23 Reasons to Own Berkshire Hathaway

​1.      Warren Buffett is the greatest investor of all time delivering annual returns that were more than double the market for the past 52 years.

2.      Berkshire’s Vice Chairman Charlie Munger is a genius and had a lot to do with this impressive track record.  He is also very entertaining to listen to at the annual meeting.
3.      Even after a 22% run over the past 12 months, Berkshire is undervalued.  I estimate it’s worth $210 per share.  Today it trades for $179
4.      Ted Weschler and Todd Combs will one day take over the entire investment portfolio.  They both have excellent long-term track records.
5.      Conservative accounting.  They could easily be more aggressive with their accounting just like other Fortune 500 Companies and significantly increase their reported earnings…not that I want them to!
6.      One of the strongest balance sheets of any public company with nearly $100 billion in cash
7.      Downside protection.  Buffett has stated that they will buy back their own shares if the price gets down to 120% of book value.  Given the $100 billion in cash they have, this essentially puts a floor under the stock 17% below the current price.
8.      Very diversified company operating in nearly every sector of the economy. 
9.      Even though they are a huge company with a market value of $440 billion, they still delivered outperformed the S&P 500 over the past 10 years.
10.  Great annual meetings with crowds of 40,000+ and a chance to listen to Warren and Charlie for six hours
11.  Educational & entertaining annual shareholder letters.  Warren’s letters cover business, investing, economics, politics and basic life lessons.
12.  Buffett is humble.  In his annual report, he has a section called “Mistakes De jour” where he lists the mistakes he made in the past year including things he should have done but didn’t.  What other CEO does that?
13.   Even though Berkshire Hathaway is the 4th largest company in the U.S., they only have 25 people working in the corporate office.  No personal relations dept, no legal dept, no mergers and acquisitions, no human resources, no strategy dept, no investor relations.
14.  Buffett and Munger only earn $100,000 per year.  No stock options and no bonuses.
15.  Berkshire Hathaway does not hold any analyst meetings, quarterly conference calls, or investor days.
16.  Buffett does not try to manage quarterly earnings to “hit consensus earnings” like most large public companies.  He does what’s best for the long term.
17.  Buffett can usually make a decision regarding an acquisition within 15 minutes. 
18.  The majority of the companies owned by Berkshire, either as equity holdings or wholly owned subsidiaries, are leaders in their respective industries and generate high returns on invested capital.
19.  Buffett does not engage in unfriendly takeovers or bidding wars.  His offers are normally take it or leave it
20.   Berkshire Hathaway never has restructuring charges or “one-time charges”
21.   Unlike many public companies where board members can become very wealthy serving on boards, Buffett only pays his board members $2,700 - $6,700 per year for serving.  In fact, Bill Gates jokes that it actually costs him money to be on the board of Berkshire Hathaway!
22.  Buffett and Munger both have the majority of their net worth in Berkshire.  They eat their own cooking!
23.  Their long term economic goal is to maximize growth in per share intrinsic business value not simply the size of the company, number of employees, revenue etc.  As a shareholder, this is exactly what you want.