Chapters see below.
Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger take shareholder questions at the 1994 Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting, covering intrinsic value, capital allocation, and why they will not step outside the businesses they can actually understand. Buffett opens on derivatives, warning that combining ignorance with borrowed money has always produced interesting consequences, and points to Procter and Gamble as the early evidence. He explains how they discount future cash at a rate set by their certainty about the business, why he would pay two million dollars not to read a seller's projections, and how to judge a management team by how they played the hand they were dealt and how they treat their owners. He rejects volatility as a measure of risk, arguing that a business returning between twenty and eighty percent is treated by the academic world as riskier than one returning five percent every year, and describes pricing catastrophe reinsurance to exposure rather than to recent experience. He also talks about holding more than a billion dollars in cash as an index of management failure, why he has never sold a good business because of a guess about the market, and why he and Munger allocate every dollar themselves with no staff to help them.
1:45 - The use of derivatives
4:37 - Investment in Cap Cities
6:37 - After-tax free cash flow value
9:21 - Intrinsic value of the insurance operations
11:30 - Splitting the shares
13:57 - Buffett's use of The Indefensible
14:59 - Management and life goals
18:22 - Question on Ajit Jain
23:36 - Question on Guinness
26:02 - Berkshire after Buffett
28:53 - Reverse splits, 100x returns and stamps
33:41 - Greenspan, the Fed and interest rates
35:26 - Opinions on Berkshire's value
37:31 - Banks and buybacks
42:10 - Leverage at Salomon
47:14 - Sale of a mutual savings and loan
48:56 - Munger on changing his mind
49:41 - The shoe industry
51:25 - The tobacco business
52:40 - Business acquisition considerations
55:13 - The LA quake and insurance
1:00:02 - Recommended books
1:02:35 - Uncertainties for global brand leaders, Nike and Reebok
1:08:15 - Airlines and USAir
1:11:35 - Munger's retirement
1:12:38 - Sale of Cap Cities shares
1:13:53 - Structured settlements
1:14:53 - Wrigley
1:15:58 - Global diversification
1:18:43 - Explaining insurance losses
1:21:02 - Bullish or bearish?
1:25:23 - Private versus public markets
1:30:32 - Berkshire's intrinsic value relative to market price
1:33:59 - The view of risk
1:38:37 - Tax rates
1:42:54 - Interest rate sensitivity in certain businesses
1:45:40 - Retroactive insurance
1:48:34 - Berkshire's preparation for times of distress
1:51:13 - Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae
1:53:14 - Faster information and the cost of a missed opportunity
1:55:39 - Berkshire buybacks and intrinsic value
1:59:40 - Peter Lynch
2:00:47 - Reinsurance
2:06:20 - Guinness
2:06:53 - World Book and the Buffalo News
2:09:18 - Breaking Berkshire into smaller entities
2:11:08 - Sale of General Dynamics
2:12:30 - Volatility in the Berkshire share price
2:16:05 - Question about cash
2:18:09 - Question about Salomon
2:19:14 - The use of puts at Berkshire
2:21:06 - Stories about Berkshire not in the annual report
2:23:11 - Berkshire ending up on an index
2:24:52 - Position sizing in a given security
2:28:16 - Growth at Coca-Cola
2:29:20 - Question on convertible bonds
2:31:02 - Market impact when Berkshire sells a security
2:32:11 - Key-man insurance for Berkshire
2:32:48 - Currency risk in the Guinness investment
2:38:20 - Question on Berkshire's intrinsic value
2:39:31 - Succession at Coca-Cola
2:39:42 - Question on Salomon
2:41:25 - Merits of the different Berkshire holdings
2:43:30 - Method for arriving at an intrinsic value
2:46:49 - Growth rates in companies
2:49:06 - Capital allocation decisions at Berkshire
2:54:18 - Two or three investment lessons from Maynard Keynes
","author_name":"Investing Wisdom"}