This past Saturday, Warren Buffett released Berkshire Hathaway’s 2009 annual report and his annual letter to Berkshire shareholders.*  The last Friday in February has become like Christmas Eve for value investors the world over.  A night of tossing and turning is followed by a mad rush to the computer to download the latest version at 8am on Saturday morning.  And then, maybe 30 minutes later, melancholy as we all realize that Mr. Buffett won’t write to us again for 365 days.  As admirers of Mr. Buffett, frequent shareholders, and practitioners of the “value” approach to investing, you could count us among the sleep deprived on February 27th.

Given Berkshire’s recent (and massive) acquisition of Burlington Northern Santa Fe, Mr. Buffett chose to make this year’s letter a primer on the various Berkshire business lines, as well as his value-oriented approach to investing.  Here are a few thoughts on areas we found particularly interesting:

  • Berkshire’s stated book value was $84,487 / share (page 3).  Investments totaled $59,034mm with a cost basis of $34,646.  If one were to mark these investment to market and then subtract 20% for capital gains taxes (estimate of federal and state), Berkshire’s book value is just over $97,000 / share.  As of the close on March 2, 2010, the stock traded at $121,740 or 1.26x “adjusted” book value.
  • Mr. Buffett has always shunned excessive leverage and talked about its many risks.  He often admits that during good times the company’s equity might underperform more leveraged entities.  “Sleeping well at night” is the reason he usually provides for this strategy.  True enough, but 2008 demonstrated that over a full cycle, low leverage entities such as Berkshire can outperform because they are able to provide liquidity precisely when no one else can and in doing so receive outsized compensation.  As he writes on page 4 of the letter, “When the financial system went into cardiac arrest in September 2008, Berkshire was a supplier of liquidity and capital to the system, not a supplicant.  At the very peak of the crisis, we poured $15.5 billion into a business world that could otherwise look only to the federal government for help.”
  • The 17th century philosopher Frederic Bastiat spoke of “what is seen and what is not seen” in regards to the unintended consequences of laws on the economic sphere.  Mr. Buffett recognizes similar risks in over handed management and thus promotes an organizational approach at Berkshire that is as laissez-faire as the political approach recommended by Bastiat.  On page 5, Mr. Buffett states, “We would rather suffer the visible costs of a few bad decisions than incur the many invisible costs that come from decisions made too slowly – or not at all – because of a stifling bureaucracy.”
  • In the Insurance section beginning on page 6, Mr. Buffett states the two critical aspects of the insurance business:  1) fairly unique in business, insurance operates on a “collect-now, pay-later model” and thus requires “negative” working capital – called “float” and  2) because enough people have recognized how favorable these economics are, the insurance industry as a whole operates at an underwriting loss.  Berkshire offers shareholders a unique proposition:  the firm has demonstrated an ability to invest the “float” in a very profitable way AND because of the superior managers and compensation structure the Berkshire insurance companies operate under, the firm has consistently operated at an underwriting profit.
  • In the Utilities section, which begins on page 8, Mr. Buffett provides insight into why Berkshire is now willing to own such capital-intensive business when in the past they avoided them.  Two explanations are given:  1) today, Berkshire is so big that Mr. Buffett has no choice but to look at opportunities he would have passed on before and 2) given the regulated nature of utilities, Mr. Buffett seems to believe that he is trading some investment upside for greater certainty.  This makes sense to us.  Other investors and financial writers (including Whitney Tilson) have articulated a third possibility:  because Berkshire pays a “negative” rate on its borrowings (i.e. “float”) investments that would be unprofitable for others can be profitable for them.
  • The housing market makes its way into the letter on page 12 in the Finance and Financial Products section.  Given the lowest-in-fifty-years 2009 housing start number, Mr. Buffett believes that “within a year or so residential housing problems should largely be behind us.”  While he is correct in stating that 2009’s 554k starts is well below the 1.2mm annual housing formation number, we think his optimism might be a bit premature.  The recession has probably lowered the annual housing formation number and published inventory numbers are too low when bank “real estate owned” is considered.
  • Mr. Buffett then discusses the structural problems at Clayton Homes that are a result of the government’s housing finance policy.  The government artificially lowers the interest rate for conventional mortgages.  Therefore, when financing is considered, a traditional home can be cheaper than the manufactured houses sold by Clayton.  Mr. Buffett doesn’t say this but this is another example of Bastiat’s “not seen.”  It also reminds us that in the current climate, government interference must be a part of the investment calculus.
  • Berkshire is unlikely to experience the damaging impact of “group think.”  In describing Berkshire’s derivative contracts, Mr. Buffett (on pages 15 and 16) assures shareholders that these contracts neither expose Berkshire to extreme leverage nor to counterparty risk.  “If Berkshire ever gets in trouble, it will be my fault.  It will not be because of misjudgments made by a Risk Committee or Chief Risk Officer.”
  • Mr. Buffett concludes the financial section with a well-deserved excoriation of financial company CEOs and directors.  However, regarding his defense of investors against the “bail-out” claim, we offer one final quibble with Mr. Buffett.  He states, “Collectively, they [shareholders of the largest financial institutions] have lost more than $500 billion in just the four largest financial fiascos of the last two years.  To say these owners have been “bailed-out” is to make a mockery of the term.”  If he is using the term “owners” very explicitly, then, with the exception of Bear Stearns shareholders, perhaps he is correct.  However, he leaves out the fact that bond holders of these same insolvent institutions, who knowingly assumed the risk of capital loss, were in fact bailed out to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars and made whole by taxpayers.

That wraps up the highlights as we see them.  However, the whole letter is well worth reading and it is available here:  http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2009ltr.pdf

*This discussion should not be construed as a recommendation to buy or sell Berkshire Hathaway.