n<p>BNSF is probably the single most valuable division within Berkshire and would be worth close to $150 billion, in line with its public rivalUnion Pacific(UNP), if it were a stand-alone company. Berkshire is now valued at around $625 billion.</p>\n<p>Buffett has been a prominent Bitcoin skeptic, having called it “rat poison squared” and not a legitimate asset class. Shareholders may ask what he thinks now that Bitcoin has soared.</p>\n<p>Also on hand to answer questions will be Berkshire’s vice chairmen, Ajit Jain and Greg Abel, who head Berkshire’s insurance and non-insurance operations, respectively.<i>Barron’s</i>has identified Abel as the most likely successor to Buffett as CEO.</p>\n<p>Some investors—and<i>Barron’s</i>—would like to see Jain, Abel, Combs, and Weschler get more exposure at the meeting as the likely next generation of leadership at Berkshire. But Buffett is a creature of habit and he likes the Warren and Charlie show. So that’s what it will be.</p>","source":"lsy1603348471595","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>Berkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting Is Saturday. Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About.</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\">\nBerkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting Is Saturday. Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About.\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-04-26 22:49 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews><strong>MarketWatch</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and ...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"BRK.A":"伯克希尔","BRK.B":"伯克希尔B"},"source_url":"https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1184991623","content_text":"Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and topics like Bitcoin and the SPAC mania at the company’s annual meeting on Saturday.\nThe meeting, normally in Omaha, will take place virtually from Los Angeles, enabling longtime vice chairman Charlie Munger, 97, to join the 90-year-old Buffett for 3½ hours of shareholder questions starting at 1:30 p.m. Eastern time.\nBuffett is hoping to resume the Omaha extravaganza, which he calls a “Woodstock for Capitalists,” in 2022. The outspoken Munger, who didn’t participate in last year’s meeting, is popular with the Berkshire faithful. Buffett has run Berkshire for 56 years.\nBerkshire shareholders will likely be in a good mood with the stock on a roll this year. The class A shares hit a record Monday and are up 0.9% to $412,365 on the session. The class B stock is up 0.7% to $273.96 Monday. The class A stock is up 18% this year, comfortably ahead of the S&P 500’s 12% total return, after badly lagging behind the index in both 2019 and 2020.\nBerkshire’s aggressive stock repurchase program will probably be a major topic at the meeting. Investors are interested in Buffett’s current appetite for buybacks given the stock’s rally this year.\nThe company ramped up its buybacks in the second half of 2020, with about $9 billion repurchased in each of the final two quarters of 2020, up from a total of nearly $7 billion in the first half of the year.\nBefore the meeting on Saturday, Berkshire will release its first-quarter earnings, and investors will be focused on the buyback. The company’s operating profits are expected to be up 6%, to $2.55 a class B share, according to FactSet.\nBarron’shas estimated that Berkshire bought back about $5 billion of stock from year-end through early March based on the share count disclosed in the recent proxy statement. Investors will look to see how much more stock Berkshire repurchased during the rest of March as the share price rose. Our guess is that Berkshire probably didn’t match the fourth-quarter total of $9 billion in the first quarter.\n“I’m interested to see their enthusiasm for the buyback program given the performance of the stock,” says James Shanahan, an Edward Jones analyst, referring to Buffett and Munger.\nBuffett has said Berkshire will be price conscious about buybacks, but has not provided any specifics.\nShanahan sees a rise in the book value to $296,000 a class A share on March 31 from $287,000 at year-end 2020. The stock now trades for about 1.4 times that March 31 estimate, up from a low of around 1.1 times book a year ago and close to the five-year average.\nThere could also be shareholder questions about climate change and diversity at Berkshire. The company has recommended that shareholders reject proposals about providing more disclosure about both issues.\nBuffett is likely to weigh in on the current investment landscape.\nHe wasn’t aggressive on making new investments in 2020, as Berkshire sold a net $8 billion of stocks, including a group of airlines, and stakes inJPMorgan Chase(JPM) andGoldman Sachs Group(GS).\nThis disappointed many holders who hoped Buffett would have been a big buyer of stocks during the selloff and follow his maxim to be “fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”\nBerkshire did establish sizable stakes inVerizon Communications(VZ) andChevron(CVX). Buffett may be asked about those purchases and the outlook for bank stocks and the overall market, which is now trading at lofty valuation, with the S&P 500 at around 23 times projected 2021 earnings.\nBerkshire has also been quiet on acquisitions with only one notable deal in 2020, a roughly $10 billion purchase ofDominion Energy’s(D) natural-gas pipeline business by Berkshire Hathaway’s big utility unit, Berkshire Hathaway Energy.\nBuffett has long sought to land what he has called an “elephant,” or a large acquisition, but that has proven elusive. Berkshire’s only big deal in the past decade was its $33 billion purchase of Precision Castparts in 2016. The deal for the aircraft-parts maker hasn’t gone well, with the company hit by the aerospace downturn in 2020, forcing Berkshire to take a roughly $11 billion write-down. Amid an improving aerospace market, Buffett might be queried about the outlook for Precision Castparts.\nBuffett has complained in the past that aggressive private-equity firms have made it tough for Berkshire to land big deals. Now, the acquisition environment is even tougher amid record stock prices and a big new buyer of private companies in SPACs, or special-purpose acquisition companies, that have raised about $100 billion this year alone to pursue deals.\n“It’s unlikely there will be a major acquisition soon,” Shanahan says. Berkshire handicaps itself by refusing to participate in corporate auctions. Buffett prefers old-style handshake deals and tells potential sellers that Berkshire’s generally hands-off approach to its dozens of subsidiaries makes it an ideal home for their businesses.\nInvestors may ask Buffett about trends in the reinsurance business, an important part of Berkshire’s big property and casualty insurance operations. Pricing has been improving in the P&C market. Investors also may query him about Berkshire’s Geico unit, which has been losing ground to its chief auto-insurance rival,Progressive(PGR) in the past year. Geico and Progressive are the two best-run auto insurers in the country and now rank second and third, respectively, behind State Farm.\nIn a surprise move, Berkshire decided to name one of Buffett’s top investment lieutenants, Todd Combs, as CEO of Geico at the start of 2020. Investors may want to know how long Combs plans to stay at Geico.\nThere also may be questions about the investment performance of Combs and Ted Weschler, who together run an estimated 10% of Berkshire’s $295 billion equity investment portfolio. The two are a good bet to run the entire equity portfolio in the post-Buffett era.\nAnother topic is likely to be the railroad industry given the bidding war forKansas City Southern(KSU) by two leading Canadian railroads. Berkshire owns Burlington Northern Santa Fe, one of the big four railroads in the country. Berkshire is unlikely to get involved in the contest for Kansas City Southern.\nBNSF is probably the single most valuable division within Berkshire and would be worth close to $150 billion, in line with its public rivalUnion Pacific(UNP), if it were a stand-alone company. Berkshire is now valued at around $625 billion.\nBuffett has been a prominent Bitcoin skeptic, having called it “rat poison squared” and not a legitimate asset class. Shareholders may ask what he thinks now that Bitcoin has soared.\nAlso on hand to answer questions will be Berkshire’s vice chairmen, Ajit Jain and Greg Abel, who head Berkshire’s insurance and non-insurance operations, respectively.Barron’shas identified Abel as the most likely successor to Buffett as CEO.\nSome investors—andBarron’s—would like to see Jain, Abel, Combs, and Weschler get more exposure at the meeting as the likely next generation of leadership at Berkshire. But Buffett is a creature of habit and he likes the Warren and Charlie show. So that’s what it will be.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"langContent":"EN"},{"id":374474349,"gmtCreate":1619479618481,"gmtModify":1634273181900,"author":{"id":"3577914647547876","authorId":"3577914647547876","name":"Jieshenggoh","avatar":"https://static.laohu8.com/default-avatar.jpg","vip":1,"crmLevel":1,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"idStr":"3577914647547876","authorIdStr":"3577914647547876"},"htmlText":"OK","listText":"OK","text":"OK","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":0,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/374474349","repostId":1184991623,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1184991623","pubTimestamp":1619448590,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/1184991623?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-04-26 22:49","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Berkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting Is Saturday. Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About.","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1184991623","media":"MarketWatch","summary":"Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyba","content":"<p>Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and topics like Bitcoin and the SPAC mania at the company’s annual meeting on Saturday.</p>\n<p>The meeting, normally in Omaha, will take place virtually from Los Angeles, enabling longtime vice chairman Charlie Munger, 97, to join the 90-year-old Buffett for 3½ hours of shareholder questions starting at 1:30 p.m. Eastern time.</p>\n<p>Buffett is hoping to resume the Omaha extravaganza, which he calls a “Woodstock for Capitalists,” in 2022. The outspoken Munger, who didn’t participate in last year’s meeting, is popular with the Berkshire faithful. Buffett has run Berkshire for 56 years.</p>\n<p>Berkshire shareholders will likely be in a good mood with the stock on a roll this year. The class A shares hit a record Monday and are up 0.9% to $412,365 on the session. The class B stock is up 0.7% to $273.96 Monday. The class A stock is up 18% this year, comfortably ahead of the S&amp;P 500’s 12% total return, after badly lagging behind the index in both 2019 and 2020.</p>\n<p>Berkshire’s aggressive stock repurchase program will probably be a major topic at the meeting. Investors are interested in Buffett’s current appetite for buybacks given the stock’s rally this year.</p>\n<p>The company ramped up its buybacks in the second half of 2020, with about $9 billion repurchased in each of the final two quarters of 2020, up from a total of nearly $7 billion in the first half of the year.</p>\n<p>Before the meeting on Saturday, Berkshire will release its first-quarter earnings, and investors will be focused on the buyback. The company’s operating profits are expected to be up 6%, to $2.55 a class B share, according to FactSet.</p>\n<p><i>Barron’s</i>has estimated that Berkshire bought back about $5 billion of stock from year-end through early March based on the share count disclosed in the recent proxy statement. Investors will look to see how much more stock Berkshire repurchased during the rest of March as the share price rose. Our guess is that Berkshire probably didn’t match the fourth-quarter total of $9 billion in the first quarter.</p>\n<p>“I’m interested to see their enthusiasm for the buyback program given the performance of the stock,” says James Shanahan, an Edward Jones analyst, referring to Buffett and Munger.</p>\n<p>Buffett has said Berkshire will be price conscious about buybacks, but has not provided any specifics.</p>\n<p>Shanahan sees a rise in the book value to $296,000 a class A share on March 31 from $287,000 at year-end 2020. The stock now trades for about 1.4 times that March 31 estimate, up from a low of around 1.1 times book a year ago and close to the five-year average.</p>\n<p>There could also be shareholder questions about climate change and diversity at Berkshire. The company has recommended that shareholders reject proposals about providing more disclosure about both issues.</p>\n<p>Buffett is likely to weigh in on the current investment landscape.</p>\n<p>He wasn’t aggressive on making new investments in 2020, as Berkshire sold a net $8 billion of stocks, including a group of airlines, and stakes inJPMorgan Chase(JPM) andGoldman Sachs Group(GS).</p>\n<p>This disappointed many holders who hoped Buffett would have been a big buyer of stocks during the selloff and follow his maxim to be “fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”</p>\n<p>Berkshire did establish sizable stakes inVerizon Communications(VZ) andChevron(CVX). Buffett may be asked about those purchases and the outlook for bank stocks and the overall market, which is now trading at lofty valuation, with the S&amp;P 500 at around 23 times projected 2021 earnings.</p>\n<p>Berkshire has also been quiet on acquisitions with only one notable deal in 2020, a roughly $10 billion purchase ofDominion Energy’s(D) natural-gas pipeline business by Berkshire Hathaway’s big utility unit, Berkshire Hathaway Energy.</p>\n<p>Buffett has long sought to land what he has called an “elephant,” or a large acquisition, but that has proven elusive. Berkshire’s only big deal in the past decade was its $33 billion purchase of Precision Castparts in 2016. The deal for the aircraft-parts maker hasn’t gone well, with the company hit by the aerospace downturn in 2020, forcing Berkshire to take a roughly $11 billion write-down. Amid an improving aerospace market, Buffett might be queried about the outlook for Precision Castparts.</p>\n<p>Buffett has complained in the past that aggressive private-equity firms have made it tough for Berkshire to land big deals. Now, the acquisition environment is even tougher amid record stock prices and a big new buyer of private companies in SPACs, or special-purpose acquisition companies, that have raised about $100 billion this year alone to pursue deals.</p>\n<p>“It’s unlikely there will be a major acquisition soon,” Shanahan says. Berkshire handicaps itself by refusing to participate in corporate auctions. Buffett prefers old-style handshake deals and tells potential sellers that Berkshire’s generally hands-off approach to its dozens of subsidiaries makes it an ideal home for their businesses.</p>\n<p>Investors may ask Buffett about trends in the reinsurance business, an important part of Berkshire’s big property and casualty insurance operations. Pricing has been improving in the P&amp;C market. Investors also may query him about Berkshire’s Geico unit, which has been losing ground to its chief auto-insurance rival,Progressive(PGR) in the past year. Geico and Progressive are the two best-run auto insurers in the country and now rank second and third, respectively, behind State Farm.</p>\n<p>In a surprise move, Berkshire decided to name one of Buffett’s top investment lieutenants, Todd Combs, as CEO of Geico at the start of 2020. Investors may want to know how long Combs plans to stay at Geico.</p>\n<p>There also may be questions about the investment performance of Combs and Ted Weschler, who together run an estimated 10% of Berkshire’s $295 billion equity investment portfolio. The two are a good bet to run the entire equity portfolio in the post-Buffett era.</p>\n<p>Another topic is likely to be the railroad industry given the bidding war forKansas City Southern(KSU) by two leading Canadian railroads. Berkshire owns Burlington Northern Santa Fe, one of the big four railroads in the country. Berkshire is unlikely to get involved in the contest for Kansas City Southern.</p>\n<p>BNSF is probably the single most valuable division within Berkshire and would be worth close to $150 billion, in line with its public rivalUnion Pacific(UNP), if it were a stand-alone company. Berkshire is now valued at around $625 billion.</p>\n<p>Buffett has been a prominent Bitcoin skeptic, having called it “rat poison squared” and not a legitimate asset class. Shareholders may ask what he thinks now that Bitcoin has soared.</p>\n<p>Also on hand to answer questions will be Berkshire’s vice chairmen, Ajit Jain and Greg Abel, who head Berkshire’s insurance and non-insurance operations, respectively.<i>Barron’s</i>has identified Abel as the most likely successor to Buffett as CEO.</p>\n<p>Some investors—and<i>Barron’s</i>—would like to see Jain, Abel, Combs, and Weschler get more exposure at the meeting as the likely next generation of leadership at Berkshire. But Buffett is a creature of habit and he likes the Warren and Charlie show. So that’s what it will be.</p>","source":"lsy1603348471595","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>Berkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting Is Saturday. Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About.</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\">\nBerkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting Is Saturday. Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About.\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-04-26 22:49 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews><strong>MarketWatch</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and ...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"BRK.A":"伯克希尔","BRK.B":"伯克希尔B"},"source_url":"https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1184991623","content_text":"Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and topics like Bitcoin and the SPAC mania at the company’s annual meeting on Saturday.\nThe meeting, normally in Omaha, will take place virtually from Los Angeles, enabling longtime vice chairman Charlie Munger, 97, to join the 90-year-old Buffett for 3½ hours of shareholder questions starting at 1:30 p.m. Eastern time.\nBuffett is hoping to resume the Omaha extravaganza, which he calls a “Woodstock for Capitalists,” in 2022. The outspoken Munger, who didn’t participate in last year’s meeting, is popular with the Berkshire faithful. Buffett has run Berkshire for 56 years.\nBerkshire shareholders will likely be in a good mood with the stock on a roll this year. The class A shares hit a record Monday and are up 0.9% to $412,365 on the session. The class B stock is up 0.7% to $273.96 Monday. The class A stock is up 18% this year, comfortably ahead of the S&P 500’s 12% total return, after badly lagging behind the index in both 2019 and 2020.\nBerkshire’s aggressive stock repurchase program will probably be a major topic at the meeting. Investors are interested in Buffett’s current appetite for buybacks given the stock’s rally this year.\nThe company ramped up its buybacks in the second half of 2020, with about $9 billion repurchased in each of the final two quarters of 2020, up from a total of nearly $7 billion in the first half of the year.\nBefore the meeting on Saturday, Berkshire will release its first-quarter earnings, and investors will be focused on the buyback. The company’s operating profits are expected to be up 6%, to $2.55 a class B share, according to FactSet.\nBarron’shas estimated that Berkshire bought back about $5 billion of stock from year-end through early March based on the share count disclosed in the recent proxy statement. Investors will look to see how much more stock Berkshire repurchased during the rest of March as the share price rose. Our guess is that Berkshire probably didn’t match the fourth-quarter total of $9 billion in the first quarter.\n“I’m interested to see their enthusiasm for the buyback program given the performance of the stock,” says James Shanahan, an Edward Jones analyst, referring to Buffett and Munger.\nBuffett has said Berkshire will be price conscious about buybacks, but has not provided any specifics.\nShanahan sees a rise in the book value to $296,000 a class A share on March 31 from $287,000 at year-end 2020. The stock now trades for about 1.4 times that March 31 estimate, up from a low of around 1.1 times book a year ago and close to the five-year average.\nThere could also be shareholder questions about climate change and diversity at Berkshire. The company has recommended that shareholders reject proposals about providing more disclosure about both issues.\nBuffett is likely to weigh in on the current investment landscape.\nHe wasn’t aggressive on making new investments in 2020, as Berkshire sold a net $8 billion of stocks, including a group of airlines, and stakes inJPMorgan Chase(JPM) andGoldman Sachs Group(GS).\nThis disappointed many holders who hoped Buffett would have been a big buyer of stocks during the selloff and follow his maxim to be “fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”\nBerkshire did establish sizable stakes inVerizon Communications(VZ) andChevron(CVX). Buffett may be asked about those purchases and the outlook for bank stocks and the overall market, which is now trading at lofty valuation, with the S&P 500 at around 23 times projected 2021 earnings.\nBerkshire has also been quiet on acquisitions with only one notable deal in 2020, a roughly $10 billion purchase ofDominion Energy’s(D) natural-gas pipeline business by Berkshire Hathaway’s big utility unit, Berkshire Hathaway Energy.\nBuffett has long sought to land what he has called an “elephant,” or a large acquisition, but that has proven elusive. Berkshire’s only big deal in the past decade was its $33 billion purchase of Precision Castparts in 2016. The deal for the aircraft-parts maker hasn’t gone well, with the company hit by the aerospace downturn in 2020, forcing Berkshire to take a roughly $11 billion write-down. Amid an improving aerospace market, Buffett might be queried about the outlook for Precision Castparts.\nBuffett has complained in the past that aggressive private-equity firms have made it tough for Berkshire to land big deals. Now, the acquisition environment is even tougher amid record stock prices and a big new buyer of private companies in SPACs, or special-purpose acquisition companies, that have raised about $100 billion this year alone to pursue deals.\n“It’s unlikely there will be a major acquisition soon,” Shanahan says. Berkshire handicaps itself by refusing to participate in corporate auctions. Buffett prefers old-style handshake deals and tells potential sellers that Berkshire’s generally hands-off approach to its dozens of subsidiaries makes it an ideal home for their businesses.\nInvestors may ask Buffett about trends in the reinsurance business, an important part of Berkshire’s big property and casualty insurance operations. Pricing has been improving in the P&C market. Investors also may query him about Berkshire’s Geico unit, which has been losing ground to its chief auto-insurance rival,Progressive(PGR) in the past year. Geico and Progressive are the two best-run auto insurers in the country and now rank second and third, respectively, behind State Farm.\nIn a surprise move, Berkshire decided to name one of Buffett’s top investment lieutenants, Todd Combs, as CEO of Geico at the start of 2020. Investors may want to know how long Combs plans to stay at Geico.\nThere also may be questions about the investment performance of Combs and Ted Weschler, who together run an estimated 10% of Berkshire’s $295 billion equity investment portfolio. The two are a good bet to run the entire equity portfolio in the post-Buffett era.\nAnother topic is likely to be the railroad industry given the bidding war forKansas City Southern(KSU) by two leading Canadian railroads. Berkshire owns Burlington Northern Santa Fe, one of the big four railroads in the country. Berkshire is unlikely to get involved in the contest for Kansas City Southern.\nBNSF is probably the single most valuable division within Berkshire and would be worth close to $150 billion, in line with its public rivalUnion Pacific(UNP), if it were a stand-alone company. Berkshire is now valued at around $625 billion.\nBuffett has been a prominent Bitcoin skeptic, having called it “rat poison squared” and not a legitimate asset class. Shareholders may ask what he thinks now that Bitcoin has soared.\nAlso on hand to answer questions will be Berkshire’s vice chairmen, Ajit Jain and Greg Abel, who head Berkshire’s insurance and non-insurance operations, respectively.Barron’shas identified Abel as the most likely successor to Buffett as CEO.\nSome investors—andBarron’s—would like to see Jain, Abel, Combs, and Weschler get more exposure at the meeting as the likely next generation of leadership at Berkshire. But Buffett is a creature of habit and he likes the Warren and Charlie show. So that’s what it will be.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"langContent":"EN"},{"id":374452144,"gmtCreate":1619478694788,"gmtModify":1634273201224,"author":{"id":"3566159832938847","authorId":"3566159832938847","name":"Winkingbear","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/fa59ca544b59fdba57ec5b04668be509","vip":1,"crmLevel":6,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"idStr":"3566159832938847","authorIdStr":"3566159832938847"},"htmlText":"I love Berkshire&nbsp;","listText":"I love Berkshire&nbsp;","text":"I love Berkshire","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":4,"commentSize":1,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/374452144","repostId":1184991623,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1184991623","pubTimestamp":1619448590,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/1184991623?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-04-26 22:49","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Berkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting Is Saturday. Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About.","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1184991623","media":"MarketWatch","summary":"Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyba","content":"<p>Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and topics like Bitcoin and the SPAC mania at the company’s annual meeting on Saturday.</p>\n<p>The meeting, normally in Omaha, will take place virtually from Los Angeles, enabling longtime vice chairman Charlie Munger, 97, to join the 90-year-old Buffett for 3½ hours of shareholder questions starting at 1:30 p.m. Eastern time.</p>\n<p>Buffett is hoping to resume the Omaha extravaganza, which he calls a “Woodstock for Capitalists,” in 2022. The outspoken Munger, who didn’t participate in last year’s meeting, is popular with the Berkshire faithful. Buffett has run Berkshire for 56 years.</p>\n<p>Berkshire shareholders will likely be in a good mood with the stock on a roll this year. The class A shares hit a record Monday and are up 0.9% to $412,365 on the session. The class B stock is up 0.7% to $273.96 Monday. The class A stock is up 18% this year, comfortably ahead of the S&amp;P 500’s 12% total return, after badly lagging behind the index in both 2019 and 2020.</p>\n<p>Berkshire’s aggressive stock repurchase program will probably be a major topic at the meeting. Investors are interested in Buffett’s current appetite for buybacks given the stock’s rally this year.</p>\n<p>The company ramped up its buybacks in the second half of 2020, with about $9 billion repurchased in each of the final two quarters of 2020, up from a total of nearly $7 billion in the first half of the year.</p>\n<p>Before the meeting on Saturday, Berkshire will release its first-quarter earnings, and investors will be focused on the buyback. The company’s operating profits are expected to be up 6%, to $2.55 a class B share, according to FactSet.</p>\n<p><i>Barron’s</i>has estimated that Berkshire bought back about $5 billion of stock from year-end through early March based on the share count disclosed in the recent proxy statement. Investors will look to see how much more stock Berkshire repurchased during the rest of March as the share price rose. Our guess is that Berkshire probably didn’t match the fourth-quarter total of $9 billion in the first quarter.</p>\n<p>“I’m interested to see their enthusiasm for the buyback program given the performance of the stock,” says James Shanahan, an Edward Jones analyst, referring to Buffett and Munger.</p>\n<p>Buffett has said Berkshire will be price conscious about buybacks, but has not provided any specifics.</p>\n<p>Shanahan sees a rise in the book value to $296,000 a class A share on March 31 from $287,000 at year-end 2020. The stock now trades for about 1.4 times that March 31 estimate, up from a low of around 1.1 times book a year ago and close to the five-year average.</p>\n<p>There could also be shareholder questions about climate change and diversity at Berkshire. The company has recommended that shareholders reject proposals about providing more disclosure about both issues.</p>\n<p>Buffett is likely to weigh in on the current investment landscape.</p>\n<p>He wasn’t aggressive on making new investments in 2020, as Berkshire sold a net $8 billion of stocks, including a group of airlines, and stakes inJPMorgan Chase(JPM) andGoldman Sachs Group(GS).</p>\n<p>This disappointed many holders who hoped Buffett would have been a big buyer of stocks during the selloff and follow his maxim to be “fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”</p>\n<p>Berkshire did establish sizable stakes inVerizon Communications(VZ) andChevron(CVX). Buffett may be asked about those purchases and the outlook for bank stocks and the overall market, which is now trading at lofty valuation, with the S&amp;P 500 at around 23 times projected 2021 earnings.</p>\n<p>Berkshire has also been quiet on acquisitions with only one notable deal in 2020, a roughly $10 billion purchase ofDominion Energy’s(D) natural-gas pipeline business by Berkshire Hathaway’s big utility unit, Berkshire Hathaway Energy.</p>\n<p>Buffett has long sought to land what he has called an “elephant,” or a large acquisition, but that has proven elusive. Berkshire’s only big deal in the past decade was its $33 billion purchase of Precision Castparts in 2016. The deal for the aircraft-parts maker hasn’t gone well, with the company hit by the aerospace downturn in 2020, forcing Berkshire to take a roughly $11 billion write-down. Amid an improving aerospace market, Buffett might be queried about the outlook for Precision Castparts.</p>\n<p>Buffett has complained in the past that aggressive private-equity firms have made it tough for Berkshire to land big deals. Now, the acquisition environment is even tougher amid record stock prices and a big new buyer of private companies in SPACs, or special-purpose acquisition companies, that have raised about $100 billion this year alone to pursue deals.</p>\n<p>“It’s unlikely there will be a major acquisition soon,” Shanahan says. Berkshire handicaps itself by refusing to participate in corporate auctions. Buffett prefers old-style handshake deals and tells potential sellers that Berkshire’s generally hands-off approach to its dozens of subsidiaries makes it an ideal home for their businesses.</p>\n<p>Investors may ask Buffett about trends in the reinsurance business, an important part of Berkshire’s big property and casualty insurance operations. Pricing has been improving in the P&amp;C market. Investors also may query him about Berkshire’s Geico unit, which has been losing ground to its chief auto-insurance rival,Progressive(PGR) in the past year. Geico and Progressive are the two best-run auto insurers in the country and now rank second and third, respectively, behind State Farm.</p>\n<p>In a surprise move, Berkshire decided to name one of Buffett’s top investment lieutenants, Todd Combs, as CEO of Geico at the start of 2020. Investors may want to know how long Combs plans to stay at Geico.</p>\n<p>There also may be questions about the investment performance of Combs and Ted Weschler, who together run an estimated 10% of Berkshire’s $295 billion equity investment portfolio. The two are a good bet to run the entire equity portfolio in the post-Buffett era.</p>\n<p>Another topic is likely to be the railroad industry given the bidding war forKansas City Southern(KSU) by two leading Canadian railroads. Berkshire owns Burlington Northern Santa Fe, one of the big four railroads in the country. Berkshire is unlikely to get involved in the contest for Kansas City Southern.</p>\n<p>BNSF is probably the single most valuable division within Berkshire and would be worth close to $150 billion, in line with its public rivalUnion Pacific(UNP), if it were a stand-alone company. Berkshire is now valued at around $625 billion.</p>\n<p>Buffett has been a prominent Bitcoin skeptic, having called it “rat poison squared” and not a legitimate asset class. Shareholders may ask what he thinks now that Bitcoin has soared.</p>\n<p>Also on hand to answer questions will be Berkshire’s vice chairmen, Ajit Jain and Greg Abel, who head Berkshire’s insurance and non-insurance operations, respectively.<i>Barron’s</i>has identified Abel as the most likely successor to Buffett as CEO.</p>\n<p>Some investors—and<i>Barron’s</i>—would like to see Jain, Abel, Combs, and Weschler get more exposure at the meeting as the likely next generation of leadership at Berkshire. But Buffett is a creature of habit and he likes the Warren and Charlie show. So that’s what it will be.</p>","source":"lsy1603348471595","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>Berkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting Is Saturday. Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About.</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\">\nBerkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting Is Saturday. Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About.\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-04-26 22:49 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews><strong>MarketWatch</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and ...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"BRK.A":"伯克希尔","BRK.B":"伯克希尔B"},"source_url":"https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1184991623","content_text":"Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and topics like Bitcoin and the SPAC mania at the company’s annual meeting on Saturday.\nThe meeting, normally in Omaha, will take place virtually from Los Angeles, enabling longtime vice chairman Charlie Munger, 97, to join the 90-year-old Buffett for 3½ hours of shareholder questions starting at 1:30 p.m. Eastern time.\nBuffett is hoping to resume the Omaha extravaganza, which he calls a “Woodstock for Capitalists,” in 2022. The outspoken Munger, who didn’t participate in last year’s meeting, is popular with the Berkshire faithful. Buffett has run Berkshire for 56 years.\nBerkshire shareholders will likely be in a good mood with the stock on a roll this year. The class A shares hit a record Monday and are up 0.9% to $412,365 on the session. The class B stock is up 0.7% to $273.96 Monday. The class A stock is up 18% this year, comfortably ahead of the S&P 500’s 12% total return, after badly lagging behind the index in both 2019 and 2020.\nBerkshire’s aggressive stock repurchase program will probably be a major topic at the meeting. Investors are interested in Buffett’s current appetite for buybacks given the stock’s rally this year.\nThe company ramped up its buybacks in the second half of 2020, with about $9 billion repurchased in each of the final two quarters of 2020, up from a total of nearly $7 billion in the first half of the year.\nBefore the meeting on Saturday, Berkshire will release its first-quarter earnings, and investors will be focused on the buyback. The company’s operating profits are expected to be up 6%, to $2.55 a class B share, according to FactSet.\nBarron’shas estimated that Berkshire bought back about $5 billion of stock from year-end through early March based on the share count disclosed in the recent proxy statement. Investors will look to see how much more stock Berkshire repurchased during the rest of March as the share price rose. Our guess is that Berkshire probably didn’t match the fourth-quarter total of $9 billion in the first quarter.\n“I’m interested to see their enthusiasm for the buyback program given the performance of the stock,” says James Shanahan, an Edward Jones analyst, referring to Buffett and Munger.\nBuffett has said Berkshire will be price conscious about buybacks, but has not provided any specifics.\nShanahan sees a rise in the book value to $296,000 a class A share on March 31 from $287,000 at year-end 2020. The stock now trades for about 1.4 times that March 31 estimate, up from a low of around 1.1 times book a year ago and close to the five-year average.\nThere could also be shareholder questions about climate change and diversity at Berkshire. The company has recommended that shareholders reject proposals about providing more disclosure about both issues.\nBuffett is likely to weigh in on the current investment landscape.\nHe wasn’t aggressive on making new investments in 2020, as Berkshire sold a net $8 billion of stocks, including a group of airlines, and stakes inJPMorgan Chase(JPM) andGoldman Sachs Group(GS).\nThis disappointed many holders who hoped Buffett would have been a big buyer of stocks during the selloff and follow his maxim to be “fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”\nBerkshire did establish sizable stakes inVerizon Communications(VZ) andChevron(CVX). Buffett may be asked about those purchases and the outlook for bank stocks and the overall market, which is now trading at lofty valuation, with the S&P 500 at around 23 times projected 2021 earnings.\nBerkshire has also been quiet on acquisitions with only one notable deal in 2020, a roughly $10 billion purchase ofDominion Energy’s(D) natural-gas pipeline business by Berkshire Hathaway’s big utility unit, Berkshire Hathaway Energy.\nBuffett has long sought to land what he has called an “elephant,” or a large acquisition, but that has proven elusive. Berkshire’s only big deal in the past decade was its $33 billion purchase of Precision Castparts in 2016. The deal for the aircraft-parts maker hasn’t gone well, with the company hit by the aerospace downturn in 2020, forcing Berkshire to take a roughly $11 billion write-down. Amid an improving aerospace market, Buffett might be queried about the outlook for Precision Castparts.\nBuffett has complained in the past that aggressive private-equity firms have made it tough for Berkshire to land big deals. Now, the acquisition environment is even tougher amid record stock prices and a big new buyer of private companies in SPACs, or special-purpose acquisition companies, that have raised about $100 billion this year alone to pursue deals.\n“It’s unlikely there will be a major acquisition soon,” Shanahan says. Berkshire handicaps itself by refusing to participate in corporate auctions. Buffett prefers old-style handshake deals and tells potential sellers that Berkshire’s generally hands-off approach to its dozens of subsidiaries makes it an ideal home for their businesses.\nInvestors may ask Buffett about trends in the reinsurance business, an important part of Berkshire’s big property and casualty insurance operations. Pricing has been improving in the P&C market. Investors also may query him about Berkshire’s Geico unit, which has been losing ground to its chief auto-insurance rival,Progressive(PGR) in the past year. Geico and Progressive are the two best-run auto insurers in the country and now rank second and third, respectively, behind State Farm.\nIn a surprise move, Berkshire decided to name one of Buffett’s top investment lieutenants, Todd Combs, as CEO of Geico at the start of 2020. Investors may want to know how long Combs plans to stay at Geico.\nThere also may be questions about the investment performance of Combs and Ted Weschler, who together run an estimated 10% of Berkshire’s $295 billion equity investment portfolio. The two are a good bet to run the entire equity portfolio in the post-Buffett era.\nAnother topic is likely to be the railroad industry given the bidding war forKansas City Southern(KSU) by two leading Canadian railroads. Berkshire owns Burlington Northern Santa Fe, one of the big four railroads in the country. Berkshire is unlikely to get involved in the contest for Kansas City Southern.\nBNSF is probably the single most valuable division within Berkshire and would be worth close to $150 billion, in line with its public rivalUnion Pacific(UNP), if it were a stand-alone company. Berkshire is now valued at around $625 billion.\nBuffett has been a prominent Bitcoin skeptic, having called it “rat poison squared” and not a legitimate asset class. Shareholders may ask what he thinks now that Bitcoin has soared.\nAlso on hand to answer questions will be Berkshire’s vice chairmen, Ajit Jain and Greg Abel, who head Berkshire’s insurance and non-insurance operations, respectively.Barron’shas identified Abel as the most likely successor to Buffett as CEO.\nSome investors—andBarron’s—would like to see Jain, Abel, Combs, and Weschler get more exposure at the meeting as the likely next generation of leadership at Berkshire. But Buffett is a creature of habit and he likes the Warren and Charlie show. So that’s what it will be.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"comments":[{"id":4143099,"gmtCreate":1619481011603,"gmtModify":1635510499592,"authorId":3575107980285854,"author":{"id":3575107980285854,"idStr":"3575107980285854","authorId":3575107980285854,"name":"Ski58","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/af0171db501c11338ce9414623621549","vip":1,"crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"individualDisplayBadges":[]},"repliedAuthorId":0,"objectId":374452144,"type":1,"supId":0,"prevId":0,"content":"Hahahh nIce ","text":"Hahahh nIce ","html":"Hahahh nIce "}],"langContent":"EN"},{"id":374466812,"gmtCreate":1619477780036,"gmtModify":1634273220520,"author":{"id":"3562019478826489","authorId":"3562019478826489","name":"Jimmy365","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/f0b5ef01e17ff83b62385dd919d36027","vip":1,"crmLevel":4,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"idStr":"3562019478826489","authorIdStr":"3562019478826489"},"htmlText":"Ookok","listText":"Ookok","text":"Ookok","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":1,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/374466812","repostId":1184991623,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1184991623","pubTimestamp":1619448590,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/1184991623?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-04-26 22:49","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Berkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting Is Saturday. Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About.","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1184991623","media":"MarketWatch","summary":"Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyba","content":"<p>Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and topics like Bitcoin and the SPAC mania at the company’s annual meeting on Saturday.</p>\n<p>The meeting, normally in Omaha, will take place virtually from Los Angeles, enabling longtime vice chairman Charlie Munger, 97, to join the 90-year-old Buffett for 3½ hours of shareholder questions starting at 1:30 p.m. Eastern time.</p>\n<p>Buffett is hoping to resume the Omaha extravaganza, which he calls a “Woodstock for Capitalists,” in 2022. The outspoken Munger, who didn’t participate in last year’s meeting, is popular with the Berkshire faithful. Buffett has run Berkshire for 56 years.</p>\n<p>Berkshire shareholders will likely be in a good mood with the stock on a roll this year. The class A shares hit a record Monday and are up 0.9% to $412,365 on the session. The class B stock is up 0.7% to $273.96 Monday. The class A stock is up 18% this year, comfortably ahead of the S&amp;P 500’s 12% total return, after badly lagging behind the index in both 2019 and 2020.</p>\n<p>Berkshire’s aggressive stock repurchase program will probably be a major topic at the meeting. Investors are interested in Buffett’s current appetite for buybacks given the stock’s rally this year.</p>\n<p>The company ramped up its buybacks in the second half of 2020, with about $9 billion repurchased in each of the final two quarters of 2020, up from a total of nearly $7 billion in the first half of the year.</p>\n<p>Before the meeting on Saturday, Berkshire will release its first-quarter earnings, and investors will be focused on the buyback. The company’s operating profits are expected to be up 6%, to $2.55 a class B share, according to FactSet.</p>\n<p><i>Barron’s</i>has estimated that Berkshire bought back about $5 billion of stock from year-end through early March based on the share count disclosed in the recent proxy statement. Investors will look to see how much more stock Berkshire repurchased during the rest of March as the share price rose. Our guess is that Berkshire probably didn’t match the fourth-quarter total of $9 billion in the first quarter.</p>\n<p>“I’m interested to see their enthusiasm for the buyback program given the performance of the stock,” says James Shanahan, an Edward Jones analyst, referring to Buffett and Munger.</p>\n<p>Buffett has said Berkshire will be price conscious about buybacks, but has not provided any specifics.</p>\n<p>Shanahan sees a rise in the book value to $296,000 a class A share on March 31 from $287,000 at year-end 2020. The stock now trades for about 1.4 times that March 31 estimate, up from a low of around 1.1 times book a year ago and close to the five-year average.</p>\n<p>There could also be shareholder questions about climate change and diversity at Berkshire. The company has recommended that shareholders reject proposals about providing more disclosure about both issues.</p>\n<p>Buffett is likely to weigh in on the current investment landscape.</p>\n<p>He wasn’t aggressive on making new investments in 2020, as Berkshire sold a net $8 billion of stocks, including a group of airlines, and stakes inJPMorgan Chase(JPM) andGoldman Sachs Group(GS).</p>\n<p>This disappointed many holders who hoped Buffett would have been a big buyer of stocks during the selloff and follow his maxim to be “fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”</p>\n<p>Berkshire did establish sizable stakes inVerizon Communications(VZ) andChevron(CVX). Buffett may be asked about those purchases and the outlook for bank stocks and the overall market, which is now trading at lofty valuation, with the S&amp;P 500 at around 23 times projected 2021 earnings.</p>\n<p>Berkshire has also been quiet on acquisitions with only one notable deal in 2020, a roughly $10 billion purchase ofDominion Energy’s(D) natural-gas pipeline business by Berkshire Hathaway’s big utility unit, Berkshire Hathaway Energy.</p>\n<p>Buffett has long sought to land what he has called an “elephant,” or a large acquisition, but that has proven elusive. Berkshire’s only big deal in the past decade was its $33 billion purchase of Precision Castparts in 2016. The deal for the aircraft-parts maker hasn’t gone well, with the company hit by the aerospace downturn in 2020, forcing Berkshire to take a roughly $11 billion write-down. Amid an improving aerospace market, Buffett might be queried about the outlook for Precision Castparts.</p>\n<p>Buffett has complained in the past that aggressive private-equity firms have made it tough for Berkshire to land big deals. Now, the acquisition environment is even tougher amid record stock prices and a big new buyer of private companies in SPACs, or special-purpose acquisition companies, that have raised about $100 billion this year alone to pursue deals.</p>\n<p>“It’s unlikely there will be a major acquisition soon,” Shanahan says. Berkshire handicaps itself by refusing to participate in corporate auctions. Buffett prefers old-style handshake deals and tells potential sellers that Berkshire’s generally hands-off approach to its dozens of subsidiaries makes it an ideal home for their businesses.</p>\n<p>Investors may ask Buffett about trends in the reinsurance business, an important part of Berkshire’s big property and casualty insurance operations. Pricing has been improving in the P&amp;C market. Investors also may query him about Berkshire’s Geico unit, which has been losing ground to its chief auto-insurance rival,Progressive(PGR) in the past year. Geico and Progressive are the two best-run auto insurers in the country and now rank second and third, respectively, behind State Farm.</p>\n<p>In a surprise move, Berkshire decided to name one of Buffett’s top investment lieutenants, Todd Combs, as CEO of Geico at the start of 2020. Investors may want to know how long Combs plans to stay at Geico.</p>\n<p>There also may be questions about the investment performance of Combs and Ted Weschler, who together run an estimated 10% of Berkshire’s $295 billion equity investment portfolio. The two are a good bet to run the entire equity portfolio in the post-Buffett era.</p>\n<p>Another topic is likely to be the railroad industry given the bidding war forKansas City Southern(KSU) by two leading Canadian railroads. Berkshire owns Burlington Northern Santa Fe, one of the big four railroads in the country. Berkshire is unlikely to get involved in the contest for Kansas City Southern.</p>\n<p>BNSF is probably the single most valuable division within Berkshire and would be worth close to $150 billion, in line with its public rivalUnion Pacific(UNP), if it were a stand-alone company. Berkshire is now valued at around $625 billion.</p>\n<p>Buffett has been a prominent Bitcoin skeptic, having called it “rat poison squared” and not a legitimate asset class. Shareholders may ask what he thinks now that Bitcoin has soared.</p>\n<p>Also on hand to answer questions will be Berkshire’s vice chairmen, Ajit Jain and Greg Abel, who head Berkshire’s insurance and non-insurance operations, respectively.<i>Barron’s</i>has identified Abel as the most likely successor to Buffett as CEO.</p>\n<p>Some investors—and<i>Barron’s</i>—would like to see Jain, Abel, Combs, and Weschler get more exposure at the meeting as the likely next generation of leadership at Berkshire. But Buffett is a creature of habit and he likes the Warren and Charlie show. So that’s what it will be.</p>","source":"lsy1603348471595","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>Berkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting Is Saturday. Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About.</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\">\nBerkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting Is Saturday. Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About.\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-04-26 22:49 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews><strong>MarketWatch</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and ...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"BRK.A":"伯克希尔","BRK.B":"伯克希尔B"},"source_url":"https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1184991623","content_text":"Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and topics like Bitcoin and the SPAC mania at the company’s annual meeting on Saturday.\nThe meeting, normally in Omaha, will take place virtually from Los Angeles, enabling longtime vice chairman Charlie Munger, 97, to join the 90-year-old Buffett for 3½ hours of shareholder questions starting at 1:30 p.m. Eastern time.\nBuffett is hoping to resume the Omaha extravaganza, which he calls a “Woodstock for Capitalists,” in 2022. The outspoken Munger, who didn’t participate in last year’s meeting, is popular with the Berkshire faithful. Buffett has run Berkshire for 56 years.\nBerkshire shareholders will likely be in a good mood with the stock on a roll this year. The class A shares hit a record Monday and are up 0.9% to $412,365 on the session. The class B stock is up 0.7% to $273.96 Monday. The class A stock is up 18% this year, comfortably ahead of the S&P 500’s 12% total return, after badly lagging behind the index in both 2019 and 2020.\nBerkshire’s aggressive stock repurchase program will probably be a major topic at the meeting. Investors are interested in Buffett’s current appetite for buybacks given the stock’s rally this year.\nThe company ramped up its buybacks in the second half of 2020, with about $9 billion repurchased in each of the final two quarters of 2020, up from a total of nearly $7 billion in the first half of the year.\nBefore the meeting on Saturday, Berkshire will release its first-quarter earnings, and investors will be focused on the buyback. The company’s operating profits are expected to be up 6%, to $2.55 a class B share, according to FactSet.\nBarron’shas estimated that Berkshire bought back about $5 billion of stock from year-end through early March based on the share count disclosed in the recent proxy statement. Investors will look to see how much more stock Berkshire repurchased during the rest of March as the share price rose. Our guess is that Berkshire probably didn’t match the fourth-quarter total of $9 billion in the first quarter.\n“I’m interested to see their enthusiasm for the buyback program given the performance of the stock,” says James Shanahan, an Edward Jones analyst, referring to Buffett and Munger.\nBuffett has said Berkshire will be price conscious about buybacks, but has not provided any specifics.\nShanahan sees a rise in the book value to $296,000 a class A share on March 31 from $287,000 at year-end 2020. The stock now trades for about 1.4 times that March 31 estimate, up from a low of around 1.1 times book a year ago and close to the five-year average.\nThere could also be shareholder questions about climate change and diversity at Berkshire. The company has recommended that shareholders reject proposals about providing more disclosure about both issues.\nBuffett is likely to weigh in on the current investment landscape.\nHe wasn’t aggressive on making new investments in 2020, as Berkshire sold a net $8 billion of stocks, including a group of airlines, and stakes inJPMorgan Chase(JPM) andGoldman Sachs Group(GS).\nThis disappointed many holders who hoped Buffett would have been a big buyer of stocks during the selloff and follow his maxim to be “fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”\nBerkshire did establish sizable stakes inVerizon Communications(VZ) andChevron(CVX). Buffett may be asked about those purchases and the outlook for bank stocks and the overall market, which is now trading at lofty valuation, with the S&P 500 at around 23 times projected 2021 earnings.\nBerkshire has also been quiet on acquisitions with only one notable deal in 2020, a roughly $10 billion purchase ofDominion Energy’s(D) natural-gas pipeline business by Berkshire Hathaway’s big utility unit, Berkshire Hathaway Energy.\nBuffett has long sought to land what he has called an “elephant,” or a large acquisition, but that has proven elusive. Berkshire’s only big deal in the past decade was its $33 billion purchase of Precision Castparts in 2016. The deal for the aircraft-parts maker hasn’t gone well, with the company hit by the aerospace downturn in 2020, forcing Berkshire to take a roughly $11 billion write-down. Amid an improving aerospace market, Buffett might be queried about the outlook for Precision Castparts.\nBuffett has complained in the past that aggressive private-equity firms have made it tough for Berkshire to land big deals. Now, the acquisition environment is even tougher amid record stock prices and a big new buyer of private companies in SPACs, or special-purpose acquisition companies, that have raised about $100 billion this year alone to pursue deals.\n“It’s unlikely there will be a major acquisition soon,” Shanahan says. Berkshire handicaps itself by refusing to participate in corporate auctions. Buffett prefers old-style handshake deals and tells potential sellers that Berkshire’s generally hands-off approach to its dozens of subsidiaries makes it an ideal home for their businesses.\nInvestors may ask Buffett about trends in the reinsurance business, an important part of Berkshire’s big property and casualty insurance operations. Pricing has been improving in the P&C market. Investors also may query him about Berkshire’s Geico unit, which has been losing ground to its chief auto-insurance rival,Progressive(PGR) in the past year. Geico and Progressive are the two best-run auto insurers in the country and now rank second and third, respectively, behind State Farm.\nIn a surprise move, Berkshire decided to name one of Buffett’s top investment lieutenants, Todd Combs, as CEO of Geico at the start of 2020. Investors may want to know how long Combs plans to stay at Geico.\nThere also may be questions about the investment performance of Combs and Ted Weschler, who together run an estimated 10% of Berkshire’s $295 billion equity investment portfolio. The two are a good bet to run the entire equity portfolio in the post-Buffett era.\nAnother topic is likely to be the railroad industry given the bidding war forKansas City Southern(KSU) by two leading Canadian railroads. Berkshire owns Burlington Northern Santa Fe, one of the big four railroads in the country. Berkshire is unlikely to get involved in the contest for Kansas City Southern.\nBNSF is probably the single most valuable division within Berkshire and would be worth close to $150 billion, in line with its public rivalUnion Pacific(UNP), if it were a stand-alone company. Berkshire is now valued at around $625 billion.\nBuffett has been a prominent Bitcoin skeptic, having called it “rat poison squared” and not a legitimate asset class. Shareholders may ask what he thinks now that Bitcoin has soared.\nAlso on hand to answer questions will be Berkshire’s vice chairmen, Ajit Jain and Greg Abel, who head Berkshire’s insurance and non-insurance operations, respectively.Barron’shas identified Abel as the most likely successor to Buffett as CEO.\nSome investors—andBarron’s—would like to see Jain, Abel, Combs, and Weschler get more exposure at the meeting as the likely next generation of leadership at Berkshire. But Buffett is a creature of habit and he likes the Warren and Charlie show. So that’s what it will be.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"langContent":"EN"},{"id":374461011,"gmtCreate":1619477619033,"gmtModify":1634273222691,"author":{"id":"3554924249585989","authorId":"3554924249585989","name":"HYYOONG","avatar":"https://static.laohu8.com/default-avatar.jpg","vip":1,"crmLevel":3,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"idStr":"3554924249585989","authorIdStr":"3554924249585989"},"htmlText":"Like and comment please! Appreciated!","listText":"Like and comment please! Appreciated!","text":"Like and comment please! Appreciated!","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":6,"commentSize":2,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/374461011","repostId":1184991623,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1184991623","pubTimestamp":1619448590,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/1184991623?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-04-26 22:49","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Berkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting Is Saturday. Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About.","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1184991623","media":"MarketWatch","summary":"Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyba","content":"<p>Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and topics like Bitcoin and the SPAC mania at the company’s annual meeting on Saturday.</p>\n<p>The meeting, normally in Omaha, will take place virtually from Los Angeles, enabling longtime vice chairman Charlie Munger, 97, to join the 90-year-old Buffett for 3½ hours of shareholder questions starting at 1:30 p.m. Eastern time.</p>\n<p>Buffett is hoping to resume the Omaha extravaganza, which he calls a “Woodstock for Capitalists,” in 2022. The outspoken Munger, who didn’t participate in last year’s meeting, is popular with the Berkshire faithful. Buffett has run Berkshire for 56 years.</p>\n<p>Berkshire shareholders will likely be in a good mood with the stock on a roll this year. The class A shares hit a record Monday and are up 0.9% to $412,365 on the session. The class B stock is up 0.7% to $273.96 Monday. The class A stock is up 18% this year, comfortably ahead of the S&amp;P 500’s 12% total return, after badly lagging behind the index in both 2019 and 2020.</p>\n<p>Berkshire’s aggressive stock repurchase program will probably be a major topic at the meeting. Investors are interested in Buffett’s current appetite for buybacks given the stock’s rally this year.</p>\n<p>The company ramped up its buybacks in the second half of 2020, with about $9 billion repurchased in each of the final two quarters of 2020, up from a total of nearly $7 billion in the first half of the year.</p>\n<p>Before the meeting on Saturday, Berkshire will release its first-quarter earnings, and investors will be focused on the buyback. The company’s operating profits are expected to be up 6%, to $2.55 a class B share, according to FactSet.</p>\n<p><i>Barron’s</i>has estimated that Berkshire bought back about $5 billion of stock from year-end through early March based on the share count disclosed in the recent proxy statement. Investors will look to see how much more stock Berkshire repurchased during the rest of March as the share price rose. Our guess is that Berkshire probably didn’t match the fourth-quarter total of $9 billion in the first quarter.</p>\n<p>“I’m interested to see their enthusiasm for the buyback program given the performance of the stock,” says James Shanahan, an Edward Jones analyst, referring to Buffett and Munger.</p>\n<p>Buffett has said Berkshire will be price conscious about buybacks, but has not provided any specifics.</p>\n<p>Shanahan sees a rise in the book value to $296,000 a class A share on March 31 from $287,000 at year-end 2020. The stock now trades for about 1.4 times that March 31 estimate, up from a low of around 1.1 times book a year ago and close to the five-year average.</p>\n<p>There could also be shareholder questions about climate change and diversity at Berkshire. The company has recommended that shareholders reject proposals about providing more disclosure about both issues.</p>\n<p>Buffett is likely to weigh in on the current investment landscape.</p>\n<p>He wasn’t aggressive on making new investments in 2020, as Berkshire sold a net $8 billion of stocks, including a group of airlines, and stakes inJPMorgan Chase(JPM) andGoldman Sachs Group(GS).</p>\n<p>This disappointed many holders who hoped Buffett would have been a big buyer of stocks during the selloff and follow his maxim to be “fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”</p>\n<p>Berkshire did establish sizable stakes inVerizon Communications(VZ) andChevron(CVX). Buffett may be asked about those purchases and the outlook for bank stocks and the overall market, which is now trading at lofty valuation, with the S&amp;P 500 at around 23 times projected 2021 earnings.</p>\n<p>Berkshire has also been quiet on acquisitions with only one notable deal in 2020, a roughly $10 billion purchase ofDominion Energy’s(D) natural-gas pipeline business by Berkshire Hathaway’s big utility unit, Berkshire Hathaway Energy.</p>\n<p>Buffett has long sought to land what he has called an “elephant,” or a large acquisition, but that has proven elusive. Berkshire’s only big deal in the past decade was its $33 billion purchase of Precision Castparts in 2016. The deal for the aircraft-parts maker hasn’t gone well, with the company hit by the aerospace downturn in 2020, forcing Berkshire to take a roughly $11 billion write-down. Amid an improving aerospace market, Buffett might be queried about the outlook for Precision Castparts.</p>\n<p>Buffett has complained in the past that aggressive private-equity firms have made it tough for Berkshire to land big deals. Now, the acquisition environment is even tougher amid record stock prices and a big new buyer of private companies in SPACs, or special-purpose acquisition companies, that have raised about $100 billion this year alone to pursue deals.</p>\n<p>“It’s unlikely there will be a major acquisition soon,” Shanahan says. Berkshire handicaps itself by refusing to participate in corporate auctions. Buffett prefers old-style handshake deals and tells potential sellers that Berkshire’s generally hands-off approach to its dozens of subsidiaries makes it an ideal home for their businesses.</p>\n<p>Investors may ask Buffett about trends in the reinsurance business, an important part of Berkshire’s big property and casualty insurance operations. Pricing has been improving in the P&amp;C market. Investors also may query him about Berkshire’s Geico unit, which has been losing ground to its chief auto-insurance rival,Progressive(PGR) in the past year. Geico and Progressive are the two best-run auto insurers in the country and now rank second and third, respectively, behind State Farm.</p>\n<p>In a surprise move, Berkshire decided to name one of Buffett’s top investment lieutenants, Todd Combs, as CEO of Geico at the start of 2020. Investors may want to know how long Combs plans to stay at Geico.</p>\n<p>There also may be questions about the investment performance of Combs and Ted Weschler, who together run an estimated 10% of Berkshire’s $295 billion equity investment portfolio. The two are a good bet to run the entire equity portfolio in the post-Buffett era.</p>\n<p>Another topic is likely to be the railroad industry given the bidding war forKansas City Southern(KSU) by two leading Canadian railroads. Berkshire owns Burlington Northern Santa Fe, one of the big four railroads in the country. Berkshire is unlikely to get involved in the contest for Kansas City Southern.</p>\n<p>BNSF is probably the single most valuable division within Berkshire and would be worth close to $150 billion, in line with its public rivalUnion Pacific(UNP), if it were a stand-alone company. Berkshire is now valued at around $625 billion.</p>\n<p>Buffett has been a prominent Bitcoin skeptic, having called it “rat poison squared” and not a legitimate asset class. Shareholders may ask what he thinks now that Bitcoin has soared.</p>\n<p>Also on hand to answer questions will be Berkshire’s vice chairmen, Ajit Jain and Greg Abel, who head Berkshire’s insurance and non-insurance operations, respectively.<i>Barron’s</i>has identified Abel as the most likely successor to Buffett as CEO.</p>\n<p>Some investors—and<i>Barron’s</i>—would like to see Jain, Abel, Combs, and Weschler get more exposure at the meeting as the likely next generation of leadership at Berkshire. But Buffett is a creature of habit and he likes the Warren and Charlie show. So that’s what it will be.</p>","source":"lsy1603348471595","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>Berkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting Is Saturday. 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Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About.\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-04-26 22:49 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews><strong>MarketWatch</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and ...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"BRK.A":"伯克希尔","BRK.B":"伯克希尔B"},"source_url":"https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1184991623","content_text":"Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and topics like Bitcoin and the SPAC mania at the company’s annual meeting on Saturday.\nThe meeting, normally in Omaha, will take place virtually from Los Angeles, enabling longtime vice chairman Charlie Munger, 97, to join the 90-year-old Buffett for 3½ hours of shareholder questions starting at 1:30 p.m. Eastern time.\nBuffett is hoping to resume the Omaha extravaganza, which he calls a “Woodstock for Capitalists,” in 2022. The outspoken Munger, who didn’t participate in last year’s meeting, is popular with the Berkshire faithful. Buffett has run Berkshire for 56 years.\nBerkshire shareholders will likely be in a good mood with the stock on a roll this year. The class A shares hit a record Monday and are up 0.9% to $412,365 on the session. The class B stock is up 0.7% to $273.96 Monday. The class A stock is up 18% this year, comfortably ahead of the S&P 500’s 12% total return, after badly lagging behind the index in both 2019 and 2020.\nBerkshire’s aggressive stock repurchase program will probably be a major topic at the meeting. Investors are interested in Buffett’s current appetite for buybacks given the stock’s rally this year.\nThe company ramped up its buybacks in the second half of 2020, with about $9 billion repurchased in each of the final two quarters of 2020, up from a total of nearly $7 billion in the first half of the year.\nBefore the meeting on Saturday, Berkshire will release its first-quarter earnings, and investors will be focused on the buyback. The company’s operating profits are expected to be up 6%, to $2.55 a class B share, according to FactSet.\nBarron’shas estimated that Berkshire bought back about $5 billion of stock from year-end through early March based on the share count disclosed in the recent proxy statement. Investors will look to see how much more stock Berkshire repurchased during the rest of March as the share price rose. Our guess is that Berkshire probably didn’t match the fourth-quarter total of $9 billion in the first quarter.\n“I’m interested to see their enthusiasm for the buyback program given the performance of the stock,” says James Shanahan, an Edward Jones analyst, referring to Buffett and Munger.\nBuffett has said Berkshire will be price conscious about buybacks, but has not provided any specifics.\nShanahan sees a rise in the book value to $296,000 a class A share on March 31 from $287,000 at year-end 2020. The stock now trades for about 1.4 times that March 31 estimate, up from a low of around 1.1 times book a year ago and close to the five-year average.\nThere could also be shareholder questions about climate change and diversity at Berkshire. The company has recommended that shareholders reject proposals about providing more disclosure about both issues.\nBuffett is likely to weigh in on the current investment landscape.\nHe wasn’t aggressive on making new investments in 2020, as Berkshire sold a net $8 billion of stocks, including a group of airlines, and stakes inJPMorgan Chase(JPM) andGoldman Sachs Group(GS).\nThis disappointed many holders who hoped Buffett would have been a big buyer of stocks during the selloff and follow his maxim to be “fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”\nBerkshire did establish sizable stakes inVerizon Communications(VZ) andChevron(CVX). Buffett may be asked about those purchases and the outlook for bank stocks and the overall market, which is now trading at lofty valuation, with the S&P 500 at around 23 times projected 2021 earnings.\nBerkshire has also been quiet on acquisitions with only one notable deal in 2020, a roughly $10 billion purchase ofDominion Energy’s(D) natural-gas pipeline business by Berkshire Hathaway’s big utility unit, Berkshire Hathaway Energy.\nBuffett has long sought to land what he has called an “elephant,” or a large acquisition, but that has proven elusive. Berkshire’s only big deal in the past decade was its $33 billion purchase of Precision Castparts in 2016. The deal for the aircraft-parts maker hasn’t gone well, with the company hit by the aerospace downturn in 2020, forcing Berkshire to take a roughly $11 billion write-down. Amid an improving aerospace market, Buffett might be queried about the outlook for Precision Castparts.\nBuffett has complained in the past that aggressive private-equity firms have made it tough for Berkshire to land big deals. Now, the acquisition environment is even tougher amid record stock prices and a big new buyer of private companies in SPACs, or special-purpose acquisition companies, that have raised about $100 billion this year alone to pursue deals.\n“It’s unlikely there will be a major acquisition soon,” Shanahan says. Berkshire handicaps itself by refusing to participate in corporate auctions. Buffett prefers old-style handshake deals and tells potential sellers that Berkshire’s generally hands-off approach to its dozens of subsidiaries makes it an ideal home for their businesses.\nInvestors may ask Buffett about trends in the reinsurance business, an important part of Berkshire’s big property and casualty insurance operations. Pricing has been improving in the P&C market. Investors also may query him about Berkshire’s Geico unit, which has been losing ground to its chief auto-insurance rival,Progressive(PGR) in the past year. Geico and Progressive are the two best-run auto insurers in the country and now rank second and third, respectively, behind State Farm.\nIn a surprise move, Berkshire decided to name one of Buffett’s top investment lieutenants, Todd Combs, as CEO of Geico at the start of 2020. Investors may want to know how long Combs plans to stay at Geico.\nThere also may be questions about the investment performance of Combs and Ted Weschler, who together run an estimated 10% of Berkshire’s $295 billion equity investment portfolio. The two are a good bet to run the entire equity portfolio in the post-Buffett era.\nAnother topic is likely to be the railroad industry given the bidding war forKansas City Southern(KSU) by two leading Canadian railroads. Berkshire owns Burlington Northern Santa Fe, one of the big four railroads in the country. Berkshire is unlikely to get involved in the contest for Kansas City Southern.\nBNSF is probably the single most valuable division within Berkshire and would be worth close to $150 billion, in line with its public rivalUnion Pacific(UNP), if it were a stand-alone company. Berkshire is now valued at around $625 billion.\nBuffett has been a prominent Bitcoin skeptic, having called it “rat poison squared” and not a legitimate asset class. Shareholders may ask what he thinks now that Bitcoin has soared.\nAlso on hand to answer questions will be Berkshire’s vice chairmen, Ajit Jain and Greg Abel, who head Berkshire’s insurance and non-insurance operations, respectively.Barron’shas identified Abel as the most likely successor to Buffett as CEO.\nSome investors—andBarron’s—would like to see Jain, Abel, Combs, and Weschler get more exposure at the meeting as the likely next generation of leadership at Berkshire. But Buffett is a creature of habit and he likes the Warren and Charlie show. So that’s what it will be.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"comments":[{"id":4142086,"gmtCreate":1619477839541,"gmtModify":1635510602498,"authorId":3562019478826489,"author":{"id":3562019478826489,"idStr":"3562019478826489","authorId":3562019478826489,"name":"Jimmy365","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/f0b5ef01e17ff83b62385dd919d36027","vip":1,"crmLevel":4,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"individualDisplayBadges":[]},"repliedAuthorId":0,"objectId":374461011,"type":1,"supId":0,"prevId":0,"content":"Okokokok","text":"Okokokok","html":"Okokokok"},{"id":4146365,"gmtCreate":1619495549449,"gmtModify":1635510195398,"authorId":3563150446821026,"author":{"id":3563150446821026,"idStr":"3563150446821026","authorId":3563150446821026,"name":"Acella","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/2712c4bb0bfbec4d2773e012189db3bc","vip":1,"crmLevel":9,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"individualDisplayBadges":[]},"repliedAuthorId":0,"objectId":374461011,"type":1,"supId":0,"prevId":0,"content":"😀","text":"😀","html":"😀"}],"langContent":"EN"},{"id":374415337,"gmtCreate":1619476470529,"gmtModify":1634273237653,"author":{"id":"3576306005094300","authorId":"3576306005094300","name":"SimonGoh","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/73b898c8aede2bc74299e222da0c4a75","vip":1,"crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"idStr":"3576306005094300","authorIdStr":"3576306005094300"},"htmlText":"...","listText":"...","text":"...","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":6,"commentSize":1,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/374415337","repostId":1184991623,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1184991623","pubTimestamp":1619448590,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/1184991623?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-04-26 22:49","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Berkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting Is Saturday. Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About.","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1184991623","media":"MarketWatch","summary":"Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyba","content":"<p>Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and topics like Bitcoin and the SPAC mania at the company’s annual meeting on Saturday.</p>\n<p>The meeting, normally in Omaha, will take place virtually from Los Angeles, enabling longtime vice chairman Charlie Munger, 97, to join the 90-year-old Buffett for 3½ hours of shareholder questions starting at 1:30 p.m. Eastern time.</p>\n<p>Buffett is hoping to resume the Omaha extravaganza, which he calls a “Woodstock for Capitalists,” in 2022. The outspoken Munger, who didn’t participate in last year’s meeting, is popular with the Berkshire faithful. Buffett has run Berkshire for 56 years.</p>\n<p>Berkshire shareholders will likely be in a good mood with the stock on a roll this year. The class A shares hit a record Monday and are up 0.9% to $412,365 on the session. The class B stock is up 0.7% to $273.96 Monday. The class A stock is up 18% this year, comfortably ahead of the S&amp;P 500’s 12% total return, after badly lagging behind the index in both 2019 and 2020.</p>\n<p>Berkshire’s aggressive stock repurchase program will probably be a major topic at the meeting. Investors are interested in Buffett’s current appetite for buybacks given the stock’s rally this year.</p>\n<p>The company ramped up its buybacks in the second half of 2020, with about $9 billion repurchased in each of the final two quarters of 2020, up from a total of nearly $7 billion in the first half of the year.</p>\n<p>Before the meeting on Saturday, Berkshire will release its first-quarter earnings, and investors will be focused on the buyback. The company’s operating profits are expected to be up 6%, to $2.55 a class B share, according to FactSet.</p>\n<p><i>Barron’s</i>has estimated that Berkshire bought back about $5 billion of stock from year-end through early March based on the share count disclosed in the recent proxy statement. Investors will look to see how much more stock Berkshire repurchased during the rest of March as the share price rose. Our guess is that Berkshire probably didn’t match the fourth-quarter total of $9 billion in the first quarter.</p>\n<p>“I’m interested to see their enthusiasm for the buyback program given the performance of the stock,” says James Shanahan, an Edward Jones analyst, referring to Buffett and Munger.</p>\n<p>Buffett has said Berkshire will be price conscious about buybacks, but has not provided any specifics.</p>\n<p>Shanahan sees a rise in the book value to $296,000 a class A share on March 31 from $287,000 at year-end 2020. The stock now trades for about 1.4 times that March 31 estimate, up from a low of around 1.1 times book a year ago and close to the five-year average.</p>\n<p>There could also be shareholder questions about climate change and diversity at Berkshire. The company has recommended that shareholders reject proposals about providing more disclosure about both issues.</p>\n<p>Buffett is likely to weigh in on the current investment landscape.</p>\n<p>He wasn’t aggressive on making new investments in 2020, as Berkshire sold a net $8 billion of stocks, including a group of airlines, and stakes inJPMorgan Chase(JPM) andGoldman Sachs Group(GS).</p>\n<p>This disappointed many holders who hoped Buffett would have been a big buyer of stocks during the selloff and follow his maxim to be “fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”</p>\n<p>Berkshire did establish sizable stakes inVerizon Communications(VZ) andChevron(CVX). Buffett may be asked about those purchases and the outlook for bank stocks and the overall market, which is now trading at lofty valuation, with the S&amp;P 500 at around 23 times projected 2021 earnings.</p>\n<p>Berkshire has also been quiet on acquisitions with only one notable deal in 2020, a roughly $10 billion purchase ofDominion Energy’s(D) natural-gas pipeline business by Berkshire Hathaway’s big utility unit, Berkshire Hathaway Energy.</p>\n<p>Buffett has long sought to land what he has called an “elephant,” or a large acquisition, but that has proven elusive. Berkshire’s only big deal in the past decade was its $33 billion purchase of Precision Castparts in 2016. The deal for the aircraft-parts maker hasn’t gone well, with the company hit by the aerospace downturn in 2020, forcing Berkshire to take a roughly $11 billion write-down. Amid an improving aerospace market, Buffett might be queried about the outlook for Precision Castparts.</p>\n<p>Buffett has complained in the past that aggressive private-equity firms have made it tough for Berkshire to land big deals. Now, the acquisition environment is even tougher amid record stock prices and a big new buyer of private companies in SPACs, or special-purpose acquisition companies, that have raised about $100 billion this year alone to pursue deals.</p>\n<p>“It’s unlikely there will be a major acquisition soon,” Shanahan says. Berkshire handicaps itself by refusing to participate in corporate auctions. Buffett prefers old-style handshake deals and tells potential sellers that Berkshire’s generally hands-off approach to its dozens of subsidiaries makes it an ideal home for their businesses.</p>\n<p>Investors may ask Buffett about trends in the reinsurance business, an important part of Berkshire’s big property and casualty insurance operations. Pricing has been improving in the P&amp;C market. Investors also may query him about Berkshire’s Geico unit, which has been losing ground to its chief auto-insurance rival,Progressive(PGR) in the past year. Geico and Progressive are the two best-run auto insurers in the country and now rank second and third, respectively, behind State Farm.</p>\n<p>In a surprise move, Berkshire decided to name one of Buffett’s top investment lieutenants, Todd Combs, as CEO of Geico at the start of 2020. Investors may want to know how long Combs plans to stay at Geico.</p>\n<p>There also may be questions about the investment performance of Combs and Ted Weschler, who together run an estimated 10% of Berkshire’s $295 billion equity investment portfolio. The two are a good bet to run the entire equity portfolio in the post-Buffett era.</p>\n<p>Another topic is likely to be the railroad industry given the bidding war forKansas City Southern(KSU) by two leading Canadian railroads. Berkshire owns Burlington Northern Santa Fe, one of the big four railroads in the country. Berkshire is unlikely to get involved in the contest for Kansas City Southern.</p>\n<p>BNSF is probably the single most valuable division within Berkshire and would be worth close to $150 billion, in line with its public rivalUnion Pacific(UNP), if it were a stand-alone company. Berkshire is now valued at around $625 billion.</p>\n<p>Buffett has been a prominent Bitcoin skeptic, having called it “rat poison squared” and not a legitimate asset class. Shareholders may ask what he thinks now that Bitcoin has soared.</p>\n<p>Also on hand to answer questions will be Berkshire’s vice chairmen, Ajit Jain and Greg Abel, who head Berkshire’s insurance and non-insurance operations, respectively.<i>Barron’s</i>has identified Abel as the most likely successor to Buffett as CEO.</p>\n<p>Some investors—and<i>Barron’s</i>—would like to see Jain, Abel, Combs, and Weschler get more exposure at the meeting as the likely next generation of leadership at Berkshire. But Buffett is a creature of habit and he likes the Warren and Charlie show. So that’s what it will be.</p>","source":"lsy1603348471595","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>Berkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting Is Saturday. Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About.</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\">\nBerkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting Is Saturday. Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About.\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-04-26 22:49 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews><strong>MarketWatch</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and ...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"BRK.A":"伯克希尔","BRK.B":"伯克希尔B"},"source_url":"https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1184991623","content_text":"Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and topics like Bitcoin and the SPAC mania at the company’s annual meeting on Saturday.\nThe meeting, normally in Omaha, will take place virtually from Los Angeles, enabling longtime vice chairman Charlie Munger, 97, to join the 90-year-old Buffett for 3½ hours of shareholder questions starting at 1:30 p.m. Eastern time.\nBuffett is hoping to resume the Omaha extravaganza, which he calls a “Woodstock for Capitalists,” in 2022. The outspoken Munger, who didn’t participate in last year’s meeting, is popular with the Berkshire faithful. Buffett has run Berkshire for 56 years.\nBerkshire shareholders will likely be in a good mood with the stock on a roll this year. The class A shares hit a record Monday and are up 0.9% to $412,365 on the session. The class B stock is up 0.7% to $273.96 Monday. The class A stock is up 18% this year, comfortably ahead of the S&P 500’s 12% total return, after badly lagging behind the index in both 2019 and 2020.\nBerkshire’s aggressive stock repurchase program will probably be a major topic at the meeting. Investors are interested in Buffett’s current appetite for buybacks given the stock’s rally this year.\nThe company ramped up its buybacks in the second half of 2020, with about $9 billion repurchased in each of the final two quarters of 2020, up from a total of nearly $7 billion in the first half of the year.\nBefore the meeting on Saturday, Berkshire will release its first-quarter earnings, and investors will be focused on the buyback. The company’s operating profits are expected to be up 6%, to $2.55 a class B share, according to FactSet.\nBarron’shas estimated that Berkshire bought back about $5 billion of stock from year-end through early March based on the share count disclosed in the recent proxy statement. Investors will look to see how much more stock Berkshire repurchased during the rest of March as the share price rose. Our guess is that Berkshire probably didn’t match the fourth-quarter total of $9 billion in the first quarter.\n“I’m interested to see their enthusiasm for the buyback program given the performance of the stock,” says James Shanahan, an Edward Jones analyst, referring to Buffett and Munger.\nBuffett has said Berkshire will be price conscious about buybacks, but has not provided any specifics.\nShanahan sees a rise in the book value to $296,000 a class A share on March 31 from $287,000 at year-end 2020. The stock now trades for about 1.4 times that March 31 estimate, up from a low of around 1.1 times book a year ago and close to the five-year average.\nThere could also be shareholder questions about climate change and diversity at Berkshire. The company has recommended that shareholders reject proposals about providing more disclosure about both issues.\nBuffett is likely to weigh in on the current investment landscape.\nHe wasn’t aggressive on making new investments in 2020, as Berkshire sold a net $8 billion of stocks, including a group of airlines, and stakes inJPMorgan Chase(JPM) andGoldman Sachs Group(GS).\nThis disappointed many holders who hoped Buffett would have been a big buyer of stocks during the selloff and follow his maxim to be “fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”\nBerkshire did establish sizable stakes inVerizon Communications(VZ) andChevron(CVX). Buffett may be asked about those purchases and the outlook for bank stocks and the overall market, which is now trading at lofty valuation, with the S&P 500 at around 23 times projected 2021 earnings.\nBerkshire has also been quiet on acquisitions with only one notable deal in 2020, a roughly $10 billion purchase ofDominion Energy’s(D) natural-gas pipeline business by Berkshire Hathaway’s big utility unit, Berkshire Hathaway Energy.\nBuffett has long sought to land what he has called an “elephant,” or a large acquisition, but that has proven elusive. Berkshire’s only big deal in the past decade was its $33 billion purchase of Precision Castparts in 2016. The deal for the aircraft-parts maker hasn’t gone well, with the company hit by the aerospace downturn in 2020, forcing Berkshire to take a roughly $11 billion write-down. Amid an improving aerospace market, Buffett might be queried about the outlook for Precision Castparts.\nBuffett has complained in the past that aggressive private-equity firms have made it tough for Berkshire to land big deals. Now, the acquisition environment is even tougher amid record stock prices and a big new buyer of private companies in SPACs, or special-purpose acquisition companies, that have raised about $100 billion this year alone to pursue deals.\n“It’s unlikely there will be a major acquisition soon,” Shanahan says. Berkshire handicaps itself by refusing to participate in corporate auctions. Buffett prefers old-style handshake deals and tells potential sellers that Berkshire’s generally hands-off approach to its dozens of subsidiaries makes it an ideal home for their businesses.\nInvestors may ask Buffett about trends in the reinsurance business, an important part of Berkshire’s big property and casualty insurance operations. Pricing has been improving in the P&C market. Investors also may query him about Berkshire’s Geico unit, which has been losing ground to its chief auto-insurance rival,Progressive(PGR) in the past year. Geico and Progressive are the two best-run auto insurers in the country and now rank second and third, respectively, behind State Farm.\nIn a surprise move, Berkshire decided to name one of Buffett’s top investment lieutenants, Todd Combs, as CEO of Geico at the start of 2020. Investors may want to know how long Combs plans to stay at Geico.\nThere also may be questions about the investment performance of Combs and Ted Weschler, who together run an estimated 10% of Berkshire’s $295 billion equity investment portfolio. The two are a good bet to run the entire equity portfolio in the post-Buffett era.\nAnother topic is likely to be the railroad industry given the bidding war forKansas City Southern(KSU) by two leading Canadian railroads. Berkshire owns Burlington Northern Santa Fe, one of the big four railroads in the country. Berkshire is unlikely to get involved in the contest for Kansas City Southern.\nBNSF is probably the single most valuable division within Berkshire and would be worth close to $150 billion, in line with its public rivalUnion Pacific(UNP), if it were a stand-alone company. Berkshire is now valued at around $625 billion.\nBuffett has been a prominent Bitcoin skeptic, having called it “rat poison squared” and not a legitimate asset class. Shareholders may ask what he thinks now that Bitcoin has soared.\nAlso on hand to answer questions will be Berkshire’s vice chairmen, Ajit Jain and Greg Abel, who head Berkshire’s insurance and non-insurance operations, respectively.Barron’shas identified Abel as the most likely successor to Buffett as CEO.\nSome investors—andBarron’s—would like to see Jain, Abel, Combs, and Weschler get more exposure at the meeting as the likely next generation of leadership at Berkshire. But Buffett is a creature of habit and he likes the Warren and Charlie show. So that’s what it will be.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"comments":[{"id":4142088,"gmtCreate":1619477846808,"gmtModify":1635510602257,"authorId":3562019478826489,"author":{"id":3562019478826489,"idStr":"3562019478826489","authorId":3562019478826489,"name":"Jimmy365","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/f0b5ef01e17ff83b62385dd919d36027","vip":1,"crmLevel":4,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"individualDisplayBadges":[]},"repliedAuthorId":0,"objectId":374415337,"type":1,"supId":0,"prevId":0,"content":"Okokok","text":"Okokok","html":"Okokok"}],"langContent":"EN"},{"id":374433773,"gmtCreate":1619475540492,"gmtModify":1634273249512,"author":{"id":"3581645176053205","authorId":"3581645176053205","name":"VSkemama","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/152a99fdc4377699d227035746bb7293","vip":1,"crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"idStr":"3581645176053205","authorIdStr":"3581645176053205"},"htmlText":"Market to the moon....huat ah....like and comment to huat&nbsp;","listText":"Market to the moon....huat ah....like and comment to huat&nbsp;","text":"Market to the moon....huat ah....like and comment to huat","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":2,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/374433773","repostId":1184991623,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1184991623","pubTimestamp":1619448590,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/1184991623?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-04-26 22:49","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Berkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting Is Saturday. Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About.","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1184991623","media":"MarketWatch","summary":"Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyba","content":"<p>Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and topics like Bitcoin and the SPAC mania at the company’s annual meeting on Saturday.</p>\n<p>The meeting, normally in Omaha, will take place virtually from Los Angeles, enabling longtime vice chairman Charlie Munger, 97, to join the 90-year-old Buffett for 3½ hours of shareholder questions starting at 1:30 p.m. Eastern time.</p>\n<p>Buffett is hoping to resume the Omaha extravaganza, which he calls a “Woodstock for Capitalists,” in 2022. The outspoken Munger, who didn’t participate in last year’s meeting, is popular with the Berkshire faithful. Buffett has run Berkshire for 56 years.</p>\n<p>Berkshire shareholders will likely be in a good mood with the stock on a roll this year. The class A shares hit a record Monday and are up 0.9% to $412,365 on the session. The class B stock is up 0.7% to $273.96 Monday. The class A stock is up 18% this year, comfortably ahead of the S&amp;P 500’s 12% total return, after badly lagging behind the index in both 2019 and 2020.</p>\n<p>Berkshire’s aggressive stock repurchase program will probably be a major topic at the meeting. Investors are interested in Buffett’s current appetite for buybacks given the stock’s rally this year.</p>\n<p>The company ramped up its buybacks in the second half of 2020, with about $9 billion repurchased in each of the final two quarters of 2020, up from a total of nearly $7 billion in the first half of the year.</p>\n<p>Before the meeting on Saturday, Berkshire will release its first-quarter earnings, and investors will be focused on the buyback. The company’s operating profits are expected to be up 6%, to $2.55 a class B share, according to FactSet.</p>\n<p><i>Barron’s</i>has estimated that Berkshire bought back about $5 billion of stock from year-end through early March based on the share count disclosed in the recent proxy statement. Investors will look to see how much more stock Berkshire repurchased during the rest of March as the share price rose. Our guess is that Berkshire probably didn’t match the fourth-quarter total of $9 billion in the first quarter.</p>\n<p>“I’m interested to see their enthusiasm for the buyback program given the performance of the stock,” says James Shanahan, an Edward Jones analyst, referring to Buffett and Munger.</p>\n<p>Buffett has said Berkshire will be price conscious about buybacks, but has not provided any specifics.</p>\n<p>Shanahan sees a rise in the book value to $296,000 a class A share on March 31 from $287,000 at year-end 2020. The stock now trades for about 1.4 times that March 31 estimate, up from a low of around 1.1 times book a year ago and close to the five-year average.</p>\n<p>There could also be shareholder questions about climate change and diversity at Berkshire. The company has recommended that shareholders reject proposals about providing more disclosure about both issues.</p>\n<p>Buffett is likely to weigh in on the current investment landscape.</p>\n<p>He wasn’t aggressive on making new investments in 2020, as Berkshire sold a net $8 billion of stocks, including a group of airlines, and stakes inJPMorgan Chase(JPM) andGoldman Sachs Group(GS).</p>\n<p>This disappointed many holders who hoped Buffett would have been a big buyer of stocks during the selloff and follow his maxim to be “fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”</p>\n<p>Berkshire did establish sizable stakes inVerizon Communications(VZ) andChevron(CVX). Buffett may be asked about those purchases and the outlook for bank stocks and the overall market, which is now trading at lofty valuation, with the S&amp;P 500 at around 23 times projected 2021 earnings.</p>\n<p>Berkshire has also been quiet on acquisitions with only one notable deal in 2020, a roughly $10 billion purchase ofDominion Energy’s(D) natural-gas pipeline business by Berkshire Hathaway’s big utility unit, Berkshire Hathaway Energy.</p>\n<p>Buffett has long sought to land what he has called an “elephant,” or a large acquisition, but that has proven elusive. Berkshire’s only big deal in the past decade was its $33 billion purchase of Precision Castparts in 2016. The deal for the aircraft-parts maker hasn’t gone well, with the company hit by the aerospace downturn in 2020, forcing Berkshire to take a roughly $11 billion write-down. Amid an improving aerospace market, Buffett might be queried about the outlook for Precision Castparts.</p>\n<p>Buffett has complained in the past that aggressive private-equity firms have made it tough for Berkshire to land big deals. Now, the acquisition environment is even tougher amid record stock prices and a big new buyer of private companies in SPACs, or special-purpose acquisition companies, that have raised about $100 billion this year alone to pursue deals.</p>\n<p>“It’s unlikely there will be a major acquisition soon,” Shanahan says. Berkshire handicaps itself by refusing to participate in corporate auctions. Buffett prefers old-style handshake deals and tells potential sellers that Berkshire’s generally hands-off approach to its dozens of subsidiaries makes it an ideal home for their businesses.</p>\n<p>Investors may ask Buffett about trends in the reinsurance business, an important part of Berkshire’s big property and casualty insurance operations. Pricing has been improving in the P&amp;C market. Investors also may query him about Berkshire’s Geico unit, which has been losing ground to its chief auto-insurance rival,Progressive(PGR) in the past year. Geico and Progressive are the two best-run auto insurers in the country and now rank second and third, respectively, behind State Farm.</p>\n<p>In a surprise move, Berkshire decided to name one of Buffett’s top investment lieutenants, Todd Combs, as CEO of Geico at the start of 2020. Investors may want to know how long Combs plans to stay at Geico.</p>\n<p>There also may be questions about the investment performance of Combs and Ted Weschler, who together run an estimated 10% of Berkshire’s $295 billion equity investment portfolio. The two are a good bet to run the entire equity portfolio in the post-Buffett era.</p>\n<p>Another topic is likely to be the railroad industry given the bidding war forKansas City Southern(KSU) by two leading Canadian railroads. Berkshire owns Burlington Northern Santa Fe, one of the big four railroads in the country. Berkshire is unlikely to get involved in the contest for Kansas City Southern.</p>\n<p>BNSF is probably the single most valuable division within Berkshire and would be worth close to $150 billion, in line with its public rivalUnion Pacific(UNP), if it were a stand-alone company. Berkshire is now valued at around $625 billion.</p>\n<p>Buffett has been a prominent Bitcoin skeptic, having called it “rat poison squared” and not a legitimate asset class. Shareholders may ask what he thinks now that Bitcoin has soared.</p>\n<p>Also on hand to answer questions will be Berkshire’s vice chairmen, Ajit Jain and Greg Abel, who head Berkshire’s insurance and non-insurance operations, respectively.<i>Barron’s</i>has identified Abel as the most likely successor to Buffett as CEO.</p>\n<p>Some investors—and<i>Barron’s</i>—would like to see Jain, Abel, Combs, and Weschler get more exposure at the meeting as the likely next generation of leadership at Berkshire. But Buffett is a creature of habit and he likes the Warren and Charlie show. So that’s what it will be.</p>","source":"lsy1603348471595","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>Berkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting Is Saturday. Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About.</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\">\nBerkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting Is Saturday. Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About.\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-04-26 22:49 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews><strong>MarketWatch</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and ...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"BRK.A":"伯克希尔","BRK.B":"伯克希尔B"},"source_url":"https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1184991623","content_text":"Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and topics like Bitcoin and the SPAC mania at the company’s annual meeting on Saturday.\nThe meeting, normally in Omaha, will take place virtually from Los Angeles, enabling longtime vice chairman Charlie Munger, 97, to join the 90-year-old Buffett for 3½ hours of shareholder questions starting at 1:30 p.m. Eastern time.\nBuffett is hoping to resume the Omaha extravaganza, which he calls a “Woodstock for Capitalists,” in 2022. The outspoken Munger, who didn’t participate in last year’s meeting, is popular with the Berkshire faithful. Buffett has run Berkshire for 56 years.\nBerkshire shareholders will likely be in a good mood with the stock on a roll this year. The class A shares hit a record Monday and are up 0.9% to $412,365 on the session. The class B stock is up 0.7% to $273.96 Monday. The class A stock is up 18% this year, comfortably ahead of the S&P 500’s 12% total return, after badly lagging behind the index in both 2019 and 2020.\nBerkshire’s aggressive stock repurchase program will probably be a major topic at the meeting. Investors are interested in Buffett’s current appetite for buybacks given the stock’s rally this year.\nThe company ramped up its buybacks in the second half of 2020, with about $9 billion repurchased in each of the final two quarters of 2020, up from a total of nearly $7 billion in the first half of the year.\nBefore the meeting on Saturday, Berkshire will release its first-quarter earnings, and investors will be focused on the buyback. The company’s operating profits are expected to be up 6%, to $2.55 a class B share, according to FactSet.\nBarron’shas estimated that Berkshire bought back about $5 billion of stock from year-end through early March based on the share count disclosed in the recent proxy statement. Investors will look to see how much more stock Berkshire repurchased during the rest of March as the share price rose. Our guess is that Berkshire probably didn’t match the fourth-quarter total of $9 billion in the first quarter.\n“I’m interested to see their enthusiasm for the buyback program given the performance of the stock,” says James Shanahan, an Edward Jones analyst, referring to Buffett and Munger.\nBuffett has said Berkshire will be price conscious about buybacks, but has not provided any specifics.\nShanahan sees a rise in the book value to $296,000 a class A share on March 31 from $287,000 at year-end 2020. The stock now trades for about 1.4 times that March 31 estimate, up from a low of around 1.1 times book a year ago and close to the five-year average.\nThere could also be shareholder questions about climate change and diversity at Berkshire. The company has recommended that shareholders reject proposals about providing more disclosure about both issues.\nBuffett is likely to weigh in on the current investment landscape.\nHe wasn’t aggressive on making new investments in 2020, as Berkshire sold a net $8 billion of stocks, including a group of airlines, and stakes inJPMorgan Chase(JPM) andGoldman Sachs Group(GS).\nThis disappointed many holders who hoped Buffett would have been a big buyer of stocks during the selloff and follow his maxim to be “fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”\nBerkshire did establish sizable stakes inVerizon Communications(VZ) andChevron(CVX). Buffett may be asked about those purchases and the outlook for bank stocks and the overall market, which is now trading at lofty valuation, with the S&P 500 at around 23 times projected 2021 earnings.\nBerkshire has also been quiet on acquisitions with only one notable deal in 2020, a roughly $10 billion purchase ofDominion Energy’s(D) natural-gas pipeline business by Berkshire Hathaway’s big utility unit, Berkshire Hathaway Energy.\nBuffett has long sought to land what he has called an “elephant,” or a large acquisition, but that has proven elusive. Berkshire’s only big deal in the past decade was its $33 billion purchase of Precision Castparts in 2016. The deal for the aircraft-parts maker hasn’t gone well, with the company hit by the aerospace downturn in 2020, forcing Berkshire to take a roughly $11 billion write-down. Amid an improving aerospace market, Buffett might be queried about the outlook for Precision Castparts.\nBuffett has complained in the past that aggressive private-equity firms have made it tough for Berkshire to land big deals. Now, the acquisition environment is even tougher amid record stock prices and a big new buyer of private companies in SPACs, or special-purpose acquisition companies, that have raised about $100 billion this year alone to pursue deals.\n“It’s unlikely there will be a major acquisition soon,” Shanahan says. Berkshire handicaps itself by refusing to participate in corporate auctions. Buffett prefers old-style handshake deals and tells potential sellers that Berkshire’s generally hands-off approach to its dozens of subsidiaries makes it an ideal home for their businesses.\nInvestors may ask Buffett about trends in the reinsurance business, an important part of Berkshire’s big property and casualty insurance operations. Pricing has been improving in the P&C market. Investors also may query him about Berkshire’s Geico unit, which has been losing ground to its chief auto-insurance rival,Progressive(PGR) in the past year. Geico and Progressive are the two best-run auto insurers in the country and now rank second and third, respectively, behind State Farm.\nIn a surprise move, Berkshire decided to name one of Buffett’s top investment lieutenants, Todd Combs, as CEO of Geico at the start of 2020. Investors may want to know how long Combs plans to stay at Geico.\nThere also may be questions about the investment performance of Combs and Ted Weschler, who together run an estimated 10% of Berkshire’s $295 billion equity investment portfolio. The two are a good bet to run the entire equity portfolio in the post-Buffett era.\nAnother topic is likely to be the railroad industry given the bidding war forKansas City Southern(KSU) by two leading Canadian railroads. Berkshire owns Burlington Northern Santa Fe, one of the big four railroads in the country. Berkshire is unlikely to get involved in the contest for Kansas City Southern.\nBNSF is probably the single most valuable division within Berkshire and would be worth close to $150 billion, in line with its public rivalUnion Pacific(UNP), if it were a stand-alone company. Berkshire is now valued at around $625 billion.\nBuffett has been a prominent Bitcoin skeptic, having called it “rat poison squared” and not a legitimate asset class. Shareholders may ask what he thinks now that Bitcoin has soared.\nAlso on hand to answer questions will be Berkshire’s vice chairmen, Ajit Jain and Greg Abel, who head Berkshire’s insurance and non-insurance operations, respectively.Barron’shas identified Abel as the most likely successor to Buffett as CEO.\nSome investors—andBarron’s—would like to see Jain, Abel, Combs, and Weschler get more exposure at the meeting as the likely next generation of leadership at Berkshire. But Buffett is a creature of habit and he likes the Warren and Charlie show. So that’s what it will be.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"langContent":"EN"},{"id":374493039,"gmtCreate":1619474635021,"gmtModify":1634273256483,"author":{"id":"3580330681390064","authorId":"3580330681390064","name":"Topwong","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/5f391750e9e61481646f8b96856d14d2","vip":1,"crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"idStr":"3580330681390064","authorIdStr":"3580330681390064"},"htmlText":"👍🏻👍🏻","listText":"👍🏻👍🏻","text":"👍🏻👍🏻","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":3,"commentSize":1,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/374493039","repostId":1184991623,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1184991623","pubTimestamp":1619448590,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/1184991623?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-04-26 22:49","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Berkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting Is Saturday. Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About.","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1184991623","media":"MarketWatch","summary":"Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyba","content":"<p>Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and topics like Bitcoin and the SPAC mania at the company’s annual meeting on Saturday.</p>\n<p>The meeting, normally in Omaha, will take place virtually from Los Angeles, enabling longtime vice chairman Charlie Munger, 97, to join the 90-year-old Buffett for 3½ hours of shareholder questions starting at 1:30 p.m. Eastern time.</p>\n<p>Buffett is hoping to resume the Omaha extravaganza, which he calls a “Woodstock for Capitalists,” in 2022. The outspoken Munger, who didn’t participate in last year’s meeting, is popular with the Berkshire faithful. Buffett has run Berkshire for 56 years.</p>\n<p>Berkshire shareholders will likely be in a good mood with the stock on a roll this year. The class A shares hit a record Monday and are up 0.9% to $412,365 on the session. The class B stock is up 0.7% to $273.96 Monday. The class A stock is up 18% this year, comfortably ahead of the S&amp;P 500’s 12% total return, after badly lagging behind the index in both 2019 and 2020.</p>\n<p>Berkshire’s aggressive stock repurchase program will probably be a major topic at the meeting. Investors are interested in Buffett’s current appetite for buybacks given the stock’s rally this year.</p>\n<p>The company ramped up its buybacks in the second half of 2020, with about $9 billion repurchased in each of the final two quarters of 2020, up from a total of nearly $7 billion in the first half of the year.</p>\n<p>Before the meeting on Saturday, Berkshire will release its first-quarter earnings, and investors will be focused on the buyback. The company’s operating profits are expected to be up 6%, to $2.55 a class B share, according to FactSet.</p>\n<p><i>Barron’s</i>has estimated that Berkshire bought back about $5 billion of stock from year-end through early March based on the share count disclosed in the recent proxy statement. Investors will look to see how much more stock Berkshire repurchased during the rest of March as the share price rose. Our guess is that Berkshire probably didn’t match the fourth-quarter total of $9 billion in the first quarter.</p>\n<p>“I’m interested to see their enthusiasm for the buyback program given the performance of the stock,” says James Shanahan, an Edward Jones analyst, referring to Buffett and Munger.</p>\n<p>Buffett has said Berkshire will be price conscious about buybacks, but has not provided any specifics.</p>\n<p>Shanahan sees a rise in the book value to $296,000 a class A share on March 31 from $287,000 at year-end 2020. The stock now trades for about 1.4 times that March 31 estimate, up from a low of around 1.1 times book a year ago and close to the five-year average.</p>\n<p>There could also be shareholder questions about climate change and diversity at Berkshire. The company has recommended that shareholders reject proposals about providing more disclosure about both issues.</p>\n<p>Buffett is likely to weigh in on the current investment landscape.</p>\n<p>He wasn’t aggressive on making new investments in 2020, as Berkshire sold a net $8 billion of stocks, including a group of airlines, and stakes inJPMorgan Chase(JPM) andGoldman Sachs Group(GS).</p>\n<p>This disappointed many holders who hoped Buffett would have been a big buyer of stocks during the selloff and follow his maxim to be “fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”</p>\n<p>Berkshire did establish sizable stakes inVerizon Communications(VZ) andChevron(CVX). Buffett may be asked about those purchases and the outlook for bank stocks and the overall market, which is now trading at lofty valuation, with the S&amp;P 500 at around 23 times projected 2021 earnings.</p>\n<p>Berkshire has also been quiet on acquisitions with only one notable deal in 2020, a roughly $10 billion purchase ofDominion Energy’s(D) natural-gas pipeline business by Berkshire Hathaway’s big utility unit, Berkshire Hathaway Energy.</p>\n<p>Buffett has long sought to land what he has called an “elephant,” or a large acquisition, but that has proven elusive. Berkshire’s only big deal in the past decade was its $33 billion purchase of Precision Castparts in 2016. The deal for the aircraft-parts maker hasn’t gone well, with the company hit by the aerospace downturn in 2020, forcing Berkshire to take a roughly $11 billion write-down. Amid an improving aerospace market, Buffett might be queried about the outlook for Precision Castparts.</p>\n<p>Buffett has complained in the past that aggressive private-equity firms have made it tough for Berkshire to land big deals. Now, the acquisition environment is even tougher amid record stock prices and a big new buyer of private companies in SPACs, or special-purpose acquisition companies, that have raised about $100 billion this year alone to pursue deals.</p>\n<p>“It’s unlikely there will be a major acquisition soon,” Shanahan says. Berkshire handicaps itself by refusing to participate in corporate auctions. Buffett prefers old-style handshake deals and tells potential sellers that Berkshire’s generally hands-off approach to its dozens of subsidiaries makes it an ideal home for their businesses.</p>\n<p>Investors may ask Buffett about trends in the reinsurance business, an important part of Berkshire’s big property and casualty insurance operations. Pricing has been improving in the P&amp;C market. Investors also may query him about Berkshire’s Geico unit, which has been losing ground to its chief auto-insurance rival,Progressive(PGR) in the past year. Geico and Progressive are the two best-run auto insurers in the country and now rank second and third, respectively, behind State Farm.</p>\n<p>In a surprise move, Berkshire decided to name one of Buffett’s top investment lieutenants, Todd Combs, as CEO of Geico at the start of 2020. Investors may want to know how long Combs plans to stay at Geico.</p>\n<p>There also may be questions about the investment performance of Combs and Ted Weschler, who together run an estimated 10% of Berkshire’s $295 billion equity investment portfolio. The two are a good bet to run the entire equity portfolio in the post-Buffett era.</p>\n<p>Another topic is likely to be the railroad industry given the bidding war forKansas City Southern(KSU) by two leading Canadian railroads. Berkshire owns Burlington Northern Santa Fe, one of the big four railroads in the country. Berkshire is unlikely to get involved in the contest for Kansas City Southern.</p>\n<p>BNSF is probably the single most valuable division within Berkshire and would be worth close to $150 billion, in line with its public rivalUnion Pacific(UNP), if it were a stand-alone company. Berkshire is now valued at around $625 billion.</p>\n<p>Buffett has been a prominent Bitcoin skeptic, having called it “rat poison squared” and not a legitimate asset class. Shareholders may ask what he thinks now that Bitcoin has soared.</p>\n<p>Also on hand to answer questions will be Berkshire’s vice chairmen, Ajit Jain and Greg Abel, who head Berkshire’s insurance and non-insurance operations, respectively.<i>Barron’s</i>has identified Abel as the most likely successor to Buffett as CEO.</p>\n<p>Some investors—and<i>Barron’s</i>—would like to see Jain, Abel, Combs, and Weschler get more exposure at the meeting as the likely next generation of leadership at Berkshire. But Buffett is a creature of habit and he likes the Warren and Charlie show. So that’s what it will be.</p>","source":"lsy1603348471595","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>Berkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting Is Saturday. Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About.</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\">\nBerkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting Is Saturday. Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About.\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-04-26 22:49 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews><strong>MarketWatch</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and ...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"BRK.A":"伯克希尔","BRK.B":"伯克希尔B"},"source_url":"https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1184991623","content_text":"Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and topics like Bitcoin and the SPAC mania at the company’s annual meeting on Saturday.\nThe meeting, normally in Omaha, will take place virtually from Los Angeles, enabling longtime vice chairman Charlie Munger, 97, to join the 90-year-old Buffett for 3½ hours of shareholder questions starting at 1:30 p.m. Eastern time.\nBuffett is hoping to resume the Omaha extravaganza, which he calls a “Woodstock for Capitalists,” in 2022. The outspoken Munger, who didn’t participate in last year’s meeting, is popular with the Berkshire faithful. Buffett has run Berkshire for 56 years.\nBerkshire shareholders will likely be in a good mood with the stock on a roll this year. The class A shares hit a record Monday and are up 0.9% to $412,365 on the session. The class B stock is up 0.7% to $273.96 Monday. The class A stock is up 18% this year, comfortably ahead of the S&P 500’s 12% total return, after badly lagging behind the index in both 2019 and 2020.\nBerkshire’s aggressive stock repurchase program will probably be a major topic at the meeting. Investors are interested in Buffett’s current appetite for buybacks given the stock’s rally this year.\nThe company ramped up its buybacks in the second half of 2020, with about $9 billion repurchased in each of the final two quarters of 2020, up from a total of nearly $7 billion in the first half of the year.\nBefore the meeting on Saturday, Berkshire will release its first-quarter earnings, and investors will be focused on the buyback. The company’s operating profits are expected to be up 6%, to $2.55 a class B share, according to FactSet.\nBarron’shas estimated that Berkshire bought back about $5 billion of stock from year-end through early March based on the share count disclosed in the recent proxy statement. Investors will look to see how much more stock Berkshire repurchased during the rest of March as the share price rose. Our guess is that Berkshire probably didn’t match the fourth-quarter total of $9 billion in the first quarter.\n“I’m interested to see their enthusiasm for the buyback program given the performance of the stock,” says James Shanahan, an Edward Jones analyst, referring to Buffett and Munger.\nBuffett has said Berkshire will be price conscious about buybacks, but has not provided any specifics.\nShanahan sees a rise in the book value to $296,000 a class A share on March 31 from $287,000 at year-end 2020. The stock now trades for about 1.4 times that March 31 estimate, up from a low of around 1.1 times book a year ago and close to the five-year average.\nThere could also be shareholder questions about climate change and diversity at Berkshire. The company has recommended that shareholders reject proposals about providing more disclosure about both issues.\nBuffett is likely to weigh in on the current investment landscape.\nHe wasn’t aggressive on making new investments in 2020, as Berkshire sold a net $8 billion of stocks, including a group of airlines, and stakes inJPMorgan Chase(JPM) andGoldman Sachs Group(GS).\nThis disappointed many holders who hoped Buffett would have been a big buyer of stocks during the selloff and follow his maxim to be “fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”\nBerkshire did establish sizable stakes inVerizon Communications(VZ) andChevron(CVX). Buffett may be asked about those purchases and the outlook for bank stocks and the overall market, which is now trading at lofty valuation, with the S&P 500 at around 23 times projected 2021 earnings.\nBerkshire has also been quiet on acquisitions with only one notable deal in 2020, a roughly $10 billion purchase ofDominion Energy’s(D) natural-gas pipeline business by Berkshire Hathaway’s big utility unit, Berkshire Hathaway Energy.\nBuffett has long sought to land what he has called an “elephant,” or a large acquisition, but that has proven elusive. Berkshire’s only big deal in the past decade was its $33 billion purchase of Precision Castparts in 2016. The deal for the aircraft-parts maker hasn’t gone well, with the company hit by the aerospace downturn in 2020, forcing Berkshire to take a roughly $11 billion write-down. Amid an improving aerospace market, Buffett might be queried about the outlook for Precision Castparts.\nBuffett has complained in the past that aggressive private-equity firms have made it tough for Berkshire to land big deals. Now, the acquisition environment is even tougher amid record stock prices and a big new buyer of private companies in SPACs, or special-purpose acquisition companies, that have raised about $100 billion this year alone to pursue deals.\n“It’s unlikely there will be a major acquisition soon,” Shanahan says. Berkshire handicaps itself by refusing to participate in corporate auctions. Buffett prefers old-style handshake deals and tells potential sellers that Berkshire’s generally hands-off approach to its dozens of subsidiaries makes it an ideal home for their businesses.\nInvestors may ask Buffett about trends in the reinsurance business, an important part of Berkshire’s big property and casualty insurance operations. Pricing has been improving in the P&C market. Investors also may query him about Berkshire’s Geico unit, which has been losing ground to its chief auto-insurance rival,Progressive(PGR) in the past year. Geico and Progressive are the two best-run auto insurers in the country and now rank second and third, respectively, behind State Farm.\nIn a surprise move, Berkshire decided to name one of Buffett’s top investment lieutenants, Todd Combs, as CEO of Geico at the start of 2020. Investors may want to know how long Combs plans to stay at Geico.\nThere also may be questions about the investment performance of Combs and Ted Weschler, who together run an estimated 10% of Berkshire’s $295 billion equity investment portfolio. The two are a good bet to run the entire equity portfolio in the post-Buffett era.\nAnother topic is likely to be the railroad industry given the bidding war forKansas City Southern(KSU) by two leading Canadian railroads. Berkshire owns Burlington Northern Santa Fe, one of the big four railroads in the country. Berkshire is unlikely to get involved in the contest for Kansas City Southern.\nBNSF is probably the single most valuable division within Berkshire and would be worth close to $150 billion, in line with its public rivalUnion Pacific(UNP), if it were a stand-alone company. Berkshire is now valued at around $625 billion.\nBuffett has been a prominent Bitcoin skeptic, having called it “rat poison squared” and not a legitimate asset class. Shareholders may ask what he thinks now that Bitcoin has soared.\nAlso on hand to answer questions will be Berkshire’s vice chairmen, Ajit Jain and Greg Abel, who head Berkshire’s insurance and non-insurance operations, respectively.Barron’shas identified Abel as the most likely successor to Buffett as CEO.\nSome investors—andBarron’s—would like to see Jain, Abel, Combs, and Weschler get more exposure at the meeting as the likely next generation of leadership at Berkshire. But Buffett is a creature of habit and he likes the Warren and Charlie show. So that’s what it will be.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"comments":[{"id":4148889,"gmtCreate":1619517312557,"gmtModify":1635509987381,"authorId":3580330681390064,"author":{"id":3580330681390064,"idStr":"3580330681390064","authorId":3580330681390064,"name":"Topwong","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/5f391750e9e61481646f8b96856d14d2","vip":1,"crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"individualDisplayBadges":[]},"repliedAuthorId":0,"objectId":374493039,"type":1,"supId":0,"prevId":0,"content":"Follow the pro","text":"Follow the pro","html":"Follow the pro"}],"langContent":"EN"},{"id":374407338,"gmtCreate":1619474253024,"gmtModify":1634273258943,"author":{"id":"3582017708065945","authorId":"3582017708065945","name":"SuperAngel","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/c5322f133dad8e62201da83844d08e04","vip":1,"crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"idStr":"3582017708065945","authorIdStr":"3582017708065945"},"htmlText":"👍🏻","listText":"👍🏻","text":"👍🏻","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":1,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/374407338","repostId":1184991623,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1184991623","pubTimestamp":1619448590,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/1184991623?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-04-26 22:49","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Berkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting Is Saturday. Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About.","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1184991623","media":"MarketWatch","summary":"Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyba","content":"<p>Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and topics like Bitcoin and the SPAC mania at the company’s annual meeting on Saturday.</p>\n<p>The meeting, normally in Omaha, will take place virtually from Los Angeles, enabling longtime vice chairman Charlie Munger, 97, to join the 90-year-old Buffett for 3½ hours of shareholder questions starting at 1:30 p.m. Eastern time.</p>\n<p>Buffett is hoping to resume the Omaha extravaganza, which he calls a “Woodstock for Capitalists,” in 2022. The outspoken Munger, who didn’t participate in last year’s meeting, is popular with the Berkshire faithful. Buffett has run Berkshire for 56 years.</p>\n<p>Berkshire shareholders will likely be in a good mood with the stock on a roll this year. The class A shares hit a record Monday and are up 0.9% to $412,365 on the session. The class B stock is up 0.7% to $273.96 Monday. The class A stock is up 18% this year, comfortably ahead of the S&amp;P 500’s 12% total return, after badly lagging behind the index in both 2019 and 2020.</p>\n<p>Berkshire’s aggressive stock repurchase program will probably be a major topic at the meeting. Investors are interested in Buffett’s current appetite for buybacks given the stock’s rally this year.</p>\n<p>The company ramped up its buybacks in the second half of 2020, with about $9 billion repurchased in each of the final two quarters of 2020, up from a total of nearly $7 billion in the first half of the year.</p>\n<p>Before the meeting on Saturday, Berkshire will release its first-quarter earnings, and investors will be focused on the buyback. The company’s operating profits are expected to be up 6%, to $2.55 a class B share, according to FactSet.</p>\n<p><i>Barron’s</i>has estimated that Berkshire bought back about $5 billion of stock from year-end through early March based on the share count disclosed in the recent proxy statement. Investors will look to see how much more stock Berkshire repurchased during the rest of March as the share price rose. Our guess is that Berkshire probably didn’t match the fourth-quarter total of $9 billion in the first quarter.</p>\n<p>“I’m interested to see their enthusiasm for the buyback program given the performance of the stock,” says James Shanahan, an Edward Jones analyst, referring to Buffett and Munger.</p>\n<p>Buffett has said Berkshire will be price conscious about buybacks, but has not provided any specifics.</p>\n<p>Shanahan sees a rise in the book value to $296,000 a class A share on March 31 from $287,000 at year-end 2020. The stock now trades for about 1.4 times that March 31 estimate, up from a low of around 1.1 times book a year ago and close to the five-year average.</p>\n<p>There could also be shareholder questions about climate change and diversity at Berkshire. The company has recommended that shareholders reject proposals about providing more disclosure about both issues.</p>\n<p>Buffett is likely to weigh in on the current investment landscape.</p>\n<p>He wasn’t aggressive on making new investments in 2020, as Berkshire sold a net $8 billion of stocks, including a group of airlines, and stakes inJPMorgan Chase(JPM) andGoldman Sachs Group(GS).</p>\n<p>This disappointed many holders who hoped Buffett would have been a big buyer of stocks during the selloff and follow his maxim to be “fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”</p>\n<p>Berkshire did establish sizable stakes inVerizon Communications(VZ) andChevron(CVX). Buffett may be asked about those purchases and the outlook for bank stocks and the overall market, which is now trading at lofty valuation, with the S&amp;P 500 at around 23 times projected 2021 earnings.</p>\n<p>Berkshire has also been quiet on acquisitions with only one notable deal in 2020, a roughly $10 billion purchase ofDominion Energy’s(D) natural-gas pipeline business by Berkshire Hathaway’s big utility unit, Berkshire Hathaway Energy.</p>\n<p>Buffett has long sought to land what he has called an “elephant,” or a large acquisition, but that has proven elusive. Berkshire’s only big deal in the past decade was its $33 billion purchase of Precision Castparts in 2016. The deal for the aircraft-parts maker hasn’t gone well, with the company hit by the aerospace downturn in 2020, forcing Berkshire to take a roughly $11 billion write-down. Amid an improving aerospace market, Buffett might be queried about the outlook for Precision Castparts.</p>\n<p>Buffett has complained in the past that aggressive private-equity firms have made it tough for Berkshire to land big deals. Now, the acquisition environment is even tougher amid record stock prices and a big new buyer of private companies in SPACs, or special-purpose acquisition companies, that have raised about $100 billion this year alone to pursue deals.</p>\n<p>“It’s unlikely there will be a major acquisition soon,” Shanahan says. Berkshire handicaps itself by refusing to participate in corporate auctions. Buffett prefers old-style handshake deals and tells potential sellers that Berkshire’s generally hands-off approach to its dozens of subsidiaries makes it an ideal home for their businesses.</p>\n<p>Investors may ask Buffett about trends in the reinsurance business, an important part of Berkshire’s big property and casualty insurance operations. Pricing has been improving in the P&amp;C market. Investors also may query him about Berkshire’s Geico unit, which has been losing ground to its chief auto-insurance rival,Progressive(PGR) in the past year. Geico and Progressive are the two best-run auto insurers in the country and now rank second and third, respectively, behind State Farm.</p>\n<p>In a surprise move, Berkshire decided to name one of Buffett’s top investment lieutenants, Todd Combs, as CEO of Geico at the start of 2020. Investors may want to know how long Combs plans to stay at Geico.</p>\n<p>There also may be questions about the investment performance of Combs and Ted Weschler, who together run an estimated 10% of Berkshire’s $295 billion equity investment portfolio. The two are a good bet to run the entire equity portfolio in the post-Buffett era.</p>\n<p>Another topic is likely to be the railroad industry given the bidding war forKansas City Southern(KSU) by two leading Canadian railroads. Berkshire owns Burlington Northern Santa Fe, one of the big four railroads in the country. Berkshire is unlikely to get involved in the contest for Kansas City Southern.</p>\n<p>BNSF is probably the single most valuable division within Berkshire and would be worth close to $150 billion, in line with its public rivalUnion Pacific(UNP), if it were a stand-alone company. Berkshire is now valued at around $625 billion.</p>\n<p>Buffett has been a prominent Bitcoin skeptic, having called it “rat poison squared” and not a legitimate asset class. Shareholders may ask what he thinks now that Bitcoin has soared.</p>\n<p>Also on hand to answer questions will be Berkshire’s vice chairmen, Ajit Jain and Greg Abel, who head Berkshire’s insurance and non-insurance operations, respectively.<i>Barron’s</i>has identified Abel as the most likely successor to Buffett as CEO.</p>\n<p>Some investors—and<i>Barron’s</i>—would like to see Jain, Abel, Combs, and Weschler get more exposure at the meeting as the likely next generation of leadership at Berkshire. But Buffett is a creature of habit and he likes the Warren and Charlie show. So that’s what it will be.</p>","source":"lsy1603348471595","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>Berkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting Is Saturday. Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About.</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\">\nBerkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting Is Saturday. Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About.\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-04-26 22:49 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews><strong>MarketWatch</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and ...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"BRK.A":"伯克希尔","BRK.B":"伯克希尔B"},"source_url":"https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1184991623","content_text":"Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and topics like Bitcoin and the SPAC mania at the company’s annual meeting on Saturday.\nThe meeting, normally in Omaha, will take place virtually from Los Angeles, enabling longtime vice chairman Charlie Munger, 97, to join the 90-year-old Buffett for 3½ hours of shareholder questions starting at 1:30 p.m. Eastern time.\nBuffett is hoping to resume the Omaha extravaganza, which he calls a “Woodstock for Capitalists,” in 2022. The outspoken Munger, who didn’t participate in last year’s meeting, is popular with the Berkshire faithful. Buffett has run Berkshire for 56 years.\nBerkshire shareholders will likely be in a good mood with the stock on a roll this year. The class A shares hit a record Monday and are up 0.9% to $412,365 on the session. The class B stock is up 0.7% to $273.96 Monday. The class A stock is up 18% this year, comfortably ahead of the S&P 500’s 12% total return, after badly lagging behind the index in both 2019 and 2020.\nBerkshire’s aggressive stock repurchase program will probably be a major topic at the meeting. Investors are interested in Buffett’s current appetite for buybacks given the stock’s rally this year.\nThe company ramped up its buybacks in the second half of 2020, with about $9 billion repurchased in each of the final two quarters of 2020, up from a total of nearly $7 billion in the first half of the year.\nBefore the meeting on Saturday, Berkshire will release its first-quarter earnings, and investors will be focused on the buyback. The company’s operating profits are expected to be up 6%, to $2.55 a class B share, according to FactSet.\nBarron’shas estimated that Berkshire bought back about $5 billion of stock from year-end through early March based on the share count disclosed in the recent proxy statement. Investors will look to see how much more stock Berkshire repurchased during the rest of March as the share price rose. Our guess is that Berkshire probably didn’t match the fourth-quarter total of $9 billion in the first quarter.\n“I’m interested to see their enthusiasm for the buyback program given the performance of the stock,” says James Shanahan, an Edward Jones analyst, referring to Buffett and Munger.\nBuffett has said Berkshire will be price conscious about buybacks, but has not provided any specifics.\nShanahan sees a rise in the book value to $296,000 a class A share on March 31 from $287,000 at year-end 2020. The stock now trades for about 1.4 times that March 31 estimate, up from a low of around 1.1 times book a year ago and close to the five-year average.\nThere could also be shareholder questions about climate change and diversity at Berkshire. The company has recommended that shareholders reject proposals about providing more disclosure about both issues.\nBuffett is likely to weigh in on the current investment landscape.\nHe wasn’t aggressive on making new investments in 2020, as Berkshire sold a net $8 billion of stocks, including a group of airlines, and stakes inJPMorgan Chase(JPM) andGoldman Sachs Group(GS).\nThis disappointed many holders who hoped Buffett would have been a big buyer of stocks during the selloff and follow his maxim to be “fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”\nBerkshire did establish sizable stakes inVerizon Communications(VZ) andChevron(CVX). Buffett may be asked about those purchases and the outlook for bank stocks and the overall market, which is now trading at lofty valuation, with the S&P 500 at around 23 times projected 2021 earnings.\nBerkshire has also been quiet on acquisitions with only one notable deal in 2020, a roughly $10 billion purchase ofDominion Energy’s(D) natural-gas pipeline business by Berkshire Hathaway’s big utility unit, Berkshire Hathaway Energy.\nBuffett has long sought to land what he has called an “elephant,” or a large acquisition, but that has proven elusive. Berkshire’s only big deal in the past decade was its $33 billion purchase of Precision Castparts in 2016. The deal for the aircraft-parts maker hasn’t gone well, with the company hit by the aerospace downturn in 2020, forcing Berkshire to take a roughly $11 billion write-down. Amid an improving aerospace market, Buffett might be queried about the outlook for Precision Castparts.\nBuffett has complained in the past that aggressive private-equity firms have made it tough for Berkshire to land big deals. Now, the acquisition environment is even tougher amid record stock prices and a big new buyer of private companies in SPACs, or special-purpose acquisition companies, that have raised about $100 billion this year alone to pursue deals.\n“It’s unlikely there will be a major acquisition soon,” Shanahan says. Berkshire handicaps itself by refusing to participate in corporate auctions. Buffett prefers old-style handshake deals and tells potential sellers that Berkshire’s generally hands-off approach to its dozens of subsidiaries makes it an ideal home for their businesses.\nInvestors may ask Buffett about trends in the reinsurance business, an important part of Berkshire’s big property and casualty insurance operations. Pricing has been improving in the P&C market. Investors also may query him about Berkshire’s Geico unit, which has been losing ground to its chief auto-insurance rival,Progressive(PGR) in the past year. Geico and Progressive are the two best-run auto insurers in the country and now rank second and third, respectively, behind State Farm.\nIn a surprise move, Berkshire decided to name one of Buffett’s top investment lieutenants, Todd Combs, as CEO of Geico at the start of 2020. Investors may want to know how long Combs plans to stay at Geico.\nThere also may be questions about the investment performance of Combs and Ted Weschler, who together run an estimated 10% of Berkshire’s $295 billion equity investment portfolio. The two are a good bet to run the entire equity portfolio in the post-Buffett era.\nAnother topic is likely to be the railroad industry given the bidding war forKansas City Southern(KSU) by two leading Canadian railroads. Berkshire owns Burlington Northern Santa Fe, one of the big four railroads in the country. Berkshire is unlikely to get involved in the contest for Kansas City Southern.\nBNSF is probably the single most valuable division within Berkshire and would be worth close to $150 billion, in line with its public rivalUnion Pacific(UNP), if it were a stand-alone company. Berkshire is now valued at around $625 billion.\nBuffett has been a prominent Bitcoin skeptic, having called it “rat poison squared” and not a legitimate asset class. Shareholders may ask what he thinks now that Bitcoin has soared.\nAlso on hand to answer questions will be Berkshire’s vice chairmen, Ajit Jain and Greg Abel, who head Berkshire’s insurance and non-insurance operations, respectively.Barron’shas identified Abel as the most likely successor to Buffett as CEO.\nSome investors—andBarron’s—would like to see Jain, Abel, Combs, and Weschler get more exposure at the meeting as the likely next generation of leadership at Berkshire. But Buffett is a creature of habit and he likes the Warren and Charlie show. So that’s what it will be.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"langContent":"EN"},{"id":374403049,"gmtCreate":1619473269781,"gmtModify":1634273263827,"author":{"id":"3581244873474125","authorId":"3581244873474125","name":"US_watchlist","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/c45e6bbe1cefb0fecde067a20b3c788f","vip":1,"crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"idStr":"3581244873474125","authorIdStr":"3581244873474125"},"htmlText":"Great","listText":"Great","text":"Great","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":1,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/374403049","repostId":1184991623,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1184991623","pubTimestamp":1619448590,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/1184991623?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-04-26 22:49","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Berkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting Is Saturday. Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About.","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1184991623","media":"MarketWatch","summary":"Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyba","content":"<p>Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and topics like Bitcoin and the SPAC mania at the company’s annual meeting on Saturday.</p>\n<p>The meeting, normally in Omaha, will take place virtually from Los Angeles, enabling longtime vice chairman Charlie Munger, 97, to join the 90-year-old Buffett for 3½ hours of shareholder questions starting at 1:30 p.m. Eastern time.</p>\n<p>Buffett is hoping to resume the Omaha extravaganza, which he calls a “Woodstock for Capitalists,” in 2022. The outspoken Munger, who didn’t participate in last year’s meeting, is popular with the Berkshire faithful. Buffett has run Berkshire for 56 years.</p>\n<p>Berkshire shareholders will likely be in a good mood with the stock on a roll this year. The class A shares hit a record Monday and are up 0.9% to $412,365 on the session. The class B stock is up 0.7% to $273.96 Monday. The class A stock is up 18% this year, comfortably ahead of the S&amp;P 500’s 12% total return, after badly lagging behind the index in both 2019 and 2020.</p>\n<p>Berkshire’s aggressive stock repurchase program will probably be a major topic at the meeting. Investors are interested in Buffett’s current appetite for buybacks given the stock’s rally this year.</p>\n<p>The company ramped up its buybacks in the second half of 2020, with about $9 billion repurchased in each of the final two quarters of 2020, up from a total of nearly $7 billion in the first half of the year.</p>\n<p>Before the meeting on Saturday, Berkshire will release its first-quarter earnings, and investors will be focused on the buyback. The company’s operating profits are expected to be up 6%, to $2.55 a class B share, according to FactSet.</p>\n<p><i>Barron’s</i>has estimated that Berkshire bought back about $5 billion of stock from year-end through early March based on the share count disclosed in the recent proxy statement. Investors will look to see how much more stock Berkshire repurchased during the rest of March as the share price rose. Our guess is that Berkshire probably didn’t match the fourth-quarter total of $9 billion in the first quarter.</p>\n<p>“I’m interested to see their enthusiasm for the buyback program given the performance of the stock,” says James Shanahan, an Edward Jones analyst, referring to Buffett and Munger.</p>\n<p>Buffett has said Berkshire will be price conscious about buybacks, but has not provided any specifics.</p>\n<p>Shanahan sees a rise in the book value to $296,000 a class A share on March 31 from $287,000 at year-end 2020. The stock now trades for about 1.4 times that March 31 estimate, up from a low of around 1.1 times book a year ago and close to the five-year average.</p>\n<p>There could also be shareholder questions about climate change and diversity at Berkshire. The company has recommended that shareholders reject proposals about providing more disclosure about both issues.</p>\n<p>Buffett is likely to weigh in on the current investment landscape.</p>\n<p>He wasn’t aggressive on making new investments in 2020, as Berkshire sold a net $8 billion of stocks, including a group of airlines, and stakes inJPMorgan Chase(JPM) andGoldman Sachs Group(GS).</p>\n<p>This disappointed many holders who hoped Buffett would have been a big buyer of stocks during the selloff and follow his maxim to be “fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”</p>\n<p>Berkshire did establish sizable stakes inVerizon Communications(VZ) andChevron(CVX). Buffett may be asked about those purchases and the outlook for bank stocks and the overall market, which is now trading at lofty valuation, with the S&amp;P 500 at around 23 times projected 2021 earnings.</p>\n<p>Berkshire has also been quiet on acquisitions with only one notable deal in 2020, a roughly $10 billion purchase ofDominion Energy’s(D) natural-gas pipeline business by Berkshire Hathaway’s big utility unit, Berkshire Hathaway Energy.</p>\n<p>Buffett has long sought to land what he has called an “elephant,” or a large acquisition, but that has proven elusive. Berkshire’s only big deal in the past decade was its $33 billion purchase of Precision Castparts in 2016. The deal for the aircraft-parts maker hasn’t gone well, with the company hit by the aerospace downturn in 2020, forcing Berkshire to take a roughly $11 billion write-down. Amid an improving aerospace market, Buffett might be queried about the outlook for Precision Castparts.</p>\n<p>Buffett has complained in the past that aggressive private-equity firms have made it tough for Berkshire to land big deals. Now, the acquisition environment is even tougher amid record stock prices and a big new buyer of private companies in SPACs, or special-purpose acquisition companies, that have raised about $100 billion this year alone to pursue deals.</p>\n<p>“It’s unlikely there will be a major acquisition soon,” Shanahan says. Berkshire handicaps itself by refusing to participate in corporate auctions. Buffett prefers old-style handshake deals and tells potential sellers that Berkshire’s generally hands-off approach to its dozens of subsidiaries makes it an ideal home for their businesses.</p>\n<p>Investors may ask Buffett about trends in the reinsurance business, an important part of Berkshire’s big property and casualty insurance operations. Pricing has been improving in the P&amp;C market. Investors also may query him about Berkshire’s Geico unit, which has been losing ground to its chief auto-insurance rival,Progressive(PGR) in the past year. Geico and Progressive are the two best-run auto insurers in the country and now rank second and third, respectively, behind State Farm.</p>\n<p>In a surprise move, Berkshire decided to name one of Buffett’s top investment lieutenants, Todd Combs, as CEO of Geico at the start of 2020. Investors may want to know how long Combs plans to stay at Geico.</p>\n<p>There also may be questions about the investment performance of Combs and Ted Weschler, who together run an estimated 10% of Berkshire’s $295 billion equity investment portfolio. The two are a good bet to run the entire equity portfolio in the post-Buffett era.</p>\n<p>Another topic is likely to be the railroad industry given the bidding war forKansas City Southern(KSU) by two leading Canadian railroads. Berkshire owns Burlington Northern Santa Fe, one of the big four railroads in the country. Berkshire is unlikely to get involved in the contest for Kansas City Southern.</p>\n<p>BNSF is probably the single most valuable division within Berkshire and would be worth close to $150 billion, in line with its public rivalUnion Pacific(UNP), if it were a stand-alone company. Berkshire is now valued at around $625 billion.</p>\n<p>Buffett has been a prominent Bitcoin skeptic, having called it “rat poison squared” and not a legitimate asset class. Shareholders may ask what he thinks now that Bitcoin has soared.</p>\n<p>Also on hand to answer questions will be Berkshire’s vice chairmen, Ajit Jain and Greg Abel, who head Berkshire’s insurance and non-insurance operations, respectively.<i>Barron’s</i>has identified Abel as the most likely successor to Buffett as CEO.</p>\n<p>Some investors—and<i>Barron’s</i>—would like to see Jain, Abel, Combs, and Weschler get more exposure at the meeting as the likely next generation of leadership at Berkshire. But Buffett is a creature of habit and he likes the Warren and Charlie show. So that’s what it will be.</p>","source":"lsy1603348471595","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>Berkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting Is Saturday. Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About.</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\">\nBerkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting Is Saturday. Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About.\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-04-26 22:49 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews><strong>MarketWatch</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and ...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"BRK.A":"伯克希尔","BRK.B":"伯克希尔B"},"source_url":"https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1184991623","content_text":"Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and topics like Bitcoin and the SPAC mania at the company’s annual meeting on Saturday.\nThe meeting, normally in Omaha, will take place virtually from Los Angeles, enabling longtime vice chairman Charlie Munger, 97, to join the 90-year-old Buffett for 3½ hours of shareholder questions starting at 1:30 p.m. Eastern time.\nBuffett is hoping to resume the Omaha extravaganza, which he calls a “Woodstock for Capitalists,” in 2022. The outspoken Munger, who didn’t participate in last year’s meeting, is popular with the Berkshire faithful. Buffett has run Berkshire for 56 years.\nBerkshire shareholders will likely be in a good mood with the stock on a roll this year. The class A shares hit a record Monday and are up 0.9% to $412,365 on the session. The class B stock is up 0.7% to $273.96 Monday. The class A stock is up 18% this year, comfortably ahead of the S&P 500’s 12% total return, after badly lagging behind the index in both 2019 and 2020.\nBerkshire’s aggressive stock repurchase program will probably be a major topic at the meeting. Investors are interested in Buffett’s current appetite for buybacks given the stock’s rally this year.\nThe company ramped up its buybacks in the second half of 2020, with about $9 billion repurchased in each of the final two quarters of 2020, up from a total of nearly $7 billion in the first half of the year.\nBefore the meeting on Saturday, Berkshire will release its first-quarter earnings, and investors will be focused on the buyback. The company’s operating profits are expected to be up 6%, to $2.55 a class B share, according to FactSet.\nBarron’shas estimated that Berkshire bought back about $5 billion of stock from year-end through early March based on the share count disclosed in the recent proxy statement. Investors will look to see how much more stock Berkshire repurchased during the rest of March as the share price rose. Our guess is that Berkshire probably didn’t match the fourth-quarter total of $9 billion in the first quarter.\n“I’m interested to see their enthusiasm for the buyback program given the performance of the stock,” says James Shanahan, an Edward Jones analyst, referring to Buffett and Munger.\nBuffett has said Berkshire will be price conscious about buybacks, but has not provided any specifics.\nShanahan sees a rise in the book value to $296,000 a class A share on March 31 from $287,000 at year-end 2020. The stock now trades for about 1.4 times that March 31 estimate, up from a low of around 1.1 times book a year ago and close to the five-year average.\nThere could also be shareholder questions about climate change and diversity at Berkshire. The company has recommended that shareholders reject proposals about providing more disclosure about both issues.\nBuffett is likely to weigh in on the current investment landscape.\nHe wasn’t aggressive on making new investments in 2020, as Berkshire sold a net $8 billion of stocks, including a group of airlines, and stakes inJPMorgan Chase(JPM) andGoldman Sachs Group(GS).\nThis disappointed many holders who hoped Buffett would have been a big buyer of stocks during the selloff and follow his maxim to be “fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”\nBerkshire did establish sizable stakes inVerizon Communications(VZ) andChevron(CVX). Buffett may be asked about those purchases and the outlook for bank stocks and the overall market, which is now trading at lofty valuation, with the S&P 500 at around 23 times projected 2021 earnings.\nBerkshire has also been quiet on acquisitions with only one notable deal in 2020, a roughly $10 billion purchase ofDominion Energy’s(D) natural-gas pipeline business by Berkshire Hathaway’s big utility unit, Berkshire Hathaway Energy.\nBuffett has long sought to land what he has called an “elephant,” or a large acquisition, but that has proven elusive. Berkshire’s only big deal in the past decade was its $33 billion purchase of Precision Castparts in 2016. The deal for the aircraft-parts maker hasn’t gone well, with the company hit by the aerospace downturn in 2020, forcing Berkshire to take a roughly $11 billion write-down. Amid an improving aerospace market, Buffett might be queried about the outlook for Precision Castparts.\nBuffett has complained in the past that aggressive private-equity firms have made it tough for Berkshire to land big deals. Now, the acquisition environment is even tougher amid record stock prices and a big new buyer of private companies in SPACs, or special-purpose acquisition companies, that have raised about $100 billion this year alone to pursue deals.\n“It’s unlikely there will be a major acquisition soon,” Shanahan says. Berkshire handicaps itself by refusing to participate in corporate auctions. Buffett prefers old-style handshake deals and tells potential sellers that Berkshire’s generally hands-off approach to its dozens of subsidiaries makes it an ideal home for their businesses.\nInvestors may ask Buffett about trends in the reinsurance business, an important part of Berkshire’s big property and casualty insurance operations. Pricing has been improving in the P&C market. Investors also may query him about Berkshire’s Geico unit, which has been losing ground to its chief auto-insurance rival,Progressive(PGR) in the past year. Geico and Progressive are the two best-run auto insurers in the country and now rank second and third, respectively, behind State Farm.\nIn a surprise move, Berkshire decided to name one of Buffett’s top investment lieutenants, Todd Combs, as CEO of Geico at the start of 2020. Investors may want to know how long Combs plans to stay at Geico.\nThere also may be questions about the investment performance of Combs and Ted Weschler, who together run an estimated 10% of Berkshire’s $295 billion equity investment portfolio. The two are a good bet to run the entire equity portfolio in the post-Buffett era.\nAnother topic is likely to be the railroad industry given the bidding war forKansas City Southern(KSU) by two leading Canadian railroads. Berkshire owns Burlington Northern Santa Fe, one of the big four railroads in the country. Berkshire is unlikely to get involved in the contest for Kansas City Southern.\nBNSF is probably the single most valuable division within Berkshire and would be worth close to $150 billion, in line with its public rivalUnion Pacific(UNP), if it were a stand-alone company. Berkshire is now valued at around $625 billion.\nBuffett has been a prominent Bitcoin skeptic, having called it “rat poison squared” and not a legitimate asset class. Shareholders may ask what he thinks now that Bitcoin has soared.\nAlso on hand to answer questions will be Berkshire’s vice chairmen, Ajit Jain and Greg Abel, who head Berkshire’s insurance and non-insurance operations, respectively.Barron’shas identified Abel as the most likely successor to Buffett as CEO.\nSome investors—andBarron’s—would like to see Jain, Abel, Combs, and Weschler get more exposure at the meeting as the likely next generation of leadership at Berkshire. But Buffett is a creature of habit and he likes the Warren and Charlie show. So that’s what it will be.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"langContent":"EN"},{"id":374571319,"gmtCreate":1619472069331,"gmtModify":1619475386408,"author":{"id":"3556938315267406","authorId":"3556938315267406","name":"简单就好没错","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/f012b58646df639be52448ccbb9be1a7","vip":1,"crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"idStr":"3556938315267406","authorIdStr":"3556938315267406"},"htmlText":"For big capital like BH, to keep 20%+ is quite good enough, But for small capital holder, it’s normal to persue a higher return while take more risk","listText":"For big capital like BH, to keep 20%+ is quite good enough, But for small capital holder, it’s normal to persue a higher return while take more risk","text":"For big capital like BH, to keep 20%+ is quite good enough, But for small capital holder, it’s normal to persue a higher return while take more risk","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":1,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/374571319","repostId":1184991623,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1184991623","pubTimestamp":1619448590,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/1184991623?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-04-26 22:49","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Berkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting Is Saturday. Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About.","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1184991623","media":"MarketWatch","summary":"Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyba","content":"<p>Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and topics like Bitcoin and the SPAC mania at the company’s annual meeting on Saturday.</p>\n<p>The meeting, normally in Omaha, will take place virtually from Los Angeles, enabling longtime vice chairman Charlie Munger, 97, to join the 90-year-old Buffett for 3½ hours of shareholder questions starting at 1:30 p.m. Eastern time.</p>\n<p>Buffett is hoping to resume the Omaha extravaganza, which he calls a “Woodstock for Capitalists,” in 2022. The outspoken Munger, who didn’t participate in last year’s meeting, is popular with the Berkshire faithful. Buffett has run Berkshire for 56 years.</p>\n<p>Berkshire shareholders will likely be in a good mood with the stock on a roll this year. The class A shares hit a record Monday and are up 0.9% to $412,365 on the session. The class B stock is up 0.7% to $273.96 Monday. The class A stock is up 18% this year, comfortably ahead of the S&amp;P 500’s 12% total return, after badly lagging behind the index in both 2019 and 2020.</p>\n<p>Berkshire’s aggressive stock repurchase program will probably be a major topic at the meeting. Investors are interested in Buffett’s current appetite for buybacks given the stock’s rally this year.</p>\n<p>The company ramped up its buybacks in the second half of 2020, with about $9 billion repurchased in each of the final two quarters of 2020, up from a total of nearly $7 billion in the first half of the year.</p>\n<p>Before the meeting on Saturday, Berkshire will release its first-quarter earnings, and investors will be focused on the buyback. The company’s operating profits are expected to be up 6%, to $2.55 a class B share, according to FactSet.</p>\n<p><i>Barron’s</i>has estimated that Berkshire bought back about $5 billion of stock from year-end through early March based on the share count disclosed in the recent proxy statement. Investors will look to see how much more stock Berkshire repurchased during the rest of March as the share price rose. Our guess is that Berkshire probably didn’t match the fourth-quarter total of $9 billion in the first quarter.</p>\n<p>“I’m interested to see their enthusiasm for the buyback program given the performance of the stock,” says James Shanahan, an Edward Jones analyst, referring to Buffett and Munger.</p>\n<p>Buffett has said Berkshire will be price conscious about buybacks, but has not provided any specifics.</p>\n<p>Shanahan sees a rise in the book value to $296,000 a class A share on March 31 from $287,000 at year-end 2020. The stock now trades for about 1.4 times that March 31 estimate, up from a low of around 1.1 times book a year ago and close to the five-year average.</p>\n<p>There could also be shareholder questions about climate change and diversity at Berkshire. The company has recommended that shareholders reject proposals about providing more disclosure about both issues.</p>\n<p>Buffett is likely to weigh in on the current investment landscape.</p>\n<p>He wasn’t aggressive on making new investments in 2020, as Berkshire sold a net $8 billion of stocks, including a group of airlines, and stakes inJPMorgan Chase(JPM) andGoldman Sachs Group(GS).</p>\n<p>This disappointed many holders who hoped Buffett would have been a big buyer of stocks during the selloff and follow his maxim to be “fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”</p>\n<p>Berkshire did establish sizable stakes inVerizon Communications(VZ) andChevron(CVX). Buffett may be asked about those purchases and the outlook for bank stocks and the overall market, which is now trading at lofty valuation, with the S&amp;P 500 at around 23 times projected 2021 earnings.</p>\n<p>Berkshire has also been quiet on acquisitions with only one notable deal in 2020, a roughly $10 billion purchase ofDominion Energy’s(D) natural-gas pipeline business by Berkshire Hathaway’s big utility unit, Berkshire Hathaway Energy.</p>\n<p>Buffett has long sought to land what he has called an “elephant,” or a large acquisition, but that has proven elusive. Berkshire’s only big deal in the past decade was its $33 billion purchase of Precision Castparts in 2016. The deal for the aircraft-parts maker hasn’t gone well, with the company hit by the aerospace downturn in 2020, forcing Berkshire to take a roughly $11 billion write-down. Amid an improving aerospace market, Buffett might be queried about the outlook for Precision Castparts.</p>\n<p>Buffett has complained in the past that aggressive private-equity firms have made it tough for Berkshire to land big deals. Now, the acquisition environment is even tougher amid record stock prices and a big new buyer of private companies in SPACs, or special-purpose acquisition companies, that have raised about $100 billion this year alone to pursue deals.</p>\n<p>“It’s unlikely there will be a major acquisition soon,” Shanahan says. Berkshire handicaps itself by refusing to participate in corporate auctions. Buffett prefers old-style handshake deals and tells potential sellers that Berkshire’s generally hands-off approach to its dozens of subsidiaries makes it an ideal home for their businesses.</p>\n<p>Investors may ask Buffett about trends in the reinsurance business, an important part of Berkshire’s big property and casualty insurance operations. Pricing has been improving in the P&amp;C market. Investors also may query him about Berkshire’s Geico unit, which has been losing ground to its chief auto-insurance rival,Progressive(PGR) in the past year. Geico and Progressive are the two best-run auto insurers in the country and now rank second and third, respectively, behind State Farm.</p>\n<p>In a surprise move, Berkshire decided to name one of Buffett’s top investment lieutenants, Todd Combs, as CEO of Geico at the start of 2020. Investors may want to know how long Combs plans to stay at Geico.</p>\n<p>There also may be questions about the investment performance of Combs and Ted Weschler, who together run an estimated 10% of Berkshire’s $295 billion equity investment portfolio. The two are a good bet to run the entire equity portfolio in the post-Buffett era.</p>\n<p>Another topic is likely to be the railroad industry given the bidding war forKansas City Southern(KSU) by two leading Canadian railroads. Berkshire owns Burlington Northern Santa Fe, one of the big four railroads in the country. Berkshire is unlikely to get involved in the contest for Kansas City Southern.</p>\n<p>BNSF is probably the single most valuable division within Berkshire and would be worth close to $150 billion, in line with its public rivalUnion Pacific(UNP), if it were a stand-alone company. Berkshire is now valued at around $625 billion.</p>\n<p>Buffett has been a prominent Bitcoin skeptic, having called it “rat poison squared” and not a legitimate asset class. Shareholders may ask what he thinks now that Bitcoin has soared.</p>\n<p>Also on hand to answer questions will be Berkshire’s vice chairmen, Ajit Jain and Greg Abel, who head Berkshire’s insurance and non-insurance operations, respectively.<i>Barron’s</i>has identified Abel as the most likely successor to Buffett as CEO.</p>\n<p>Some investors—and<i>Barron’s</i>—would like to see Jain, Abel, Combs, and Weschler get more exposure at the meeting as the likely next generation of leadership at Berkshire. But Buffett is a creature of habit and he likes the Warren and Charlie show. So that’s what it will be.</p>","source":"lsy1603348471595","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>Berkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting Is Saturday. Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About.</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\">\nBerkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting Is Saturday. Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About.\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-04-26 22:49 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews><strong>MarketWatch</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and ...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"BRK.A":"伯克希尔","BRK.B":"伯克希尔B"},"source_url":"https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1184991623","content_text":"Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and topics like Bitcoin and the SPAC mania at the company’s annual meeting on Saturday.\nThe meeting, normally in Omaha, will take place virtually from Los Angeles, enabling longtime vice chairman Charlie Munger, 97, to join the 90-year-old Buffett for 3½ hours of shareholder questions starting at 1:30 p.m. Eastern time.\nBuffett is hoping to resume the Omaha extravaganza, which he calls a “Woodstock for Capitalists,” in 2022. The outspoken Munger, who didn’t participate in last year’s meeting, is popular with the Berkshire faithful. Buffett has run Berkshire for 56 years.\nBerkshire shareholders will likely be in a good mood with the stock on a roll this year. The class A shares hit a record Monday and are up 0.9% to $412,365 on the session. The class B stock is up 0.7% to $273.96 Monday. The class A stock is up 18% this year, comfortably ahead of the S&P 500’s 12% total return, after badly lagging behind the index in both 2019 and 2020.\nBerkshire’s aggressive stock repurchase program will probably be a major topic at the meeting. Investors are interested in Buffett’s current appetite for buybacks given the stock’s rally this year.\nThe company ramped up its buybacks in the second half of 2020, with about $9 billion repurchased in each of the final two quarters of 2020, up from a total of nearly $7 billion in the first half of the year.\nBefore the meeting on Saturday, Berkshire will release its first-quarter earnings, and investors will be focused on the buyback. The company’s operating profits are expected to be up 6%, to $2.55 a class B share, according to FactSet.\nBarron’shas estimated that Berkshire bought back about $5 billion of stock from year-end through early March based on the share count disclosed in the recent proxy statement. Investors will look to see how much more stock Berkshire repurchased during the rest of March as the share price rose. Our guess is that Berkshire probably didn’t match the fourth-quarter total of $9 billion in the first quarter.\n“I’m interested to see their enthusiasm for the buyback program given the performance of the stock,” says James Shanahan, an Edward Jones analyst, referring to Buffett and Munger.\nBuffett has said Berkshire will be price conscious about buybacks, but has not provided any specifics.\nShanahan sees a rise in the book value to $296,000 a class A share on March 31 from $287,000 at year-end 2020. The stock now trades for about 1.4 times that March 31 estimate, up from a low of around 1.1 times book a year ago and close to the five-year average.\nThere could also be shareholder questions about climate change and diversity at Berkshire. The company has recommended that shareholders reject proposals about providing more disclosure about both issues.\nBuffett is likely to weigh in on the current investment landscape.\nHe wasn’t aggressive on making new investments in 2020, as Berkshire sold a net $8 billion of stocks, including a group of airlines, and stakes inJPMorgan Chase(JPM) andGoldman Sachs Group(GS).\nThis disappointed many holders who hoped Buffett would have been a big buyer of stocks during the selloff and follow his maxim to be “fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”\nBerkshire did establish sizable stakes inVerizon Communications(VZ) andChevron(CVX). Buffett may be asked about those purchases and the outlook for bank stocks and the overall market, which is now trading at lofty valuation, with the S&P 500 at around 23 times projected 2021 earnings.\nBerkshire has also been quiet on acquisitions with only one notable deal in 2020, a roughly $10 billion purchase ofDominion Energy’s(D) natural-gas pipeline business by Berkshire Hathaway’s big utility unit, Berkshire Hathaway Energy.\nBuffett has long sought to land what he has called an “elephant,” or a large acquisition, but that has proven elusive. Berkshire’s only big deal in the past decade was its $33 billion purchase of Precision Castparts in 2016. The deal for the aircraft-parts maker hasn’t gone well, with the company hit by the aerospace downturn in 2020, forcing Berkshire to take a roughly $11 billion write-down. Amid an improving aerospace market, Buffett might be queried about the outlook for Precision Castparts.\nBuffett has complained in the past that aggressive private-equity firms have made it tough for Berkshire to land big deals. Now, the acquisition environment is even tougher amid record stock prices and a big new buyer of private companies in SPACs, or special-purpose acquisition companies, that have raised about $100 billion this year alone to pursue deals.\n“It’s unlikely there will be a major acquisition soon,” Shanahan says. Berkshire handicaps itself by refusing to participate in corporate auctions. Buffett prefers old-style handshake deals and tells potential sellers that Berkshire’s generally hands-off approach to its dozens of subsidiaries makes it an ideal home for their businesses.\nInvestors may ask Buffett about trends in the reinsurance business, an important part of Berkshire’s big property and casualty insurance operations. Pricing has been improving in the P&C market. Investors also may query him about Berkshire’s Geico unit, which has been losing ground to its chief auto-insurance rival,Progressive(PGR) in the past year. Geico and Progressive are the two best-run auto insurers in the country and now rank second and third, respectively, behind State Farm.\nIn a surprise move, Berkshire decided to name one of Buffett’s top investment lieutenants, Todd Combs, as CEO of Geico at the start of 2020. Investors may want to know how long Combs plans to stay at Geico.\nThere also may be questions about the investment performance of Combs and Ted Weschler, who together run an estimated 10% of Berkshire’s $295 billion equity investment portfolio. The two are a good bet to run the entire equity portfolio in the post-Buffett era.\nAnother topic is likely to be the railroad industry given the bidding war forKansas City Southern(KSU) by two leading Canadian railroads. Berkshire owns Burlington Northern Santa Fe, one of the big four railroads in the country. Berkshire is unlikely to get involved in the contest for Kansas City Southern.\nBNSF is probably the single most valuable division within Berkshire and would be worth close to $150 billion, in line with its public rivalUnion Pacific(UNP), if it were a stand-alone company. Berkshire is now valued at around $625 billion.\nBuffett has been a prominent Bitcoin skeptic, having called it “rat poison squared” and not a legitimate asset class. Shareholders may ask what he thinks now that Bitcoin has soared.\nAlso on hand to answer questions will be Berkshire’s vice chairmen, Ajit Jain and Greg Abel, who head Berkshire’s insurance and non-insurance operations, respectively.Barron’shas identified Abel as the most likely successor to Buffett as CEO.\nSome investors—andBarron’s—would like to see Jain, Abel, Combs, and Weschler get more exposure at the meeting as the likely next generation of leadership at Berkshire. But Buffett is a creature of habit and he likes the Warren and Charlie show. So that’s what it will be.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"langContent":"EN"},{"id":374524249,"gmtCreate":1619461864581,"gmtModify":1634273286160,"author":{"id":"3575548858399731","authorId":"3575548858399731","name":"mad276","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/1a9a58ce8db8a0e8a73026ea18b28fcc","vip":1,"crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"idStr":"3575548858399731","authorIdStr":"3575548858399731"},"htmlText":"Looking&nbsp;forward to this","listText":"Looking&nbsp;forward to this","text":"Looking forward to this","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":0,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/374524249","repostId":1184991623,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1184991623","pubTimestamp":1619448590,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/1184991623?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-04-26 22:49","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Berkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting Is Saturday. Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About.","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1184991623","media":"MarketWatch","summary":"Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyba","content":"<p>Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and topics like Bitcoin and the SPAC mania at the company’s annual meeting on Saturday.</p>\n<p>The meeting, normally in Omaha, will take place virtually from Los Angeles, enabling longtime vice chairman Charlie Munger, 97, to join the 90-year-old Buffett for 3½ hours of shareholder questions starting at 1:30 p.m. Eastern time.</p>\n<p>Buffett is hoping to resume the Omaha extravaganza, which he calls a “Woodstock for Capitalists,” in 2022. The outspoken Munger, who didn’t participate in last year’s meeting, is popular with the Berkshire faithful. Buffett has run Berkshire for 56 years.</p>\n<p>Berkshire shareholders will likely be in a good mood with the stock on a roll this year. The class A shares hit a record Monday and are up 0.9% to $412,365 on the session. The class B stock is up 0.7% to $273.96 Monday. The class A stock is up 18% this year, comfortably ahead of the S&amp;P 500’s 12% total return, after badly lagging behind the index in both 2019 and 2020.</p>\n<p>Berkshire’s aggressive stock repurchase program will probably be a major topic at the meeting. Investors are interested in Buffett’s current appetite for buybacks given the stock’s rally this year.</p>\n<p>The company ramped up its buybacks in the second half of 2020, with about $9 billion repurchased in each of the final two quarters of 2020, up from a total of nearly $7 billion in the first half of the year.</p>\n<p>Before the meeting on Saturday, Berkshire will release its first-quarter earnings, and investors will be focused on the buyback. The company’s operating profits are expected to be up 6%, to $2.55 a class B share, according to FactSet.</p>\n<p><i>Barron’s</i>has estimated that Berkshire bought back about $5 billion of stock from year-end through early March based on the share count disclosed in the recent proxy statement. Investors will look to see how much more stock Berkshire repurchased during the rest of March as the share price rose. Our guess is that Berkshire probably didn’t match the fourth-quarter total of $9 billion in the first quarter.</p>\n<p>“I’m interested to see their enthusiasm for the buyback program given the performance of the stock,” says James Shanahan, an Edward Jones analyst, referring to Buffett and Munger.</p>\n<p>Buffett has said Berkshire will be price conscious about buybacks, but has not provided any specifics.</p>\n<p>Shanahan sees a rise in the book value to $296,000 a class A share on March 31 from $287,000 at year-end 2020. The stock now trades for about 1.4 times that March 31 estimate, up from a low of around 1.1 times book a year ago and close to the five-year average.</p>\n<p>There could also be shareholder questions about climate change and diversity at Berkshire. The company has recommended that shareholders reject proposals about providing more disclosure about both issues.</p>\n<p>Buffett is likely to weigh in on the current investment landscape.</p>\n<p>He wasn’t aggressive on making new investments in 2020, as Berkshire sold a net $8 billion of stocks, including a group of airlines, and stakes inJPMorgan Chase(JPM) andGoldman Sachs Group(GS).</p>\n<p>This disappointed many holders who hoped Buffett would have been a big buyer of stocks during the selloff and follow his maxim to be “fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”</p>\n<p>Berkshire did establish sizable stakes inVerizon Communications(VZ) andChevron(CVX). Buffett may be asked about those purchases and the outlook for bank stocks and the overall market, which is now trading at lofty valuation, with the S&amp;P 500 at around 23 times projected 2021 earnings.</p>\n<p>Berkshire has also been quiet on acquisitions with only one notable deal in 2020, a roughly $10 billion purchase ofDominion Energy’s(D) natural-gas pipeline business by Berkshire Hathaway’s big utility unit, Berkshire Hathaway Energy.</p>\n<p>Buffett has long sought to land what he has called an “elephant,” or a large acquisition, but that has proven elusive. Berkshire’s only big deal in the past decade was its $33 billion purchase of Precision Castparts in 2016. The deal for the aircraft-parts maker hasn’t gone well, with the company hit by the aerospace downturn in 2020, forcing Berkshire to take a roughly $11 billion write-down. Amid an improving aerospace market, Buffett might be queried about the outlook for Precision Castparts.</p>\n<p>Buffett has complained in the past that aggressive private-equity firms have made it tough for Berkshire to land big deals. Now, the acquisition environment is even tougher amid record stock prices and a big new buyer of private companies in SPACs, or special-purpose acquisition companies, that have raised about $100 billion this year alone to pursue deals.</p>\n<p>“It’s unlikely there will be a major acquisition soon,” Shanahan says. Berkshire handicaps itself by refusing to participate in corporate auctions. Buffett prefers old-style handshake deals and tells potential sellers that Berkshire’s generally hands-off approach to its dozens of subsidiaries makes it an ideal home for their businesses.</p>\n<p>Investors may ask Buffett about trends in the reinsurance business, an important part of Berkshire’s big property and casualty insurance operations. Pricing has been improving in the P&amp;C market. Investors also may query him about Berkshire’s Geico unit, which has been losing ground to its chief auto-insurance rival,Progressive(PGR) in the past year. Geico and Progressive are the two best-run auto insurers in the country and now rank second and third, respectively, behind State Farm.</p>\n<p>In a surprise move, Berkshire decided to name one of Buffett’s top investment lieutenants, Todd Combs, as CEO of Geico at the start of 2020. Investors may want to know how long Combs plans to stay at Geico.</p>\n<p>There also may be questions about the investment performance of Combs and Ted Weschler, who together run an estimated 10% of Berkshire’s $295 billion equity investment portfolio. The two are a good bet to run the entire equity portfolio in the post-Buffett era.</p>\n<p>Another topic is likely to be the railroad industry given the bidding war forKansas City Southern(KSU) by two leading Canadian railroads. Berkshire owns Burlington Northern Santa Fe, one of the big four railroads in the country. Berkshire is unlikely to get involved in the contest for Kansas City Southern.</p>\n<p>BNSF is probably the single most valuable division within Berkshire and would be worth close to $150 billion, in line with its public rivalUnion Pacific(UNP), if it were a stand-alone company. Berkshire is now valued at around $625 billion.</p>\n<p>Buffett has been a prominent Bitcoin skeptic, having called it “rat poison squared” and not a legitimate asset class. Shareholders may ask what he thinks now that Bitcoin has soared.</p>\n<p>Also on hand to answer questions will be Berkshire’s vice chairmen, Ajit Jain and Greg Abel, who head Berkshire’s insurance and non-insurance operations, respectively.<i>Barron’s</i>has identified Abel as the most likely successor to Buffett as CEO.</p>\n<p>Some investors—and<i>Barron’s</i>—would like to see Jain, Abel, Combs, and Weschler get more exposure at the meeting as the likely next generation of leadership at Berkshire. But Buffett is a creature of habit and he likes the Warren and Charlie show. So that’s what it will be.</p>","source":"lsy1603348471595","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>Berkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting Is Saturday. Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About.</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\">\nBerkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting Is Saturday. Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About.\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-04-26 22:49 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews><strong>MarketWatch</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and ...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"BRK.A":"伯克希尔","BRK.B":"伯克希尔B"},"source_url":"https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1184991623","content_text":"Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and topics like Bitcoin and the SPAC mania at the company’s annual meeting on Saturday.\nThe meeting, normally in Omaha, will take place virtually from Los Angeles, enabling longtime vice chairman Charlie Munger, 97, to join the 90-year-old Buffett for 3½ hours of shareholder questions starting at 1:30 p.m. Eastern time.\nBuffett is hoping to resume the Omaha extravaganza, which he calls a “Woodstock for Capitalists,” in 2022. The outspoken Munger, who didn’t participate in last year’s meeting, is popular with the Berkshire faithful. Buffett has run Berkshire for 56 years.\nBerkshire shareholders will likely be in a good mood with the stock on a roll this year. The class A shares hit a record Monday and are up 0.9% to $412,365 on the session. The class B stock is up 0.7% to $273.96 Monday. The class A stock is up 18% this year, comfortably ahead of the S&P 500’s 12% total return, after badly lagging behind the index in both 2019 and 2020.\nBerkshire’s aggressive stock repurchase program will probably be a major topic at the meeting. Investors are interested in Buffett’s current appetite for buybacks given the stock’s rally this year.\nThe company ramped up its buybacks in the second half of 2020, with about $9 billion repurchased in each of the final two quarters of 2020, up from a total of nearly $7 billion in the first half of the year.\nBefore the meeting on Saturday, Berkshire will release its first-quarter earnings, and investors will be focused on the buyback. The company’s operating profits are expected to be up 6%, to $2.55 a class B share, according to FactSet.\nBarron’shas estimated that Berkshire bought back about $5 billion of stock from year-end through early March based on the share count disclosed in the recent proxy statement. Investors will look to see how much more stock Berkshire repurchased during the rest of March as the share price rose. Our guess is that Berkshire probably didn’t match the fourth-quarter total of $9 billion in the first quarter.\n“I’m interested to see their enthusiasm for the buyback program given the performance of the stock,” says James Shanahan, an Edward Jones analyst, referring to Buffett and Munger.\nBuffett has said Berkshire will be price conscious about buybacks, but has not provided any specifics.\nShanahan sees a rise in the book value to $296,000 a class A share on March 31 from $287,000 at year-end 2020. The stock now trades for about 1.4 times that March 31 estimate, up from a low of around 1.1 times book a year ago and close to the five-year average.\nThere could also be shareholder questions about climate change and diversity at Berkshire. The company has recommended that shareholders reject proposals about providing more disclosure about both issues.\nBuffett is likely to weigh in on the current investment landscape.\nHe wasn’t aggressive on making new investments in 2020, as Berkshire sold a net $8 billion of stocks, including a group of airlines, and stakes inJPMorgan Chase(JPM) andGoldman Sachs Group(GS).\nThis disappointed many holders who hoped Buffett would have been a big buyer of stocks during the selloff and follow his maxim to be “fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”\nBerkshire did establish sizable stakes inVerizon Communications(VZ) andChevron(CVX). Buffett may be asked about those purchases and the outlook for bank stocks and the overall market, which is now trading at lofty valuation, with the S&P 500 at around 23 times projected 2021 earnings.\nBerkshire has also been quiet on acquisitions with only one notable deal in 2020, a roughly $10 billion purchase ofDominion Energy’s(D) natural-gas pipeline business by Berkshire Hathaway’s big utility unit, Berkshire Hathaway Energy.\nBuffett has long sought to land what he has called an “elephant,” or a large acquisition, but that has proven elusive. Berkshire’s only big deal in the past decade was its $33 billion purchase of Precision Castparts in 2016. The deal for the aircraft-parts maker hasn’t gone well, with the company hit by the aerospace downturn in 2020, forcing Berkshire to take a roughly $11 billion write-down. Amid an improving aerospace market, Buffett might be queried about the outlook for Precision Castparts.\nBuffett has complained in the past that aggressive private-equity firms have made it tough for Berkshire to land big deals. Now, the acquisition environment is even tougher amid record stock prices and a big new buyer of private companies in SPACs, or special-purpose acquisition companies, that have raised about $100 billion this year alone to pursue deals.\n“It’s unlikely there will be a major acquisition soon,” Shanahan says. Berkshire handicaps itself by refusing to participate in corporate auctions. Buffett prefers old-style handshake deals and tells potential sellers that Berkshire’s generally hands-off approach to its dozens of subsidiaries makes it an ideal home for their businesses.\nInvestors may ask Buffett about trends in the reinsurance business, an important part of Berkshire’s big property and casualty insurance operations. Pricing has been improving in the P&C market. Investors also may query him about Berkshire’s Geico unit, which has been losing ground to its chief auto-insurance rival,Progressive(PGR) in the past year. Geico and Progressive are the two best-run auto insurers in the country and now rank second and third, respectively, behind State Farm.\nIn a surprise move, Berkshire decided to name one of Buffett’s top investment lieutenants, Todd Combs, as CEO of Geico at the start of 2020. Investors may want to know how long Combs plans to stay at Geico.\nThere also may be questions about the investment performance of Combs and Ted Weschler, who together run an estimated 10% of Berkshire’s $295 billion equity investment portfolio. The two are a good bet to run the entire equity portfolio in the post-Buffett era.\nAnother topic is likely to be the railroad industry given the bidding war forKansas City Southern(KSU) by two leading Canadian railroads. Berkshire owns Burlington Northern Santa Fe, one of the big four railroads in the country. Berkshire is unlikely to get involved in the contest for Kansas City Southern.\nBNSF is probably the single most valuable division within Berkshire and would be worth close to $150 billion, in line with its public rivalUnion Pacific(UNP), if it were a stand-alone company. Berkshire is now valued at around $625 billion.\nBuffett has been a prominent Bitcoin skeptic, having called it “rat poison squared” and not a legitimate asset class. Shareholders may ask what he thinks now that Bitcoin has soared.\nAlso on hand to answer questions will be Berkshire’s vice chairmen, Ajit Jain and Greg Abel, who head Berkshire’s insurance and non-insurance operations, respectively.Barron’shas identified Abel as the most likely successor to Buffett as CEO.\nSome investors—andBarron’s—would like to see Jain, Abel, Combs, and Weschler get more exposure at the meeting as the likely next generation of leadership at Berkshire. But Buffett is a creature of habit and he likes the Warren and Charlie show. So that’s what it will be.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"langContent":"EN"},{"id":374529245,"gmtCreate":1619460092887,"gmtModify":1634273290237,"author":{"id":"3580113363890300","authorId":"3580113363890300","name":"MamaA","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/47ff78e347e29043307dcca7056166a2","vip":1,"crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"idStr":"3580113363890300","authorIdStr":"3580113363890300"},"htmlText":"Always interesting to listen in to Berkshire AGM","listText":"Always interesting to listen in to Berkshire AGM","text":"Always interesting to listen in to Berkshire AGM","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":0,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/374529245","repostId":1184991623,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1184991623","pubTimestamp":1619448590,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/1184991623?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-04-26 22:49","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Berkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting Is Saturday. Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About.","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1184991623","media":"MarketWatch","summary":"Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyba","content":"<p>Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and topics like Bitcoin and the SPAC mania at the company’s annual meeting on Saturday.</p>\n<p>The meeting, normally in Omaha, will take place virtually from Los Angeles, enabling longtime vice chairman Charlie Munger, 97, to join the 90-year-old Buffett for 3½ hours of shareholder questions starting at 1:30 p.m. Eastern time.</p>\n<p>Buffett is hoping to resume the Omaha extravaganza, which he calls a “Woodstock for Capitalists,” in 2022. The outspoken Munger, who didn’t participate in last year’s meeting, is popular with the Berkshire faithful. Buffett has run Berkshire for 56 years.</p>\n<p>Berkshire shareholders will likely be in a good mood with the stock on a roll this year. The class A shares hit a record Monday and are up 0.9% to $412,365 on the session. The class B stock is up 0.7% to $273.96 Monday. The class A stock is up 18% this year, comfortably ahead of the S&amp;P 500’s 12% total return, after badly lagging behind the index in both 2019 and 2020.</p>\n<p>Berkshire’s aggressive stock repurchase program will probably be a major topic at the meeting. Investors are interested in Buffett’s current appetite for buybacks given the stock’s rally this year.</p>\n<p>The company ramped up its buybacks in the second half of 2020, with about $9 billion repurchased in each of the final two quarters of 2020, up from a total of nearly $7 billion in the first half of the year.</p>\n<p>Before the meeting on Saturday, Berkshire will release its first-quarter earnings, and investors will be focused on the buyback. The company’s operating profits are expected to be up 6%, to $2.55 a class B share, according to FactSet.</p>\n<p><i>Barron’s</i>has estimated that Berkshire bought back about $5 billion of stock from year-end through early March based on the share count disclosed in the recent proxy statement. Investors will look to see how much more stock Berkshire repurchased during the rest of March as the share price rose. Our guess is that Berkshire probably didn’t match the fourth-quarter total of $9 billion in the first quarter.</p>\n<p>“I’m interested to see their enthusiasm for the buyback program given the performance of the stock,” says James Shanahan, an Edward Jones analyst, referring to Buffett and Munger.</p>\n<p>Buffett has said Berkshire will be price conscious about buybacks, but has not provided any specifics.</p>\n<p>Shanahan sees a rise in the book value to $296,000 a class A share on March 31 from $287,000 at year-end 2020. The stock now trades for about 1.4 times that March 31 estimate, up from a low of around 1.1 times book a year ago and close to the five-year average.</p>\n<p>There could also be shareholder questions about climate change and diversity at Berkshire. The company has recommended that shareholders reject proposals about providing more disclosure about both issues.</p>\n<p>Buffett is likely to weigh in on the current investment landscape.</p>\n<p>He wasn’t aggressive on making new investments in 2020, as Berkshire sold a net $8 billion of stocks, including a group of airlines, and stakes inJPMorgan Chase(JPM) andGoldman Sachs Group(GS).</p>\n<p>This disappointed many holders who hoped Buffett would have been a big buyer of stocks during the selloff and follow his maxim to be “fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”</p>\n<p>Berkshire did establish sizable stakes inVerizon Communications(VZ) andChevron(CVX). Buffett may be asked about those purchases and the outlook for bank stocks and the overall market, which is now trading at lofty valuation, with the S&amp;P 500 at around 23 times projected 2021 earnings.</p>\n<p>Berkshire has also been quiet on acquisitions with only one notable deal in 2020, a roughly $10 billion purchase ofDominion Energy’s(D) natural-gas pipeline business by Berkshire Hathaway’s big utility unit, Berkshire Hathaway Energy.</p>\n<p>Buffett has long sought to land what he has called an “elephant,” or a large acquisition, but that has proven elusive. Berkshire’s only big deal in the past decade was its $33 billion purchase of Precision Castparts in 2016. The deal for the aircraft-parts maker hasn’t gone well, with the company hit by the aerospace downturn in 2020, forcing Berkshire to take a roughly $11 billion write-down. Amid an improving aerospace market, Buffett might be queried about the outlook for Precision Castparts.</p>\n<p>Buffett has complained in the past that aggressive private-equity firms have made it tough for Berkshire to land big deals. Now, the acquisition environment is even tougher amid record stock prices and a big new buyer of private companies in SPACs, or special-purpose acquisition companies, that have raised about $100 billion this year alone to pursue deals.</p>\n<p>“It’s unlikely there will be a major acquisition soon,” Shanahan says. Berkshire handicaps itself by refusing to participate in corporate auctions. Buffett prefers old-style handshake deals and tells potential sellers that Berkshire’s generally hands-off approach to its dozens of subsidiaries makes it an ideal home for their businesses.</p>\n<p>Investors may ask Buffett about trends in the reinsurance business, an important part of Berkshire’s big property and casualty insurance operations. Pricing has been improving in the P&amp;C market. Investors also may query him about Berkshire’s Geico unit, which has been losing ground to its chief auto-insurance rival,Progressive(PGR) in the past year. Geico and Progressive are the two best-run auto insurers in the country and now rank second and third, respectively, behind State Farm.</p>\n<p>In a surprise move, Berkshire decided to name one of Buffett’s top investment lieutenants, Todd Combs, as CEO of Geico at the start of 2020. Investors may want to know how long Combs plans to stay at Geico.</p>\n<p>There also may be questions about the investment performance of Combs and Ted Weschler, who together run an estimated 10% of Berkshire’s $295 billion equity investment portfolio. The two are a good bet to run the entire equity portfolio in the post-Buffett era.</p>\n<p>Another topic is likely to be the railroad industry given the bidding war forKansas City Southern(KSU) by two leading Canadian railroads. Berkshire owns Burlington Northern Santa Fe, one of the big four railroads in the country. Berkshire is unlikely to get involved in the contest for Kansas City Southern.</p>\n<p>BNSF is probably the single most valuable division within Berkshire and would be worth close to $150 billion, in line with its public rivalUnion Pacific(UNP), if it were a stand-alone company. Berkshire is now valued at around $625 billion.</p>\n<p>Buffett has been a prominent Bitcoin skeptic, having called it “rat poison squared” and not a legitimate asset class. Shareholders may ask what he thinks now that Bitcoin has soared.</p>\n<p>Also on hand to answer questions will be Berkshire’s vice chairmen, Ajit Jain and Greg Abel, who head Berkshire’s insurance and non-insurance operations, respectively.<i>Barron’s</i>has identified Abel as the most likely successor to Buffett as CEO.</p>\n<p>Some investors—and<i>Barron’s</i>—would like to see Jain, Abel, Combs, and Weschler get more exposure at the meeting as the likely next generation of leadership at Berkshire. But Buffett is a creature of habit and he likes the Warren and Charlie show. So that’s what it will be.</p>","source":"lsy1603348471595","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>Berkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting Is Saturday. Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About.</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\">\nBerkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting Is Saturday. Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About.\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-04-26 22:49 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews><strong>MarketWatch</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and ...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"BRK.A":"伯克希尔","BRK.B":"伯克希尔B"},"source_url":"https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1184991623","content_text":"Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and topics like Bitcoin and the SPAC mania at the company’s annual meeting on Saturday.\nThe meeting, normally in Omaha, will take place virtually from Los Angeles, enabling longtime vice chairman Charlie Munger, 97, to join the 90-year-old Buffett for 3½ hours of shareholder questions starting at 1:30 p.m. Eastern time.\nBuffett is hoping to resume the Omaha extravaganza, which he calls a “Woodstock for Capitalists,” in 2022. The outspoken Munger, who didn’t participate in last year’s meeting, is popular with the Berkshire faithful. Buffett has run Berkshire for 56 years.\nBerkshire shareholders will likely be in a good mood with the stock on a roll this year. The class A shares hit a record Monday and are up 0.9% to $412,365 on the session. The class B stock is up 0.7% to $273.96 Monday. The class A stock is up 18% this year, comfortably ahead of the S&P 500’s 12% total return, after badly lagging behind the index in both 2019 and 2020.\nBerkshire’s aggressive stock repurchase program will probably be a major topic at the meeting. Investors are interested in Buffett’s current appetite for buybacks given the stock’s rally this year.\nThe company ramped up its buybacks in the second half of 2020, with about $9 billion repurchased in each of the final two quarters of 2020, up from a total of nearly $7 billion in the first half of the year.\nBefore the meeting on Saturday, Berkshire will release its first-quarter earnings, and investors will be focused on the buyback. The company’s operating profits are expected to be up 6%, to $2.55 a class B share, according to FactSet.\nBarron’shas estimated that Berkshire bought back about $5 billion of stock from year-end through early March based on the share count disclosed in the recent proxy statement. Investors will look to see how much more stock Berkshire repurchased during the rest of March as the share price rose. Our guess is that Berkshire probably didn’t match the fourth-quarter total of $9 billion in the first quarter.\n“I’m interested to see their enthusiasm for the buyback program given the performance of the stock,” says James Shanahan, an Edward Jones analyst, referring to Buffett and Munger.\nBuffett has said Berkshire will be price conscious about buybacks, but has not provided any specifics.\nShanahan sees a rise in the book value to $296,000 a class A share on March 31 from $287,000 at year-end 2020. The stock now trades for about 1.4 times that March 31 estimate, up from a low of around 1.1 times book a year ago and close to the five-year average.\nThere could also be shareholder questions about climate change and diversity at Berkshire. The company has recommended that shareholders reject proposals about providing more disclosure about both issues.\nBuffett is likely to weigh in on the current investment landscape.\nHe wasn’t aggressive on making new investments in 2020, as Berkshire sold a net $8 billion of stocks, including a group of airlines, and stakes inJPMorgan Chase(JPM) andGoldman Sachs Group(GS).\nThis disappointed many holders who hoped Buffett would have been a big buyer of stocks during the selloff and follow his maxim to be “fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”\nBerkshire did establish sizable stakes inVerizon Communications(VZ) andChevron(CVX). Buffett may be asked about those purchases and the outlook for bank stocks and the overall market, which is now trading at lofty valuation, with the S&P 500 at around 23 times projected 2021 earnings.\nBerkshire has also been quiet on acquisitions with only one notable deal in 2020, a roughly $10 billion purchase ofDominion Energy’s(D) natural-gas pipeline business by Berkshire Hathaway’s big utility unit, Berkshire Hathaway Energy.\nBuffett has long sought to land what he has called an “elephant,” or a large acquisition, but that has proven elusive. Berkshire’s only big deal in the past decade was its $33 billion purchase of Precision Castparts in 2016. The deal for the aircraft-parts maker hasn’t gone well, with the company hit by the aerospace downturn in 2020, forcing Berkshire to take a roughly $11 billion write-down. Amid an improving aerospace market, Buffett might be queried about the outlook for Precision Castparts.\nBuffett has complained in the past that aggressive private-equity firms have made it tough for Berkshire to land big deals. Now, the acquisition environment is even tougher amid record stock prices and a big new buyer of private companies in SPACs, or special-purpose acquisition companies, that have raised about $100 billion this year alone to pursue deals.\n“It’s unlikely there will be a major acquisition soon,” Shanahan says. Berkshire handicaps itself by refusing to participate in corporate auctions. Buffett prefers old-style handshake deals and tells potential sellers that Berkshire’s generally hands-off approach to its dozens of subsidiaries makes it an ideal home for their businesses.\nInvestors may ask Buffett about trends in the reinsurance business, an important part of Berkshire’s big property and casualty insurance operations. Pricing has been improving in the P&C market. Investors also may query him about Berkshire’s Geico unit, which has been losing ground to its chief auto-insurance rival,Progressive(PGR) in the past year. Geico and Progressive are the two best-run auto insurers in the country and now rank second and third, respectively, behind State Farm.\nIn a surprise move, Berkshire decided to name one of Buffett’s top investment lieutenants, Todd Combs, as CEO of Geico at the start of 2020. Investors may want to know how long Combs plans to stay at Geico.\nThere also may be questions about the investment performance of Combs and Ted Weschler, who together run an estimated 10% of Berkshire’s $295 billion equity investment portfolio. The two are a good bet to run the entire equity portfolio in the post-Buffett era.\nAnother topic is likely to be the railroad industry given the bidding war forKansas City Southern(KSU) by two leading Canadian railroads. Berkshire owns Burlington Northern Santa Fe, one of the big four railroads in the country. Berkshire is unlikely to get involved in the contest for Kansas City Southern.\nBNSF is probably the single most valuable division within Berkshire and would be worth close to $150 billion, in line with its public rivalUnion Pacific(UNP), if it were a stand-alone company. Berkshire is now valued at around $625 billion.\nBuffett has been a prominent Bitcoin skeptic, having called it “rat poison squared” and not a legitimate asset class. Shareholders may ask what he thinks now that Bitcoin has soared.\nAlso on hand to answer questions will be Berkshire’s vice chairmen, Ajit Jain and Greg Abel, who head Berkshire’s insurance and non-insurance operations, respectively.Barron’shas identified Abel as the most likely successor to Buffett as CEO.\nSome investors—andBarron’s—would like to see Jain, Abel, Combs, and Weschler get more exposure at the meeting as the likely next generation of leadership at Berkshire. But Buffett is a creature of habit and he likes the Warren and Charlie show. So that’s what it will be.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"langContent":"EN"},{"id":374566267,"gmtCreate":1619458378759,"gmtModify":1634273293594,"author":{"id":"3565075628273965","authorId":"3565075628273965","name":"陈河马","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/9c4a13cbf345abe505d3086b9f8da49a","vip":1,"crmLevel":5,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"idStr":"3565075628273965","authorIdStr":"3565075628273965"},"htmlText":"Wow","listText":"Wow","text":"Wow","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":0,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/374566267","repostId":1184991623,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1184991623","pubTimestamp":1619448590,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/1184991623?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-04-26 22:49","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Berkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting Is Saturday. Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About.","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1184991623","media":"MarketWatch","summary":"Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyba","content":"<p>Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and topics like Bitcoin and the SPAC mania at the company’s annual meeting on Saturday.</p>\n<p>The meeting, normally in Omaha, will take place virtually from Los Angeles, enabling longtime vice chairman Charlie Munger, 97, to join the 90-year-old Buffett for 3½ hours of shareholder questions starting at 1:30 p.m. Eastern time.</p>\n<p>Buffett is hoping to resume the Omaha extravaganza, which he calls a “Woodstock for Capitalists,” in 2022. The outspoken Munger, who didn’t participate in last year’s meeting, is popular with the Berkshire faithful. Buffett has run Berkshire for 56 years.</p>\n<p>Berkshire shareholders will likely be in a good mood with the stock on a roll this year. The class A shares hit a record Monday and are up 0.9% to $412,365 on the session. The class B stock is up 0.7% to $273.96 Monday. The class A stock is up 18% this year, comfortably ahead of the S&amp;P 500’s 12% total return, after badly lagging behind the index in both 2019 and 2020.</p>\n<p>Berkshire’s aggressive stock repurchase program will probably be a major topic at the meeting. Investors are interested in Buffett’s current appetite for buybacks given the stock’s rally this year.</p>\n<p>The company ramped up its buybacks in the second half of 2020, with about $9 billion repurchased in each of the final two quarters of 2020, up from a total of nearly $7 billion in the first half of the year.</p>\n<p>Before the meeting on Saturday, Berkshire will release its first-quarter earnings, and investors will be focused on the buyback. The company’s operating profits are expected to be up 6%, to $2.55 a class B share, according to FactSet.</p>\n<p><i>Barron’s</i>has estimated that Berkshire bought back about $5 billion of stock from year-end through early March based on the share count disclosed in the recent proxy statement. Investors will look to see how much more stock Berkshire repurchased during the rest of March as the share price rose. Our guess is that Berkshire probably didn’t match the fourth-quarter total of $9 billion in the first quarter.</p>\n<p>“I’m interested to see their enthusiasm for the buyback program given the performance of the stock,” says James Shanahan, an Edward Jones analyst, referring to Buffett and Munger.</p>\n<p>Buffett has said Berkshire will be price conscious about buybacks, but has not provided any specifics.</p>\n<p>Shanahan sees a rise in the book value to $296,000 a class A share on March 31 from $287,000 at year-end 2020. The stock now trades for about 1.4 times that March 31 estimate, up from a low of around 1.1 times book a year ago and close to the five-year average.</p>\n<p>There could also be shareholder questions about climate change and diversity at Berkshire. The company has recommended that shareholders reject proposals about providing more disclosure about both issues.</p>\n<p>Buffett is likely to weigh in on the current investment landscape.</p>\n<p>He wasn’t aggressive on making new investments in 2020, as Berkshire sold a net $8 billion of stocks, including a group of airlines, and stakes inJPMorgan Chase(JPM) andGoldman Sachs Group(GS).</p>\n<p>This disappointed many holders who hoped Buffett would have been a big buyer of stocks during the selloff and follow his maxim to be “fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”</p>\n<p>Berkshire did establish sizable stakes inVerizon Communications(VZ) andChevron(CVX). Buffett may be asked about those purchases and the outlook for bank stocks and the overall market, which is now trading at lofty valuation, with the S&amp;P 500 at around 23 times projected 2021 earnings.</p>\n<p>Berkshire has also been quiet on acquisitions with only one notable deal in 2020, a roughly $10 billion purchase ofDominion Energy’s(D) natural-gas pipeline business by Berkshire Hathaway’s big utility unit, Berkshire Hathaway Energy.</p>\n<p>Buffett has long sought to land what he has called an “elephant,” or a large acquisition, but that has proven elusive. Berkshire’s only big deal in the past decade was its $33 billion purchase of Precision Castparts in 2016. The deal for the aircraft-parts maker hasn’t gone well, with the company hit by the aerospace downturn in 2020, forcing Berkshire to take a roughly $11 billion write-down. Amid an improving aerospace market, Buffett might be queried about the outlook for Precision Castparts.</p>\n<p>Buffett has complained in the past that aggressive private-equity firms have made it tough for Berkshire to land big deals. Now, the acquisition environment is even tougher amid record stock prices and a big new buyer of private companies in SPACs, or special-purpose acquisition companies, that have raised about $100 billion this year alone to pursue deals.</p>\n<p>“It’s unlikely there will be a major acquisition soon,” Shanahan says. Berkshire handicaps itself by refusing to participate in corporate auctions. Buffett prefers old-style handshake deals and tells potential sellers that Berkshire’s generally hands-off approach to its dozens of subsidiaries makes it an ideal home for their businesses.</p>\n<p>Investors may ask Buffett about trends in the reinsurance business, an important part of Berkshire’s big property and casualty insurance operations. Pricing has been improving in the P&amp;C market. Investors also may query him about Berkshire’s Geico unit, which has been losing ground to its chief auto-insurance rival,Progressive(PGR) in the past year. Geico and Progressive are the two best-run auto insurers in the country and now rank second and third, respectively, behind State Farm.</p>\n<p>In a surprise move, Berkshire decided to name one of Buffett’s top investment lieutenants, Todd Combs, as CEO of Geico at the start of 2020. Investors may want to know how long Combs plans to stay at Geico.</p>\n<p>There also may be questions about the investment performance of Combs and Ted Weschler, who together run an estimated 10% of Berkshire’s $295 billion equity investment portfolio. The two are a good bet to run the entire equity portfolio in the post-Buffett era.</p>\n<p>Another topic is likely to be the railroad industry given the bidding war forKansas City Southern(KSU) by two leading Canadian railroads. Berkshire owns Burlington Northern Santa Fe, one of the big four railroads in the country. Berkshire is unlikely to get involved in the contest for Kansas City Southern.</p>\n<p>BNSF is probably the single most valuable division within Berkshire and would be worth close to $150 billion, in line with its public rivalUnion Pacific(UNP), if it were a stand-alone company. Berkshire is now valued at around $625 billion.</p>\n<p>Buffett has been a prominent Bitcoin skeptic, having called it “rat poison squared” and not a legitimate asset class. Shareholders may ask what he thinks now that Bitcoin has soared.</p>\n<p>Also on hand to answer questions will be Berkshire’s vice chairmen, Ajit Jain and Greg Abel, who head Berkshire’s insurance and non-insurance operations, respectively.<i>Barron’s</i>has identified Abel as the most likely successor to Buffett as CEO.</p>\n<p>Some investors—and<i>Barron’s</i>—would like to see Jain, Abel, Combs, and Weschler get more exposure at the meeting as the likely next generation of leadership at Berkshire. But Buffett is a creature of habit and he likes the Warren and Charlie show. So that’s what it will be.</p>","source":"lsy1603348471595","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>Berkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting Is Saturday. Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About.</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\">\nBerkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting Is Saturday. Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About.\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-04-26 22:49 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews><strong>MarketWatch</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and ...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"BRK.A":"伯克希尔","BRK.B":"伯克希尔B"},"source_url":"https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1184991623","content_text":"Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and topics like Bitcoin and the SPAC mania at the company’s annual meeting on Saturday.\nThe meeting, normally in Omaha, will take place virtually from Los Angeles, enabling longtime vice chairman Charlie Munger, 97, to join the 90-year-old Buffett for 3½ hours of shareholder questions starting at 1:30 p.m. Eastern time.\nBuffett is hoping to resume the Omaha extravaganza, which he calls a “Woodstock for Capitalists,” in 2022. The outspoken Munger, who didn’t participate in last year’s meeting, is popular with the Berkshire faithful. Buffett has run Berkshire for 56 years.\nBerkshire shareholders will likely be in a good mood with the stock on a roll this year. The class A shares hit a record Monday and are up 0.9% to $412,365 on the session. The class B stock is up 0.7% to $273.96 Monday. The class A stock is up 18% this year, comfortably ahead of the S&P 500’s 12% total return, after badly lagging behind the index in both 2019 and 2020.\nBerkshire’s aggressive stock repurchase program will probably be a major topic at the meeting. Investors are interested in Buffett’s current appetite for buybacks given the stock’s rally this year.\nThe company ramped up its buybacks in the second half of 2020, with about $9 billion repurchased in each of the final two quarters of 2020, up from a total of nearly $7 billion in the first half of the year.\nBefore the meeting on Saturday, Berkshire will release its first-quarter earnings, and investors will be focused on the buyback. The company’s operating profits are expected to be up 6%, to $2.55 a class B share, according to FactSet.\nBarron’shas estimated that Berkshire bought back about $5 billion of stock from year-end through early March based on the share count disclosed in the recent proxy statement. Investors will look to see how much more stock Berkshire repurchased during the rest of March as the share price rose. Our guess is that Berkshire probably didn’t match the fourth-quarter total of $9 billion in the first quarter.\n“I’m interested to see their enthusiasm for the buyback program given the performance of the stock,” says James Shanahan, an Edward Jones analyst, referring to Buffett and Munger.\nBuffett has said Berkshire will be price conscious about buybacks, but has not provided any specifics.\nShanahan sees a rise in the book value to $296,000 a class A share on March 31 from $287,000 at year-end 2020. The stock now trades for about 1.4 times that March 31 estimate, up from a low of around 1.1 times book a year ago and close to the five-year average.\nThere could also be shareholder questions about climate change and diversity at Berkshire. The company has recommended that shareholders reject proposals about providing more disclosure about both issues.\nBuffett is likely to weigh in on the current investment landscape.\nHe wasn’t aggressive on making new investments in 2020, as Berkshire sold a net $8 billion of stocks, including a group of airlines, and stakes inJPMorgan Chase(JPM) andGoldman Sachs Group(GS).\nThis disappointed many holders who hoped Buffett would have been a big buyer of stocks during the selloff and follow his maxim to be “fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”\nBerkshire did establish sizable stakes inVerizon Communications(VZ) andChevron(CVX). Buffett may be asked about those purchases and the outlook for bank stocks and the overall market, which is now trading at lofty valuation, with the S&P 500 at around 23 times projected 2021 earnings.\nBerkshire has also been quiet on acquisitions with only one notable deal in 2020, a roughly $10 billion purchase ofDominion Energy’s(D) natural-gas pipeline business by Berkshire Hathaway’s big utility unit, Berkshire Hathaway Energy.\nBuffett has long sought to land what he has called an “elephant,” or a large acquisition, but that has proven elusive. Berkshire’s only big deal in the past decade was its $33 billion purchase of Precision Castparts in 2016. The deal for the aircraft-parts maker hasn’t gone well, with the company hit by the aerospace downturn in 2020, forcing Berkshire to take a roughly $11 billion write-down. Amid an improving aerospace market, Buffett might be queried about the outlook for Precision Castparts.\nBuffett has complained in the past that aggressive private-equity firms have made it tough for Berkshire to land big deals. Now, the acquisition environment is even tougher amid record stock prices and a big new buyer of private companies in SPACs, or special-purpose acquisition companies, that have raised about $100 billion this year alone to pursue deals.\n“It’s unlikely there will be a major acquisition soon,” Shanahan says. Berkshire handicaps itself by refusing to participate in corporate auctions. Buffett prefers old-style handshake deals and tells potential sellers that Berkshire’s generally hands-off approach to its dozens of subsidiaries makes it an ideal home for their businesses.\nInvestors may ask Buffett about trends in the reinsurance business, an important part of Berkshire’s big property and casualty insurance operations. Pricing has been improving in the P&C market. Investors also may query him about Berkshire’s Geico unit, which has been losing ground to its chief auto-insurance rival,Progressive(PGR) in the past year. Geico and Progressive are the two best-run auto insurers in the country and now rank second and third, respectively, behind State Farm.\nIn a surprise move, Berkshire decided to name one of Buffett’s top investment lieutenants, Todd Combs, as CEO of Geico at the start of 2020. Investors may want to know how long Combs plans to stay at Geico.\nThere also may be questions about the investment performance of Combs and Ted Weschler, who together run an estimated 10% of Berkshire’s $295 billion equity investment portfolio. The two are a good bet to run the entire equity portfolio in the post-Buffett era.\nAnother topic is likely to be the railroad industry given the bidding war forKansas City Southern(KSU) by two leading Canadian railroads. Berkshire owns Burlington Northern Santa Fe, one of the big four railroads in the country. Berkshire is unlikely to get involved in the contest for Kansas City Southern.\nBNSF is probably the single most valuable division within Berkshire and would be worth close to $150 billion, in line with its public rivalUnion Pacific(UNP), if it were a stand-alone company. Berkshire is now valued at around $625 billion.\nBuffett has been a prominent Bitcoin skeptic, having called it “rat poison squared” and not a legitimate asset class. Shareholders may ask what he thinks now that Bitcoin has soared.\nAlso on hand to answer questions will be Berkshire’s vice chairmen, Ajit Jain and Greg Abel, who head Berkshire’s insurance and non-insurance operations, respectively.Barron’shas identified Abel as the most likely successor to Buffett as CEO.\nSome investors—andBarron’s—would like to see Jain, Abel, Combs, and Weschler get more exposure at the meeting as the likely next generation of leadership at Berkshire. But Buffett is a creature of habit and he likes the Warren and Charlie show. So that’s what it will be.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"langContent":"EN"},{"id":374519380,"gmtCreate":1619454796540,"gmtModify":1634273309967,"author":{"id":"3574939406817507","authorId":"3574939406817507","name":"Pokpok","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/c741dc4bd431df26d78ad4e290a0daab","vip":1,"crmLevel":1,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"idStr":"3574939406817507","authorIdStr":"3574939406817507"},"htmlText":"Hi","listText":"Hi","text":"Hi","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":0,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/374519380","repostId":1184991623,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1184991623","pubTimestamp":1619448590,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/1184991623?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-04-26 22:49","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Berkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting Is Saturday. Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About.","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1184991623","media":"MarketWatch","summary":"Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyba","content":"<p>Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and topics like Bitcoin and the SPAC mania at the company’s annual meeting on Saturday.</p>\n<p>The meeting, normally in Omaha, will take place virtually from Los Angeles, enabling longtime vice chairman Charlie Munger, 97, to join the 90-year-old Buffett for 3½ hours of shareholder questions starting at 1:30 p.m. Eastern time.</p>\n<p>Buffett is hoping to resume the Omaha extravaganza, which he calls a “Woodstock for Capitalists,” in 2022. The outspoken Munger, who didn’t participate in last year’s meeting, is popular with the Berkshire faithful. Buffett has run Berkshire for 56 years.</p>\n<p>Berkshire shareholders will likely be in a good mood with the stock on a roll this year. The class A shares hit a record Monday and are up 0.9% to $412,365 on the session. The class B stock is up 0.7% to $273.96 Monday. The class A stock is up 18% this year, comfortably ahead of the S&amp;P 500’s 12% total return, after badly lagging behind the index in both 2019 and 2020.</p>\n<p>Berkshire’s aggressive stock repurchase program will probably be a major topic at the meeting. Investors are interested in Buffett’s current appetite for buybacks given the stock’s rally this year.</p>\n<p>The company ramped up its buybacks in the second half of 2020, with about $9 billion repurchased in each of the final two quarters of 2020, up from a total of nearly $7 billion in the first half of the year.</p>\n<p>Before the meeting on Saturday, Berkshire will release its first-quarter earnings, and investors will be focused on the buyback. The company’s operating profits are expected to be up 6%, to $2.55 a class B share, according to FactSet.</p>\n<p><i>Barron’s</i>has estimated that Berkshire bought back about $5 billion of stock from year-end through early March based on the share count disclosed in the recent proxy statement. Investors will look to see how much more stock Berkshire repurchased during the rest of March as the share price rose. Our guess is that Berkshire probably didn’t match the fourth-quarter total of $9 billion in the first quarter.</p>\n<p>“I’m interested to see their enthusiasm for the buyback program given the performance of the stock,” says James Shanahan, an Edward Jones analyst, referring to Buffett and Munger.</p>\n<p>Buffett has said Berkshire will be price conscious about buybacks, but has not provided any specifics.</p>\n<p>Shanahan sees a rise in the book value to $296,000 a class A share on March 31 from $287,000 at year-end 2020. The stock now trades for about 1.4 times that March 31 estimate, up from a low of around 1.1 times book a year ago and close to the five-year average.</p>\n<p>There could also be shareholder questions about climate change and diversity at Berkshire. The company has recommended that shareholders reject proposals about providing more disclosure about both issues.</p>\n<p>Buffett is likely to weigh in on the current investment landscape.</p>\n<p>He wasn’t aggressive on making new investments in 2020, as Berkshire sold a net $8 billion of stocks, including a group of airlines, and stakes inJPMorgan Chase(JPM) andGoldman Sachs Group(GS).</p>\n<p>This disappointed many holders who hoped Buffett would have been a big buyer of stocks during the selloff and follow his maxim to be “fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”</p>\n<p>Berkshire did establish sizable stakes inVerizon Communications(VZ) andChevron(CVX). Buffett may be asked about those purchases and the outlook for bank stocks and the overall market, which is now trading at lofty valuation, with the S&amp;P 500 at around 23 times projected 2021 earnings.</p>\n<p>Berkshire has also been quiet on acquisitions with only one notable deal in 2020, a roughly $10 billion purchase ofDominion Energy’s(D) natural-gas pipeline business by Berkshire Hathaway’s big utility unit, Berkshire Hathaway Energy.</p>\n<p>Buffett has long sought to land what he has called an “elephant,” or a large acquisition, but that has proven elusive. Berkshire’s only big deal in the past decade was its $33 billion purchase of Precision Castparts in 2016. The deal for the aircraft-parts maker hasn’t gone well, with the company hit by the aerospace downturn in 2020, forcing Berkshire to take a roughly $11 billion write-down. Amid an improving aerospace market, Buffett might be queried about the outlook for Precision Castparts.</p>\n<p>Buffett has complained in the past that aggressive private-equity firms have made it tough for Berkshire to land big deals. Now, the acquisition environment is even tougher amid record stock prices and a big new buyer of private companies in SPACs, or special-purpose acquisition companies, that have raised about $100 billion this year alone to pursue deals.</p>\n<p>“It’s unlikely there will be a major acquisition soon,” Shanahan says. Berkshire handicaps itself by refusing to participate in corporate auctions. Buffett prefers old-style handshake deals and tells potential sellers that Berkshire’s generally hands-off approach to its dozens of subsidiaries makes it an ideal home for their businesses.</p>\n<p>Investors may ask Buffett about trends in the reinsurance business, an important part of Berkshire’s big property and casualty insurance operations. Pricing has been improving in the P&amp;C market. Investors also may query him about Berkshire’s Geico unit, which has been losing ground to its chief auto-insurance rival,Progressive(PGR) in the past year. Geico and Progressive are the two best-run auto insurers in the country and now rank second and third, respectively, behind State Farm.</p>\n<p>In a surprise move, Berkshire decided to name one of Buffett’s top investment lieutenants, Todd Combs, as CEO of Geico at the start of 2020. Investors may want to know how long Combs plans to stay at Geico.</p>\n<p>There also may be questions about the investment performance of Combs and Ted Weschler, who together run an estimated 10% of Berkshire’s $295 billion equity investment portfolio. The two are a good bet to run the entire equity portfolio in the post-Buffett era.</p>\n<p>Another topic is likely to be the railroad industry given the bidding war forKansas City Southern(KSU) by two leading Canadian railroads. Berkshire owns Burlington Northern Santa Fe, one of the big four railroads in the country. Berkshire is unlikely to get involved in the contest for Kansas City Southern.</p>\n<p>BNSF is probably the single most valuable division within Berkshire and would be worth close to $150 billion, in line with its public rivalUnion Pacific(UNP), if it were a stand-alone company. Berkshire is now valued at around $625 billion.</p>\n<p>Buffett has been a prominent Bitcoin skeptic, having called it “rat poison squared” and not a legitimate asset class. Shareholders may ask what he thinks now that Bitcoin has soared.</p>\n<p>Also on hand to answer questions will be Berkshire’s vice chairmen, Ajit Jain and Greg Abel, who head Berkshire’s insurance and non-insurance operations, respectively.<i>Barron’s</i>has identified Abel as the most likely successor to Buffett as CEO.</p>\n<p>Some investors—and<i>Barron’s</i>—would like to see Jain, Abel, Combs, and Weschler get more exposure at the meeting as the likely next generation of leadership at Berkshire. But Buffett is a creature of habit and he likes the Warren and Charlie show. So that’s what it will be.</p>","source":"lsy1603348471595","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>Berkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting Is Saturday. Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About.</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\">\nBerkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting Is Saturday. Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About.\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-04-26 22:49 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews><strong>MarketWatch</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and ...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"BRK.A":"伯克希尔","BRK.B":"伯克希尔B"},"source_url":"https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1184991623","content_text":"Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and topics like Bitcoin and the SPAC mania at the company’s annual meeting on Saturday.\nThe meeting, normally in Omaha, will take place virtually from Los Angeles, enabling longtime vice chairman Charlie Munger, 97, to join the 90-year-old Buffett for 3½ hours of shareholder questions starting at 1:30 p.m. Eastern time.\nBuffett is hoping to resume the Omaha extravaganza, which he calls a “Woodstock for Capitalists,” in 2022. The outspoken Munger, who didn’t participate in last year’s meeting, is popular with the Berkshire faithful. Buffett has run Berkshire for 56 years.\nBerkshire shareholders will likely be in a good mood with the stock on a roll this year. The class A shares hit a record Monday and are up 0.9% to $412,365 on the session. The class B stock is up 0.7% to $273.96 Monday. The class A stock is up 18% this year, comfortably ahead of the S&P 500’s 12% total return, after badly lagging behind the index in both 2019 and 2020.\nBerkshire’s aggressive stock repurchase program will probably be a major topic at the meeting. Investors are interested in Buffett’s current appetite for buybacks given the stock’s rally this year.\nThe company ramped up its buybacks in the second half of 2020, with about $9 billion repurchased in each of the final two quarters of 2020, up from a total of nearly $7 billion in the first half of the year.\nBefore the meeting on Saturday, Berkshire will release its first-quarter earnings, and investors will be focused on the buyback. The company’s operating profits are expected to be up 6%, to $2.55 a class B share, according to FactSet.\nBarron’shas estimated that Berkshire bought back about $5 billion of stock from year-end through early March based on the share count disclosed in the recent proxy statement. Investors will look to see how much more stock Berkshire repurchased during the rest of March as the share price rose. Our guess is that Berkshire probably didn’t match the fourth-quarter total of $9 billion in the first quarter.\n“I’m interested to see their enthusiasm for the buyback program given the performance of the stock,” says James Shanahan, an Edward Jones analyst, referring to Buffett and Munger.\nBuffett has said Berkshire will be price conscious about buybacks, but has not provided any specifics.\nShanahan sees a rise in the book value to $296,000 a class A share on March 31 from $287,000 at year-end 2020. The stock now trades for about 1.4 times that March 31 estimate, up from a low of around 1.1 times book a year ago and close to the five-year average.\nThere could also be shareholder questions about climate change and diversity at Berkshire. The company has recommended that shareholders reject proposals about providing more disclosure about both issues.\nBuffett is likely to weigh in on the current investment landscape.\nHe wasn’t aggressive on making new investments in 2020, as Berkshire sold a net $8 billion of stocks, including a group of airlines, and stakes inJPMorgan Chase(JPM) andGoldman Sachs Group(GS).\nThis disappointed many holders who hoped Buffett would have been a big buyer of stocks during the selloff and follow his maxim to be “fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”\nBerkshire did establish sizable stakes inVerizon Communications(VZ) andChevron(CVX). Buffett may be asked about those purchases and the outlook for bank stocks and the overall market, which is now trading at lofty valuation, with the S&P 500 at around 23 times projected 2021 earnings.\nBerkshire has also been quiet on acquisitions with only one notable deal in 2020, a roughly $10 billion purchase ofDominion Energy’s(D) natural-gas pipeline business by Berkshire Hathaway’s big utility unit, Berkshire Hathaway Energy.\nBuffett has long sought to land what he has called an “elephant,” or a large acquisition, but that has proven elusive. Berkshire’s only big deal in the past decade was its $33 billion purchase of Precision Castparts in 2016. The deal for the aircraft-parts maker hasn’t gone well, with the company hit by the aerospace downturn in 2020, forcing Berkshire to take a roughly $11 billion write-down. Amid an improving aerospace market, Buffett might be queried about the outlook for Precision Castparts.\nBuffett has complained in the past that aggressive private-equity firms have made it tough for Berkshire to land big deals. Now, the acquisition environment is even tougher amid record stock prices and a big new buyer of private companies in SPACs, or special-purpose acquisition companies, that have raised about $100 billion this year alone to pursue deals.\n“It’s unlikely there will be a major acquisition soon,” Shanahan says. Berkshire handicaps itself by refusing to participate in corporate auctions. Buffett prefers old-style handshake deals and tells potential sellers that Berkshire’s generally hands-off approach to its dozens of subsidiaries makes it an ideal home for their businesses.\nInvestors may ask Buffett about trends in the reinsurance business, an important part of Berkshire’s big property and casualty insurance operations. Pricing has been improving in the P&C market. Investors also may query him about Berkshire’s Geico unit, which has been losing ground to its chief auto-insurance rival,Progressive(PGR) in the past year. Geico and Progressive are the two best-run auto insurers in the country and now rank second and third, respectively, behind State Farm.\nIn a surprise move, Berkshire decided to name one of Buffett’s top investment lieutenants, Todd Combs, as CEO of Geico at the start of 2020. Investors may want to know how long Combs plans to stay at Geico.\nThere also may be questions about the investment performance of Combs and Ted Weschler, who together run an estimated 10% of Berkshire’s $295 billion equity investment portfolio. The two are a good bet to run the entire equity portfolio in the post-Buffett era.\nAnother topic is likely to be the railroad industry given the bidding war forKansas City Southern(KSU) by two leading Canadian railroads. Berkshire owns Burlington Northern Santa Fe, one of the big four railroads in the country. Berkshire is unlikely to get involved in the contest for Kansas City Southern.\nBNSF is probably the single most valuable division within Berkshire and would be worth close to $150 billion, in line with its public rivalUnion Pacific(UNP), if it were a stand-alone company. Berkshire is now valued at around $625 billion.\nBuffett has been a prominent Bitcoin skeptic, having called it “rat poison squared” and not a legitimate asset class. Shareholders may ask what he thinks now that Bitcoin has soared.\nAlso on hand to answer questions will be Berkshire’s vice chairmen, Ajit Jain and Greg Abel, who head Berkshire’s insurance and non-insurance operations, respectively.Barron’shas identified Abel as the most likely successor to Buffett as CEO.\nSome investors—andBarron’s—would like to see Jain, Abel, Combs, and Weschler get more exposure at the meeting as the likely next generation of leadership at Berkshire. But Buffett is a creature of habit and he likes the Warren and Charlie show. So that’s what it will be.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"langContent":"EN"},{"id":374592408,"gmtCreate":1619453303204,"gmtModify":1631889669573,"author":{"id":"3575132378763965","authorId":"3575132378763965","name":"Giffyy","avatar":"https://static.laohu8.com/default-avatar.jpg","vip":1,"crmLevel":1,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"idStr":"3575132378763965","authorIdStr":"3575132378763965"},"htmlText":"Nice","listText":"Nice","text":"Nice","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":0,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/374592408","repostId":1184991623,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1184991623","pubTimestamp":1619448590,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/1184991623?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-04-26 22:49","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Berkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting Is Saturday. Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About.","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1184991623","media":"MarketWatch","summary":"Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyba","content":"<p>Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and topics like Bitcoin and the SPAC mania at the company’s annual meeting on Saturday.</p>\n<p>The meeting, normally in Omaha, will take place virtually from Los Angeles, enabling longtime vice chairman Charlie Munger, 97, to join the 90-year-old Buffett for 3½ hours of shareholder questions starting at 1:30 p.m. Eastern time.</p>\n<p>Buffett is hoping to resume the Omaha extravaganza, which he calls a “Woodstock for Capitalists,” in 2022. The outspoken Munger, who didn’t participate in last year’s meeting, is popular with the Berkshire faithful. Buffett has run Berkshire for 56 years.</p>\n<p>Berkshire shareholders will likely be in a good mood with the stock on a roll this year. The class A shares hit a record Monday and are up 0.9% to $412,365 on the session. The class B stock is up 0.7% to $273.96 Monday. The class A stock is up 18% this year, comfortably ahead of the S&amp;P 500’s 12% total return, after badly lagging behind the index in both 2019 and 2020.</p>\n<p>Berkshire’s aggressive stock repurchase program will probably be a major topic at the meeting. Investors are interested in Buffett’s current appetite for buybacks given the stock’s rally this year.</p>\n<p>The company ramped up its buybacks in the second half of 2020, with about $9 billion repurchased in each of the final two quarters of 2020, up from a total of nearly $7 billion in the first half of the year.</p>\n<p>Before the meeting on Saturday, Berkshire will release its first-quarter earnings, and investors will be focused on the buyback. The company’s operating profits are expected to be up 6%, to $2.55 a class B share, according to FactSet.</p>\n<p><i>Barron’s</i>has estimated that Berkshire bought back about $5 billion of stock from year-end through early March based on the share count disclosed in the recent proxy statement. Investors will look to see how much more stock Berkshire repurchased during the rest of March as the share price rose. Our guess is that Berkshire probably didn’t match the fourth-quarter total of $9 billion in the first quarter.</p>\n<p>“I’m interested to see their enthusiasm for the buyback program given the performance of the stock,” says James Shanahan, an Edward Jones analyst, referring to Buffett and Munger.</p>\n<p>Buffett has said Berkshire will be price conscious about buybacks, but has not provided any specifics.</p>\n<p>Shanahan sees a rise in the book value to $296,000 a class A share on March 31 from $287,000 at year-end 2020. The stock now trades for about 1.4 times that March 31 estimate, up from a low of around 1.1 times book a year ago and close to the five-year average.</p>\n<p>There could also be shareholder questions about climate change and diversity at Berkshire. The company has recommended that shareholders reject proposals about providing more disclosure about both issues.</p>\n<p>Buffett is likely to weigh in on the current investment landscape.</p>\n<p>He wasn’t aggressive on making new investments in 2020, as Berkshire sold a net $8 billion of stocks, including a group of airlines, and stakes inJPMorgan Chase(JPM) andGoldman Sachs Group(GS).</p>\n<p>This disappointed many holders who hoped Buffett would have been a big buyer of stocks during the selloff and follow his maxim to be “fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”</p>\n<p>Berkshire did establish sizable stakes inVerizon Communications(VZ) andChevron(CVX). Buffett may be asked about those purchases and the outlook for bank stocks and the overall market, which is now trading at lofty valuation, with the S&amp;P 500 at around 23 times projected 2021 earnings.</p>\n<p>Berkshire has also been quiet on acquisitions with only one notable deal in 2020, a roughly $10 billion purchase ofDominion Energy’s(D) natural-gas pipeline business by Berkshire Hathaway’s big utility unit, Berkshire Hathaway Energy.</p>\n<p>Buffett has long sought to land what he has called an “elephant,” or a large acquisition, but that has proven elusive. Berkshire’s only big deal in the past decade was its $33 billion purchase of Precision Castparts in 2016. The deal for the aircraft-parts maker hasn’t gone well, with the company hit by the aerospace downturn in 2020, forcing Berkshire to take a roughly $11 billion write-down. Amid an improving aerospace market, Buffett might be queried about the outlook for Precision Castparts.</p>\n<p>Buffett has complained in the past that aggressive private-equity firms have made it tough for Berkshire to land big deals. Now, the acquisition environment is even tougher amid record stock prices and a big new buyer of private companies in SPACs, or special-purpose acquisition companies, that have raised about $100 billion this year alone to pursue deals.</p>\n<p>“It’s unlikely there will be a major acquisition soon,” Shanahan says. Berkshire handicaps itself by refusing to participate in corporate auctions. Buffett prefers old-style handshake deals and tells potential sellers that Berkshire’s generally hands-off approach to its dozens of subsidiaries makes it an ideal home for their businesses.</p>\n<p>Investors may ask Buffett about trends in the reinsurance business, an important part of Berkshire’s big property and casualty insurance operations. Pricing has been improving in the P&amp;C market. Investors also may query him about Berkshire’s Geico unit, which has been losing ground to its chief auto-insurance rival,Progressive(PGR) in the past year. Geico and Progressive are the two best-run auto insurers in the country and now rank second and third, respectively, behind State Farm.</p>\n<p>In a surprise move, Berkshire decided to name one of Buffett’s top investment lieutenants, Todd Combs, as CEO of Geico at the start of 2020. Investors may want to know how long Combs plans to stay at Geico.</p>\n<p>There also may be questions about the investment performance of Combs and Ted Weschler, who together run an estimated 10% of Berkshire’s $295 billion equity investment portfolio. The two are a good bet to run the entire equity portfolio in the post-Buffett era.</p>\n<p>Another topic is likely to be the railroad industry given the bidding war forKansas City Southern(KSU) by two leading Canadian railroads. Berkshire owns Burlington Northern Santa Fe, one of the big four railroads in the country. Berkshire is unlikely to get involved in the contest for Kansas City Southern.</p>\n<p>BNSF is probably the single most valuable division within Berkshire and would be worth close to $150 billion, in line with its public rivalUnion Pacific(UNP), if it were a stand-alone company. Berkshire is now valued at around $625 billion.</p>\n<p>Buffett has been a prominent Bitcoin skeptic, having called it “rat poison squared” and not a legitimate asset class. Shareholders may ask what he thinks now that Bitcoin has soared.</p>\n<p>Also on hand to answer questions will be Berkshire’s vice chairmen, Ajit Jain and Greg Abel, who head Berkshire’s insurance and non-insurance operations, respectively.<i>Barron’s</i>has identified Abel as the most likely successor to Buffett as CEO.</p>\n<p>Some investors—and<i>Barron’s</i>—would like to see Jain, Abel, Combs, and Weschler get more exposure at the meeting as the likely next generation of leadership at Berkshire. But Buffett is a creature of habit and he likes the Warren and Charlie show. So that’s what it will be.</p>","source":"lsy1603348471595","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>Berkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting Is Saturday. Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About.</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\">\nBerkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting Is Saturday. Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About.\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-04-26 22:49 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews><strong>MarketWatch</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and ...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"BRK.A":"伯克希尔","BRK.B":"伯克希尔B"},"source_url":"https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1184991623","content_text":"Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and topics like Bitcoin and the SPAC mania at the company’s annual meeting on Saturday.\nThe meeting, normally in Omaha, will take place virtually from Los Angeles, enabling longtime vice chairman Charlie Munger, 97, to join the 90-year-old Buffett for 3½ hours of shareholder questions starting at 1:30 p.m. Eastern time.\nBuffett is hoping to resume the Omaha extravaganza, which he calls a “Woodstock for Capitalists,” in 2022. The outspoken Munger, who didn’t participate in last year’s meeting, is popular with the Berkshire faithful. Buffett has run Berkshire for 56 years.\nBerkshire shareholders will likely be in a good mood with the stock on a roll this year. The class A shares hit a record Monday and are up 0.9% to $412,365 on the session. The class B stock is up 0.7% to $273.96 Monday. The class A stock is up 18% this year, comfortably ahead of the S&P 500’s 12% total return, after badly lagging behind the index in both 2019 and 2020.\nBerkshire’s aggressive stock repurchase program will probably be a major topic at the meeting. Investors are interested in Buffett’s current appetite for buybacks given the stock’s rally this year.\nThe company ramped up its buybacks in the second half of 2020, with about $9 billion repurchased in each of the final two quarters of 2020, up from a total of nearly $7 billion in the first half of the year.\nBefore the meeting on Saturday, Berkshire will release its first-quarter earnings, and investors will be focused on the buyback. The company’s operating profits are expected to be up 6%, to $2.55 a class B share, according to FactSet.\nBarron’shas estimated that Berkshire bought back about $5 billion of stock from year-end through early March based on the share count disclosed in the recent proxy statement. Investors will look to see how much more stock Berkshire repurchased during the rest of March as the share price rose. Our guess is that Berkshire probably didn’t match the fourth-quarter total of $9 billion in the first quarter.\n“I’m interested to see their enthusiasm for the buyback program given the performance of the stock,” says James Shanahan, an Edward Jones analyst, referring to Buffett and Munger.\nBuffett has said Berkshire will be price conscious about buybacks, but has not provided any specifics.\nShanahan sees a rise in the book value to $296,000 a class A share on March 31 from $287,000 at year-end 2020. The stock now trades for about 1.4 times that March 31 estimate, up from a low of around 1.1 times book a year ago and close to the five-year average.\nThere could also be shareholder questions about climate change and diversity at Berkshire. The company has recommended that shareholders reject proposals about providing more disclosure about both issues.\nBuffett is likely to weigh in on the current investment landscape.\nHe wasn’t aggressive on making new investments in 2020, as Berkshire sold a net $8 billion of stocks, including a group of airlines, and stakes inJPMorgan Chase(JPM) andGoldman Sachs Group(GS).\nThis disappointed many holders who hoped Buffett would have been a big buyer of stocks during the selloff and follow his maxim to be “fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”\nBerkshire did establish sizable stakes inVerizon Communications(VZ) andChevron(CVX). Buffett may be asked about those purchases and the outlook for bank stocks and the overall market, which is now trading at lofty valuation, with the S&P 500 at around 23 times projected 2021 earnings.\nBerkshire has also been quiet on acquisitions with only one notable deal in 2020, a roughly $10 billion purchase ofDominion Energy’s(D) natural-gas pipeline business by Berkshire Hathaway’s big utility unit, Berkshire Hathaway Energy.\nBuffett has long sought to land what he has called an “elephant,” or a large acquisition, but that has proven elusive. Berkshire’s only big deal in the past decade was its $33 billion purchase of Precision Castparts in 2016. The deal for the aircraft-parts maker hasn’t gone well, with the company hit by the aerospace downturn in 2020, forcing Berkshire to take a roughly $11 billion write-down. Amid an improving aerospace market, Buffett might be queried about the outlook for Precision Castparts.\nBuffett has complained in the past that aggressive private-equity firms have made it tough for Berkshire to land big deals. Now, the acquisition environment is even tougher amid record stock prices and a big new buyer of private companies in SPACs, or special-purpose acquisition companies, that have raised about $100 billion this year alone to pursue deals.\n“It’s unlikely there will be a major acquisition soon,” Shanahan says. Berkshire handicaps itself by refusing to participate in corporate auctions. Buffett prefers old-style handshake deals and tells potential sellers that Berkshire’s generally hands-off approach to its dozens of subsidiaries makes it an ideal home for their businesses.\nInvestors may ask Buffett about trends in the reinsurance business, an important part of Berkshire’s big property and casualty insurance operations. Pricing has been improving in the P&C market. Investors also may query him about Berkshire’s Geico unit, which has been losing ground to its chief auto-insurance rival,Progressive(PGR) in the past year. Geico and Progressive are the two best-run auto insurers in the country and now rank second and third, respectively, behind State Farm.\nIn a surprise move, Berkshire decided to name one of Buffett’s top investment lieutenants, Todd Combs, as CEO of Geico at the start of 2020. Investors may want to know how long Combs plans to stay at Geico.\nThere also may be questions about the investment performance of Combs and Ted Weschler, who together run an estimated 10% of Berkshire’s $295 billion equity investment portfolio. The two are a good bet to run the entire equity portfolio in the post-Buffett era.\nAnother topic is likely to be the railroad industry given the bidding war forKansas City Southern(KSU) by two leading Canadian railroads. Berkshire owns Burlington Northern Santa Fe, one of the big four railroads in the country. Berkshire is unlikely to get involved in the contest for Kansas City Southern.\nBNSF is probably the single most valuable division within Berkshire and would be worth close to $150 billion, in line with its public rivalUnion Pacific(UNP), if it were a stand-alone company. Berkshire is now valued at around $625 billion.\nBuffett has been a prominent Bitcoin skeptic, having called it “rat poison squared” and not a legitimate asset class. Shareholders may ask what he thinks now that Bitcoin has soared.\nAlso on hand to answer questions will be Berkshire’s vice chairmen, Ajit Jain and Greg Abel, who head Berkshire’s insurance and non-insurance operations, respectively.Barron’shas identified Abel as the most likely successor to Buffett as CEO.\nSome investors—andBarron’s—would like to see Jain, Abel, Combs, and Weschler get more exposure at the meeting as the likely next generation of leadership at Berkshire. But Buffett is a creature of habit and he likes the Warren and Charlie show. So that’s what it will be.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"langContent":"EN"},{"id":374502377,"gmtCreate":1619452762599,"gmtModify":1634273325759,"author":{"id":"3582158284046903","authorId":"3582158284046903","name":"Mintcandy","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/a08a6e54ffd53d876428e33914fc9857","vip":1,"crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"idStr":"3582158284046903","authorIdStr":"3582158284046903"},"htmlText":"Mmm","listText":"Mmm","text":"Mmm","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":0,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/374502377","repostId":1184991623,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1184991623","pubTimestamp":1619448590,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/1184991623?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-04-26 22:49","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Berkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting Is Saturday. Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About.","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1184991623","media":"MarketWatch","summary":"Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyba","content":"<p>Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and topics like Bitcoin and the SPAC mania at the company’s annual meeting on Saturday.</p>\n<p>The meeting, normally in Omaha, will take place virtually from Los Angeles, enabling longtime vice chairman Charlie Munger, 97, to join the 90-year-old Buffett for 3½ hours of shareholder questions starting at 1:30 p.m. Eastern time.</p>\n<p>Buffett is hoping to resume the Omaha extravaganza, which he calls a “Woodstock for Capitalists,” in 2022. The outspoken Munger, who didn’t participate in last year’s meeting, is popular with the Berkshire faithful. Buffett has run Berkshire for 56 years.</p>\n<p>Berkshire shareholders will likely be in a good mood with the stock on a roll this year. The class A shares hit a record Monday and are up 0.9% to $412,365 on the session. The class B stock is up 0.7% to $273.96 Monday. The class A stock is up 18% this year, comfortably ahead of the S&amp;P 500’s 12% total return, after badly lagging behind the index in both 2019 and 2020.</p>\n<p>Berkshire’s aggressive stock repurchase program will probably be a major topic at the meeting. Investors are interested in Buffett’s current appetite for buybacks given the stock’s rally this year.</p>\n<p>The company ramped up its buybacks in the second half of 2020, with about $9 billion repurchased in each of the final two quarters of 2020, up from a total of nearly $7 billion in the first half of the year.</p>\n<p>Before the meeting on Saturday, Berkshire will release its first-quarter earnings, and investors will be focused on the buyback. The company’s operating profits are expected to be up 6%, to $2.55 a class B share, according to FactSet.</p>\n<p><i>Barron’s</i>has estimated that Berkshire bought back about $5 billion of stock from year-end through early March based on the share count disclosed in the recent proxy statement. Investors will look to see how much more stock Berkshire repurchased during the rest of March as the share price rose. Our guess is that Berkshire probably didn’t match the fourth-quarter total of $9 billion in the first quarter.</p>\n<p>“I’m interested to see their enthusiasm for the buyback program given the performance of the stock,” says James Shanahan, an Edward Jones analyst, referring to Buffett and Munger.</p>\n<p>Buffett has said Berkshire will be price conscious about buybacks, but has not provided any specifics.</p>\n<p>Shanahan sees a rise in the book value to $296,000 a class A share on March 31 from $287,000 at year-end 2020. The stock now trades for about 1.4 times that March 31 estimate, up from a low of around 1.1 times book a year ago and close to the five-year average.</p>\n<p>There could also be shareholder questions about climate change and diversity at Berkshire. The company has recommended that shareholders reject proposals about providing more disclosure about both issues.</p>\n<p>Buffett is likely to weigh in on the current investment landscape.</p>\n<p>He wasn’t aggressive on making new investments in 2020, as Berkshire sold a net $8 billion of stocks, including a group of airlines, and stakes inJPMorgan Chase(JPM) andGoldman Sachs Group(GS).</p>\n<p>This disappointed many holders who hoped Buffett would have been a big buyer of stocks during the selloff and follow his maxim to be “fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”</p>\n<p>Berkshire did establish sizable stakes inVerizon Communications(VZ) andChevron(CVX). Buffett may be asked about those purchases and the outlook for bank stocks and the overall market, which is now trading at lofty valuation, with the S&amp;P 500 at around 23 times projected 2021 earnings.</p>\n<p>Berkshire has also been quiet on acquisitions with only one notable deal in 2020, a roughly $10 billion purchase ofDominion Energy’s(D) natural-gas pipeline business by Berkshire Hathaway’s big utility unit, Berkshire Hathaway Energy.</p>\n<p>Buffett has long sought to land what he has called an “elephant,” or a large acquisition, but that has proven elusive. Berkshire’s only big deal in the past decade was its $33 billion purchase of Precision Castparts in 2016. The deal for the aircraft-parts maker hasn’t gone well, with the company hit by the aerospace downturn in 2020, forcing Berkshire to take a roughly $11 billion write-down. Amid an improving aerospace market, Buffett might be queried about the outlook for Precision Castparts.</p>\n<p>Buffett has complained in the past that aggressive private-equity firms have made it tough for Berkshire to land big deals. Now, the acquisition environment is even tougher amid record stock prices and a big new buyer of private companies in SPACs, or special-purpose acquisition companies, that have raised about $100 billion this year alone to pursue deals.</p>\n<p>“It’s unlikely there will be a major acquisition soon,” Shanahan says. Berkshire handicaps itself by refusing to participate in corporate auctions. Buffett prefers old-style handshake deals and tells potential sellers that Berkshire’s generally hands-off approach to its dozens of subsidiaries makes it an ideal home for their businesses.</p>\n<p>Investors may ask Buffett about trends in the reinsurance business, an important part of Berkshire’s big property and casualty insurance operations. Pricing has been improving in the P&amp;C market. Investors also may query him about Berkshire’s Geico unit, which has been losing ground to its chief auto-insurance rival,Progressive(PGR) in the past year. Geico and Progressive are the two best-run auto insurers in the country and now rank second and third, respectively, behind State Farm.</p>\n<p>In a surprise move, Berkshire decided to name one of Buffett’s top investment lieutenants, Todd Combs, as CEO of Geico at the start of 2020. Investors may want to know how long Combs plans to stay at Geico.</p>\n<p>There also may be questions about the investment performance of Combs and Ted Weschler, who together run an estimated 10% of Berkshire’s $295 billion equity investment portfolio. The two are a good bet to run the entire equity portfolio in the post-Buffett era.</p>\n<p>Another topic is likely to be the railroad industry given the bidding war forKansas City Southern(KSU) by two leading Canadian railroads. Berkshire owns Burlington Northern Santa Fe, one of the big four railroads in the country. Berkshire is unlikely to get involved in the contest for Kansas City Southern.</p>\n<p>BNSF is probably the single most valuable division within Berkshire and would be worth close to $150 billion, in line with its public rivalUnion Pacific(UNP), if it were a stand-alone company. Berkshire is now valued at around $625 billion.</p>\n<p>Buffett has been a prominent Bitcoin skeptic, having called it “rat poison squared” and not a legitimate asset class. Shareholders may ask what he thinks now that Bitcoin has soared.</p>\n<p>Also on hand to answer questions will be Berkshire’s vice chairmen, Ajit Jain and Greg Abel, who head Berkshire’s insurance and non-insurance operations, respectively.<i>Barron’s</i>has identified Abel as the most likely successor to Buffett as CEO.</p>\n<p>Some investors—and<i>Barron’s</i>—would like to see Jain, Abel, Combs, and Weschler get more exposure at the meeting as the likely next generation of leadership at Berkshire. But Buffett is a creature of habit and he likes the Warren and Charlie show. So that’s what it will be.</p>","source":"lsy1603348471595","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>Berkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting Is Saturday. 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Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About.\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-04-26 22:49 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews><strong>MarketWatch</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and ...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"BRK.A":"伯克希尔","BRK.B":"伯克希尔B"},"source_url":"https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1184991623","content_text":"Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and topics like Bitcoin and the SPAC mania at the company’s annual meeting on Saturday.\nThe meeting, normally in Omaha, will take place virtually from Los Angeles, enabling longtime vice chairman Charlie Munger, 97, to join the 90-year-old Buffett for 3½ hours of shareholder questions starting at 1:30 p.m. Eastern time.\nBuffett is hoping to resume the Omaha extravaganza, which he calls a “Woodstock for Capitalists,” in 2022. The outspoken Munger, who didn’t participate in last year’s meeting, is popular with the Berkshire faithful. Buffett has run Berkshire for 56 years.\nBerkshire shareholders will likely be in a good mood with the stock on a roll this year. The class A shares hit a record Monday and are up 0.9% to $412,365 on the session. The class B stock is up 0.7% to $273.96 Monday. The class A stock is up 18% this year, comfortably ahead of the S&P 500’s 12% total return, after badly lagging behind the index in both 2019 and 2020.\nBerkshire’s aggressive stock repurchase program will probably be a major topic at the meeting. Investors are interested in Buffett’s current appetite for buybacks given the stock’s rally this year.\nThe company ramped up its buybacks in the second half of 2020, with about $9 billion repurchased in each of the final two quarters of 2020, up from a total of nearly $7 billion in the first half of the year.\nBefore the meeting on Saturday, Berkshire will release its first-quarter earnings, and investors will be focused on the buyback. The company’s operating profits are expected to be up 6%, to $2.55 a class B share, according to FactSet.\nBarron’shas estimated that Berkshire bought back about $5 billion of stock from year-end through early March based on the share count disclosed in the recent proxy statement. Investors will look to see how much more stock Berkshire repurchased during the rest of March as the share price rose. Our guess is that Berkshire probably didn’t match the fourth-quarter total of $9 billion in the first quarter.\n“I’m interested to see their enthusiasm for the buyback program given the performance of the stock,” says James Shanahan, an Edward Jones analyst, referring to Buffett and Munger.\nBuffett has said Berkshire will be price conscious about buybacks, but has not provided any specifics.\nShanahan sees a rise in the book value to $296,000 a class A share on March 31 from $287,000 at year-end 2020. The stock now trades for about 1.4 times that March 31 estimate, up from a low of around 1.1 times book a year ago and close to the five-year average.\nThere could also be shareholder questions about climate change and diversity at Berkshire. The company has recommended that shareholders reject proposals about providing more disclosure about both issues.\nBuffett is likely to weigh in on the current investment landscape.\nHe wasn’t aggressive on making new investments in 2020, as Berkshire sold a net $8 billion of stocks, including a group of airlines, and stakes inJPMorgan Chase(JPM) andGoldman Sachs Group(GS).\nThis disappointed many holders who hoped Buffett would have been a big buyer of stocks during the selloff and follow his maxim to be “fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”\nBerkshire did establish sizable stakes inVerizon Communications(VZ) andChevron(CVX). Buffett may be asked about those purchases and the outlook for bank stocks and the overall market, which is now trading at lofty valuation, with the S&P 500 at around 23 times projected 2021 earnings.\nBerkshire has also been quiet on acquisitions with only one notable deal in 2020, a roughly $10 billion purchase ofDominion Energy’s(D) natural-gas pipeline business by Berkshire Hathaway’s big utility unit, Berkshire Hathaway Energy.\nBuffett has long sought to land what he has called an “elephant,” or a large acquisition, but that has proven elusive. Berkshire’s only big deal in the past decade was its $33 billion purchase of Precision Castparts in 2016. The deal for the aircraft-parts maker hasn’t gone well, with the company hit by the aerospace downturn in 2020, forcing Berkshire to take a roughly $11 billion write-down. Amid an improving aerospace market, Buffett might be queried about the outlook for Precision Castparts.\nBuffett has complained in the past that aggressive private-equity firms have made it tough for Berkshire to land big deals. Now, the acquisition environment is even tougher amid record stock prices and a big new buyer of private companies in SPACs, or special-purpose acquisition companies, that have raised about $100 billion this year alone to pursue deals.\n“It’s unlikely there will be a major acquisition soon,” Shanahan says. Berkshire handicaps itself by refusing to participate in corporate auctions. Buffett prefers old-style handshake deals and tells potential sellers that Berkshire’s generally hands-off approach to its dozens of subsidiaries makes it an ideal home for their businesses.\nInvestors may ask Buffett about trends in the reinsurance business, an important part of Berkshire’s big property and casualty insurance operations. Pricing has been improving in the P&C market. Investors also may query him about Berkshire’s Geico unit, which has been losing ground to its chief auto-insurance rival,Progressive(PGR) in the past year. Geico and Progressive are the two best-run auto insurers in the country and now rank second and third, respectively, behind State Farm.\nIn a surprise move, Berkshire decided to name one of Buffett’s top investment lieutenants, Todd Combs, as CEO of Geico at the start of 2020. Investors may want to know how long Combs plans to stay at Geico.\nThere also may be questions about the investment performance of Combs and Ted Weschler, who together run an estimated 10% of Berkshire’s $295 billion equity investment portfolio. The two are a good bet to run the entire equity portfolio in the post-Buffett era.\nAnother topic is likely to be the railroad industry given the bidding war forKansas City Southern(KSU) by two leading Canadian railroads. Berkshire owns Burlington Northern Santa Fe, one of the big four railroads in the country. Berkshire is unlikely to get involved in the contest for Kansas City Southern.\nBNSF is probably the single most valuable division within Berkshire and would be worth close to $150 billion, in line with its public rivalUnion Pacific(UNP), if it were a stand-alone company. Berkshire is now valued at around $625 billion.\nBuffett has been a prominent Bitcoin skeptic, having called it “rat poison squared” and not a legitimate asset class. Shareholders may ask what he thinks now that Bitcoin has soared.\nAlso on hand to answer questions will be Berkshire’s vice chairmen, Ajit Jain and Greg Abel, who head Berkshire’s insurance and non-insurance operations, respectively.Barron’shas identified Abel as the most likely successor to Buffett as CEO.\nSome investors—andBarron’s—would like to see Jain, Abel, Combs, and Weschler get more exposure at the meeting as the likely next generation of leadership at Berkshire. But Buffett is a creature of habit and he likes the Warren and Charlie show. So that’s what it will be.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"langContent":"EN"},{"id":374247195,"gmtCreate":1619451410117,"gmtModify":1634273337122,"author":{"id":"3570776252336545","authorId":"3570776252336545","name":"KelvinChan","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/322f5dea7567e161ddef26aec462d83d","vip":1,"crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"idStr":"3570776252336545","authorIdStr":"3570776252336545"},"htmlText":"Wow","listText":"Wow","text":"Wow","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":1,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://laohu8.com/post/374247195","repostId":1184991623,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1184991623","pubTimestamp":1619448590,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/1184991623?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-04-26 22:49","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Berkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting Is Saturday. Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About.","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1184991623","media":"MarketWatch","summary":"Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyba","content":"<p>Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and topics like Bitcoin and the SPAC mania at the company’s annual meeting on Saturday.</p>\n<p>The meeting, normally in Omaha, will take place virtually from Los Angeles, enabling longtime vice chairman Charlie Munger, 97, to join the 90-year-old Buffett for 3½ hours of shareholder questions starting at 1:30 p.m. Eastern time.</p>\n<p>Buffett is hoping to resume the Omaha extravaganza, which he calls a “Woodstock for Capitalists,” in 2022. The outspoken Munger, who didn’t participate in last year’s meeting, is popular with the Berkshire faithful. Buffett has run Berkshire for 56 years.</p>\n<p>Berkshire shareholders will likely be in a good mood with the stock on a roll this year. The class A shares hit a record Monday and are up 0.9% to $412,365 on the session. The class B stock is up 0.7% to $273.96 Monday. The class A stock is up 18% this year, comfortably ahead of the S&amp;P 500’s 12% total return, after badly lagging behind the index in both 2019 and 2020.</p>\n<p>Berkshire’s aggressive stock repurchase program will probably be a major topic at the meeting. Investors are interested in Buffett’s current appetite for buybacks given the stock’s rally this year.</p>\n<p>The company ramped up its buybacks in the second half of 2020, with about $9 billion repurchased in each of the final two quarters of 2020, up from a total of nearly $7 billion in the first half of the year.</p>\n<p>Before the meeting on Saturday, Berkshire will release its first-quarter earnings, and investors will be focused on the buyback. The company’s operating profits are expected to be up 6%, to $2.55 a class B share, according to FactSet.</p>\n<p><i>Barron’s</i>has estimated that Berkshire bought back about $5 billion of stock from year-end through early March based on the share count disclosed in the recent proxy statement. Investors will look to see how much more stock Berkshire repurchased during the rest of March as the share price rose. Our guess is that Berkshire probably didn’t match the fourth-quarter total of $9 billion in the first quarter.</p>\n<p>“I’m interested to see their enthusiasm for the buyback program given the performance of the stock,” says James Shanahan, an Edward Jones analyst, referring to Buffett and Munger.</p>\n<p>Buffett has said Berkshire will be price conscious about buybacks, but has not provided any specifics.</p>\n<p>Shanahan sees a rise in the book value to $296,000 a class A share on March 31 from $287,000 at year-end 2020. The stock now trades for about 1.4 times that March 31 estimate, up from a low of around 1.1 times book a year ago and close to the five-year average.</p>\n<p>There could also be shareholder questions about climate change and diversity at Berkshire. The company has recommended that shareholders reject proposals about providing more disclosure about both issues.</p>\n<p>Buffett is likely to weigh in on the current investment landscape.</p>\n<p>He wasn’t aggressive on making new investments in 2020, as Berkshire sold a net $8 billion of stocks, including a group of airlines, and stakes inJPMorgan Chase(JPM) andGoldman Sachs Group(GS).</p>\n<p>This disappointed many holders who hoped Buffett would have been a big buyer of stocks during the selloff and follow his maxim to be “fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”</p>\n<p>Berkshire did establish sizable stakes inVerizon Communications(VZ) andChevron(CVX). Buffett may be asked about those purchases and the outlook for bank stocks and the overall market, which is now trading at lofty valuation, with the S&amp;P 500 at around 23 times projected 2021 earnings.</p>\n<p>Berkshire has also been quiet on acquisitions with only one notable deal in 2020, a roughly $10 billion purchase ofDominion Energy’s(D) natural-gas pipeline business by Berkshire Hathaway’s big utility unit, Berkshire Hathaway Energy.</p>\n<p>Buffett has long sought to land what he has called an “elephant,” or a large acquisition, but that has proven elusive. Berkshire’s only big deal in the past decade was its $33 billion purchase of Precision Castparts in 2016. The deal for the aircraft-parts maker hasn’t gone well, with the company hit by the aerospace downturn in 2020, forcing Berkshire to take a roughly $11 billion write-down. Amid an improving aerospace market, Buffett might be queried about the outlook for Precision Castparts.</p>\n<p>Buffett has complained in the past that aggressive private-equity firms have made it tough for Berkshire to land big deals. Now, the acquisition environment is even tougher amid record stock prices and a big new buyer of private companies in SPACs, or special-purpose acquisition companies, that have raised about $100 billion this year alone to pursue deals.</p>\n<p>“It’s unlikely there will be a major acquisition soon,” Shanahan says. Berkshire handicaps itself by refusing to participate in corporate auctions. Buffett prefers old-style handshake deals and tells potential sellers that Berkshire’s generally hands-off approach to its dozens of subsidiaries makes it an ideal home for their businesses.</p>\n<p>Investors may ask Buffett about trends in the reinsurance business, an important part of Berkshire’s big property and casualty insurance operations. Pricing has been improving in the P&amp;C market. Investors also may query him about Berkshire’s Geico unit, which has been losing ground to its chief auto-insurance rival,Progressive(PGR) in the past year. Geico and Progressive are the two best-run auto insurers in the country and now rank second and third, respectively, behind State Farm.</p>\n<p>In a surprise move, Berkshire decided to name one of Buffett’s top investment lieutenants, Todd Combs, as CEO of Geico at the start of 2020. Investors may want to know how long Combs plans to stay at Geico.</p>\n<p>There also may be questions about the investment performance of Combs and Ted Weschler, who together run an estimated 10% of Berkshire’s $295 billion equity investment portfolio. The two are a good bet to run the entire equity portfolio in the post-Buffett era.</p>\n<p>Another topic is likely to be the railroad industry given the bidding war forKansas City Southern(KSU) by two leading Canadian railroads. Berkshire owns Burlington Northern Santa Fe, one of the big four railroads in the country. Berkshire is unlikely to get involved in the contest for Kansas City Southern.</p>\n<p>BNSF is probably the single most valuable division within Berkshire and would be worth close to $150 billion, in line with its public rivalUnion Pacific(UNP), if it were a stand-alone company. Berkshire is now valued at around $625 billion.</p>\n<p>Buffett has been a prominent Bitcoin skeptic, having called it “rat poison squared” and not a legitimate asset class. Shareholders may ask what he thinks now that Bitcoin has soared.</p>\n<p>Also on hand to answer questions will be Berkshire’s vice chairmen, Ajit Jain and Greg Abel, who head Berkshire’s insurance and non-insurance operations, respectively.<i>Barron’s</i>has identified Abel as the most likely successor to Buffett as CEO.</p>\n<p>Some investors—and<i>Barron’s</i>—would like to see Jain, Abel, Combs, and Weschler get more exposure at the meeting as the likely next generation of leadership at Berkshire. But Buffett is a creature of habit and he likes the Warren and Charlie show. So that’s what it will be.</p>","source":"lsy1603348471595","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>Berkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting Is Saturday. Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About.</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\">\nBerkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting Is Saturday. Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Likely to Be Asked About.\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-04-26 22:49 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews><strong>MarketWatch</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and ...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"BRK.A":"伯克希尔","BRK.B":"伯克希尔B"},"source_url":"https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaways-annual-meeting-is-saturday-heres-what-to-expect-51619447849?mod=mw_latestnews","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1184991623","content_text":"Berkshire HathawayCEO Warren Buffett may field shareholder questions about the company’s stock buyback program, investment activity, the acquisition environment, key subsidiaries, succession, and topics like Bitcoin and the SPAC mania at the company’s annual meeting on Saturday.\nThe meeting, normally in Omaha, will take place virtually from Los Angeles, enabling longtime vice chairman Charlie Munger, 97, to join the 90-year-old Buffett for 3½ hours of shareholder questions starting at 1:30 p.m. Eastern time.\nBuffett is hoping to resume the Omaha extravaganza, which he calls a “Woodstock for Capitalists,” in 2022. The outspoken Munger, who didn’t participate in last year’s meeting, is popular with the Berkshire faithful. Buffett has run Berkshire for 56 years.\nBerkshire shareholders will likely be in a good mood with the stock on a roll this year. The class A shares hit a record Monday and are up 0.9% to $412,365 on the session. The class B stock is up 0.7% to $273.96 Monday. The class A stock is up 18% this year, comfortably ahead of the S&P 500’s 12% total return, after badly lagging behind the index in both 2019 and 2020.\nBerkshire’s aggressive stock repurchase program will probably be a major topic at the meeting. Investors are interested in Buffett’s current appetite for buybacks given the stock’s rally this year.\nThe company ramped up its buybacks in the second half of 2020, with about $9 billion repurchased in each of the final two quarters of 2020, up from a total of nearly $7 billion in the first half of the year.\nBefore the meeting on Saturday, Berkshire will release its first-quarter earnings, and investors will be focused on the buyback. The company’s operating profits are expected to be up 6%, to $2.55 a class B share, according to FactSet.\nBarron’shas estimated that Berkshire bought back about $5 billion of stock from year-end through early March based on the share count disclosed in the recent proxy statement. Investors will look to see how much more stock Berkshire repurchased during the rest of March as the share price rose. Our guess is that Berkshire probably didn’t match the fourth-quarter total of $9 billion in the first quarter.\n“I’m interested to see their enthusiasm for the buyback program given the performance of the stock,” says James Shanahan, an Edward Jones analyst, referring to Buffett and Munger.\nBuffett has said Berkshire will be price conscious about buybacks, but has not provided any specifics.\nShanahan sees a rise in the book value to $296,000 a class A share on March 31 from $287,000 at year-end 2020. The stock now trades for about 1.4 times that March 31 estimate, up from a low of around 1.1 times book a year ago and close to the five-year average.\nThere could also be shareholder questions about climate change and diversity at Berkshire. The company has recommended that shareholders reject proposals about providing more disclosure about both issues.\nBuffett is likely to weigh in on the current investment landscape.\nHe wasn’t aggressive on making new investments in 2020, as Berkshire sold a net $8 billion of stocks, including a group of airlines, and stakes inJPMorgan Chase(JPM) andGoldman Sachs Group(GS).\nThis disappointed many holders who hoped Buffett would have been a big buyer of stocks during the selloff and follow his maxim to be “fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”\nBerkshire did establish sizable stakes inVerizon Communications(VZ) andChevron(CVX). Buffett may be asked about those purchases and the outlook for bank stocks and the overall market, which is now trading at lofty valuation, with the S&P 500 at around 23 times projected 2021 earnings.\nBerkshire has also been quiet on acquisitions with only one notable deal in 2020, a roughly $10 billion purchase ofDominion Energy’s(D) natural-gas pipeline business by Berkshire Hathaway’s big utility unit, Berkshire Hathaway Energy.\nBuffett has long sought to land what he has called an “elephant,” or a large acquisition, but that has proven elusive. Berkshire’s only big deal in the past decade was its $33 billion purchase of Precision Castparts in 2016. The deal for the aircraft-parts maker hasn’t gone well, with the company hit by the aerospace downturn in 2020, forcing Berkshire to take a roughly $11 billion write-down. Amid an improving aerospace market, Buffett might be queried about the outlook for Precision Castparts.\nBuffett has complained in the past that aggressive private-equity firms have made it tough for Berkshire to land big deals. Now, the acquisition environment is even tougher amid record stock prices and a big new buyer of private companies in SPACs, or special-purpose acquisition companies, that have raised about $100 billion this year alone to pursue deals.\n“It’s unlikely there will be a major acquisition soon,” Shanahan says. Berkshire handicaps itself by refusing to participate in corporate auctions. Buffett prefers old-style handshake deals and tells potential sellers that Berkshire’s generally hands-off approach to its dozens of subsidiaries makes it an ideal home for their businesses.\nInvestors may ask Buffett about trends in the reinsurance business, an important part of Berkshire’s big property and casualty insurance operations. Pricing has been improving in the P&C market. Investors also may query him about Berkshire’s Geico unit, which has been losing ground to its chief auto-insurance rival,Progressive(PGR) in the past year. Geico and Progressive are the two best-run auto insurers in the country and now rank second and third, respectively, behind State Farm.\nIn a surprise move, Berkshire decided to name one of Buffett’s top investment lieutenants, Todd Combs, as CEO of Geico at the start of 2020. Investors may want to know how long Combs plans to stay at Geico.\nThere also may be questions about the investment performance of Combs and Ted Weschler, who together run an estimated 10% of Berkshire’s $295 billion equity investment portfolio. The two are a good bet to run the entire equity portfolio in the post-Buffett era.\nAnother topic is likely to be the railroad industry given the bidding war forKansas City Southern(KSU) by two leading Canadian railroads. Berkshire owns Burlington Northern Santa Fe, one of the big four railroads in the country. Berkshire is unlikely to get involved in the contest for Kansas City Southern.\nBNSF is probably the single most valuable division within Berkshire and would be worth close to $150 billion, in line with its public rivalUnion Pacific(UNP), if it were a stand-alone company. Berkshire is now valued at around $625 billion.\nBuffett has been a prominent Bitcoin skeptic, having called it “rat poison squared” and not a legitimate asset class. Shareholders may ask what he thinks now that Bitcoin has soared.\nAlso on hand to answer questions will be Berkshire’s vice chairmen, Ajit Jain and Greg Abel, who head Berkshire’s insurance and non-insurance operations, respectively.Barron’shas identified Abel as the most likely successor to Buffett as CEO.\nSome investors—andBarron’s—would like to see Jain, Abel, Combs, and Weschler get more exposure at the meeting as the likely next generation of leadership at Berkshire. But Buffett is a creature of habit and he likes the Warren and Charlie show. So that’s what it will be.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"tweetType":1,"langContent":"EN"}],"hasMoreComments":true,"newsSizeData":{"likeSize":58,"commentSize":25,"repostSize":0,"favoriteSize":0,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false}}