Berkshire Hathaway

The annual reports for Berkshire Hathaway include Warren Buffet’s letters to shareholders. In addition to discussing the state of the company, these letters contain sage investment advice applicable to all investors, including small investors. Here is an excerpt from this year’s letter.

Over the 35 years, American business has delivered terrific results. It should therefore have been easy for investors to earn juicy returns: All they had to do was piggyback Corporate America in a diversified, low-expense way. An index fund that they never touched would have done the job. Instead many investors have had experiences ranging from mediocre to disastrous.

There have been three primary causes: first, high costs, usually because investors traded excessively or spent far too much on investment management; second, portfolio decisions based on tips and fads rather than on thoughtful, quantified evaluation of businesses; and third, a start-and-stop approach to the market marked by untimely entries (after an advance has been long underway) and exits (after periods of stagnation or decline). Investors should remember that excitement and expenses are their enemies. And if they insist on trying to time their participation in equities, they should try to be fearful when others are greedy and greedy only when others are fearful.

Recent Transactions

We sold all of our shares in Fannie Mae (FNM) at $54.23. Fannie Mae still might be a good contrarian long term investment, however, we decided to exchange the shares for a more stable, high quality bank. We bought Fifth Third Bancorp (FITB) at $42.93

We purchased additional shares of Pfizer Inc. (PFE) at $26.35.

We also purchased additional shares in Commerce Bancorp Inc. (CBH) at $29.86.

Portfolio Summary Updated

The portfolio summary has been updated.

We now have more in cash to invest. Kudos to those members who are saving and investing regularly. With the recent market down trend, we should continue to purchase new shares. It’s always better to buy stocks when they are on sale.

Here are two proposals.

Proposal 1. Replace Federal Home Loan Management Corp (FNM) with Fifth Third Bank Corp (FITB), a well managed mid-west bank. Most of the literature about FITB has been very positive. See attached SSG and related reports (e.g., Morningstar, S&P and Value Line). We would sell FNM and apply the proceeds to FITB.

Proposal 2. Use the remaining funds to purchase additional shares of four of our existing stocks with the best prospects, considering both quality and projected return. We would add to our holdings of each of the following stocks: PFE, FISV, ACS and BBY. (Note there other strong candidates for reinvestment, including LOW, CBH and AMGN.)

Financial Services Outlook

Here is an interesting article by Tom Brown, CEO of Second Curve Capital, discussing the outlook for 2005 for the financial services industry. The article notes that retail branch growth can’t go on indefinitely. The report is positive about Capital One (COF), Investors Financial Services (IFIN), Commerce Bancorp (CBH) and Morgan Stanley (MWD). (We hold three of these four stocks.) His website is www.bankstocks.com.

Recent Transactions

Yesterday we purchased an initial postion in Chevron Texaco (CVX). We also sold all of our shares in the NASDAQ 100 index fund (QQQQ) to free up cash for other purchases. We had a net gain in QQQQ of 37% from May 2003.

ChevronTexaco (CVX)

SSG and PERT A (07-06-2006) | Google Stocks | Company Website

Growth. ChevronTexaco is not a classic growth company. However, the increasing demand for energy, the increase in energy prices and acquisitions have caused CVX’s revenues to grow at an annualized rate 16.5% over the past ten years. Earnings have grown at 12.2% over the same period. The attached SSG assumes a 5-year revenue and EPS growth rate of 5.7%. Value Line projects 5% revenue growth and 11.5% earnings growth. The First Call consensus projects EPS growth at 7.1%. So the SSG rate of 5.7% is convervative.

Valuation. Valuing energy companies is a specialty. Classic NAIC-type analysis is helpful but not very. So let’s look at what the experts say. McDep Energy Investment Research makes it energy stock recommendations and investment research available to the public (with a slight time lag from its subscribers). The “McDep” ratio provides a relative measure of whether an energy company is over or under valued using futures prices and assumption about energy reserves. Of the so called “mega caps,” CVX has the lowers McDep ratio (lower is better). See page 5 of the McDep “Meter Reader” report. Also the McDep web site have posted several reports discussing CVX

Bottom line. If energy prices recede, CVX will show a modest return. CVX currently pays an annual dividend $1.60 (3.13% yield) and earnings should grow at about 5%. Under this scenario, the projected average return for CVX is 12.2%. (This assumes a projected high PE of 12.1.) If energy prices remain the same or increase, CVX has considerable price appreciation potential.
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