The “Secret” of Berkshire Hathaway

Photo Credit: Chuck Coker
Photo Credit: Chuck Coker || Another Dynamic Duo and their secret Batcave

This piece has kind of a long personal introduction to illustrate my point. ?If you don’t want to be bored with my personal history, just skip down to the next division marker after this one.

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There will always be a soft spot in my heart for people who toil in lower level areas of insurance companies, doing their work faithfully in the unsexy areas of the business. ?I’ve been there, and I worked with many competent people who will forever be obscure.

One day at Provident Mutual’s Pension Division [PMPD], my friend Roy came to me and said, “You know what the big secret is of the Pension Division?” ?I shook my head to say?no. ?He said, ” The big secret is — there is no secret,” and then he smiled and nodded his head. ?I nodded my head too.

The thing was, we were ultra-profitable,?growing fast, and our financials and strategies were simple. ?Other areas of the company were less profitable, growing more slowly, and had accrual items that were rather complex and subject to differing interpretations. ?But since the 30 of us?(out of a company of 800) were located in a corner of the building, away from everyone else, we felt misunderstood.

So one day, I was invited by an industry group of actuaries leading pension lines of business to give a presentation to the group. ?I decided to present on the business model of the PMPD, and give away most?of our secrets. ?After preparing the presentation, I went home and told my wife that I would be away in Portland, Oregon for two days, when she informed me we had an important schedule conflict.

I was stuck. ?I tried to cancel, but the leader of the group was so angry at me for trying to cancel late, when I hung up the phone, I just put my head on my desk in sorrow.

Then it hit me. ?What if I videotaped my presentation and sent that in my place? ?I called the leader of the group back, and he loooved the idea. ?I was off and running.

One afternoon of taping and $600 later, I had the taped presentation. ?It detailed marketing, sales, product design, risk control, computer systems design, and more. ?If you wanted to duplicate what we did, you would have had a road map.

But the presentation ended with a hook of sorts, where I explained why I was so free with what we were doing. ?We were the smallest player in the sub-industry, though the fastest growing, and with one of the highest profit margins. ?I said, “The reason I can share all of this with you is that if you wanted to copy us, you would have to?change an incredible amount of what you do, and kill off areas where you have invested a lot already. ?I know you can’t do that. ?But maybe you can imitate a few of our ideas and improve your current business model.”

So my colleague took the tape to the meeting, and when he returned, he handed me a baseball cap that had the word “Portland” on it. ?He said, “You did it, Dave. ?You won the best presentation of the conference award. ?Everyone sent their thanks.”

Sadly, that was one of the last things I did in the Pension Division, as corporate management chose me to clean up another division of the company. ?That is another story, but one I got few thanks for.

Today I call that hat “the $600 hat,” and I wear it to my kids baseball and softball games as I keep score.

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The secret of Berkshire Hathaway is the same as my story above. ?There is no secret.?Buffett’s methods have been written about by legions; his methods are well known. ?The same applies to Charlie Munger. ?That’s why in my opinion, there were?no significant surprises in their 50th anniversary annual letter. (There were some small surprises in the annual report, but they’re kinda obscure, and I’ll write about those tomorrow.) ?All of the significant building blocks have been written about by too many people to name.

Originally, this evening, I was going to write about the annual report, but then I?bumped across this piece of Jim Cramer’s on Buffett. ?Let me quote the most significant part:

…Cramer couldn’t help but wonder if things in the business world could be different if we approached other CEOs the way that Buffett is approached.

Perhaps, if the good CEOs were allowed to stay on longer like Buffett has or if people treated them as if they were their companies the way that Buffett is treated in relation to Berkshire, things could be different?

“Clearly something’s gone awry in the business world if we can praise this one man for everything he does, and yet every other chief executive feels shackled into being nothing like him,” Cramer said.

Cramer is very close to the following insight: the reason why more companies don’t imitate Berkshire Hathaway is that they would have to destroy too much of their existing corporations to make it worth their while. ?As such, the “secrets” of Berkshire Hathaway can be hidden in plain view of all, because the only way to create something like it would be to start from scratch. ?Yes, you can imitate pieces of it, but it’s not the same thing.

Creating a?very profitable diversified?industrial conglomerate financed by insurance liabilities is a very unique strategy, and one that few would have the capability of replicating. ?It required intelligent investing, conservative underwriting, shrewd analysis of management teams so that they would act independently and ethically, and more.

Indeed, an amazing plan in hindsight. ?Kudos to Buffett and Munger for their?clever business sense. ?It will be difficult for anyone to pursue the same strategy as well as they did.

But in my next piece, I will explain why one element of the strategy may be weakening. ?Until then.

Full disclosure: long BRK/B for myself and clients

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