[导读]面对伯克希尔丰厚的现金利润，坚持紧握钱袋再投资的巴菲特或将进行首次分红。不过，华尔街对伯克希尔股票反应冷淡，伯克希尔在后巴菲特时代的发展仍充满不确定性。
《巴伦周刊》2011年1月24日刊封面图片
腾讯财经讯 《巴伦周刊》2011年1月24日刊发表安德鲁・巴利（Andrew Bary）署名的封面文章《钱袋先生巴菲特》，现全文摘要如下：
巴菲特的伯克希尔・哈撒韦（Berkshire Hathaway）今年吸引了大量的资金，总资产将近500亿美元。伯克希尔的A类股票现交易额在12.1万美元左右，其B类股票交易额为A股的1/1500，在81美元左右。预计2011的税后运营利润在120亿至130亿美元之间。
考虑到巴菲特在经济危机期间对高盛和通用汽车的投资，伯克希尔资产或将增值200亿美元。伯克希尔现在的市值为2000亿美元，继美孚石油、苹果、微软和谷歌后第五大上市公司。充裕的资金可能会使伯克希尔在未来12至18个月之内开始现金分红，特别是如果巴菲特没有找到合适的“大象”企业进行收购。每股股东权益或将在今年底达到10.5万美元。
伯 克希尔的长期投资者惠特尼・提尔森（Whitney Tilson）认为公司的内在价值在每股16万美元左右，或将在年底超过17万美元。如果投资者不担心巴菲特的寿命和伯克希尔庞大的公司规模，公司或将能 够达到提尔森的目标。虽然巴菲特没有健康问题，但是五年之后他可能不再管理伯克希尔。
华尔街对伯克希尔反应冷淡，没有分析师推荐买入其股票。Riverpark/Wedgewood公募基金经理人大卫・洛尔福（David Rolfe）认为这是分析师的失误：“伯克希尔的利润在不断增长，伯灵顿收购也是一个大手笔的投资，但是市场对其反应冷淡”。现在，伯克希尔已不再是90年代的保险和投资公司，事实上保险和投资带来的利润不到总利润的一半。
一直以来，由于巴菲特出色的投资技巧，伯克希尔的股票交易显著高于其账面价值。在最近十年内，股票交易价值是账面价值的1.6倍。然而，年迈的巴菲特使得交易溢价有所减少。洛尔福说：“现在股票中没有巴菲特溢价”。
好 消息是伯克希尔拥有现金回报充足的公司，年均现金超过1350亿美元。其旗下还有伯灵顿北方（Burlington Northern）、Geino和美国中部能源（MidAmerican Energy）等一流的企业。其中Geino和美国中部能源价值超过150亿美元。此外，伯克希尔旗下还有一系列其他投资，包括Benjamin Moore、Dairy Queen和Fruit of the Loom and See's Candies。巴菲特的投资策略经常和集中投资的观点背道而驰，比如他会投资于ITT和Wendy’s/Arby’s等不相关的企业。很多投资者喜欢有 投资重点，而巴菲特并非如此。
多年来，大家一致认为索科尔（Sokol）将接任巴菲 特成为伯克希尔的首席执行官，他现在仍是共识的选择。未来掌管投资的可能是托德・科姆斯（Todd Combs），巴菲特曾在去年董事会上提到这位不知名的基金经理。事实上，后巴菲特时代投资官的作用有限，因为伯克希尔对可口可乐、美国运通、富国银行和宝洁的股权投资难以改变。
《巴 伦周刊》的预测是，巴菲特的离开将会使得伯克希尔的股票下跌10%。不过，随着账面价值的增长，伯克希尔股价在后巴菲特时代会逐渐回升。而且，巴菲特自 1965年以来从未进行分红，他更倾向于把利润用于再投资。如果不能找到合适的企业收购，巴菲特的策略或将发生改变。而且，分红也会减少继任者投资的压 力。如果伯克希尔决定分红，预计派息率不会超过2%。
今年，伯克希尔每股利润预计在 7500美元至8999美元之间，高于2010年6700美元的水平。伯克希尔预期市盈率为15倍，和标准普尔500持平。华尔街对伯克希尔的冷淡反应的 原因是，负责伯克希尔大多是保险领域的分析员。由于保险行业处境艰难，大部分保险公司交易和账面价值持平，这难免会带来分析的偏见。（安吉）
Mr. Moneybags
By ANDREW BARY | MORE ARTICLES BY AUTHOR
With cash pouring in, Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway may do something big this year -- maybe even pay a dividend.
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A flush Berkshire Hathaway is in its best shape ever and piling up cash so quickly that it could be sitting on close to $50 billion at its core insurance operation alone by year end, and might even begin paying a dividend. Berkshire's profit recovery, aided by some smart acquisitions and investments by CEO Warren Buffett -- notably its purchase of the Burlington Northern railroad -- has gone largely unrecognized on Wall Street, where Berkshire's Class A shares (ticker: BRKA), now trading around $121,000, haven't budged in nearly a year. Berkshire's Class B shares (BRKB) trade around $81; each equals 1/1500th of a Class A share.
Berkshire's operating profits are on track to hit a record $12 billion to $13 billion after taxes in 2011, up from an estimated $11 billion in 2010, buoyed by Burlington and many of the company's manufacturing and industrial units, whose earnings fell sharply during the downturn.
Combine that with the likely repayment of some lucrative investments in Goldman Sachs (GS),General Electric (GE) and other companies that Buffett made during the financial crisis, and Berkshire's insurance units could be holding $20 billion more by year end than the $30 billion they had on Sept. 30, 2010. (We focus on cash at Berkshire's insurance operations and not in other divisions because insurance cash is readily available for investment. Other units held about $3 billion in cash.) Berkshire's market value is $200 billion, fifth-largest in the U.S. stock market, behind only ExxonMobil (XOM), Apple (AAPL), Microsoft (MSFT) and Google (GOOG).
The flood of cash could prompt Berkshire to finally start paying a cash dividend in the next 12 to 18 months, particularly if the 80-year-old Buffett is unable to find what he calls an "elephant," or a large acquisition. Locating one could prove difficult, given rising asset and equity values, as well as Buffett's refusal to participate in corporate auctions. Buffett, who declined to comment to Barron's, also hasn't been thrilled by the stock or bond market in the past year, when Berkshire has been a net seller of stocks.
Buffett's fans think Berkshire shares look appealing, trading for a reasonable 1.3 times estimated year-end 2010 book value of $95,000 apiece, and that the stock could surpass its 2007 record of $149,000 within the next 12 months. Book value, or shareholder equity per share, may hit $105,000 by the end of this year, assuming a decent performance by Berkshire's famed equity portfolio, which was an estimated total of $62 billion at year-end 2010. Thus, the shares trade for just 1.15 times projected year-end 2011 book, providing significant downside support.
LONGTIME BERKSHIRE INVESTOR Whitney Tilson of T2 Partners pegs Berkshire's "intrinsic value" around $160,000 a share and sees it surpassing $170,000 by year end. To reach that lofty level, the stock would have to shake off investor concerns about Buffett's longevity and about Berkshire's sheer size. Intrinsic value is the discounted cash flow of Berkshire businesses.
Buffett is in good health, but he may not run Berkshire for much more than another five years -- his actuarial life expectancy is eight years. He probably will keep at it for as long as he can because he loves his job, saying he "tap-dances" to work each day in Omaha and would pay to do it. His pay remains restrained at just $175,000 a year, although his 23% stake in Berkshire is valued at $46 billion. He continues to donate stock annually to the foundation run by Bill and Melinda Gates. Berkshire is due to report its fourth-quarter results in late February.
Wall Street is lukewarm on Berkshire; no analyst has a Buy recommendation on it.
David Rolfe, chief investment officer with Wedgewood Partners in St. Louis, the manager of the new Riverpark/Wedgewood mutual fund, considers that a mistake. "Berkshire's earnings are booming, and the Burlington acquisition looks like a masterstroke, yet the market doesn't give a whit about it," he says. Rolfe sees the stock topping $140,000 this year.
Berkshire Hathaway
As its adherents regularly note, Berkshire is no longer the insurance and investment outfit it was up until the late 1990s. Insurance and investment income now account for less than half its profit.
Over the years, Berkshire often has traded markedly above its book value, getting a premium for Buffett's incomparable investment skills. The stock has averaged 1.6 times book value in the past 10 years. That premium has melted in recent years, partly reflecting Buffett's advancing age. In fact, Rolfe argues, "There's no Buffett premium in the stock now."
It's true Buffett's successors will face big challenges, both in making investments and in retaining and motivating the managers of the more than 80 businesses under the Berkshire umbrella.
The good news is that they will be sitting astride a cash-spewing conglomerate with annual revenue exceeding $135 billion and some top-notch businesses, including Burlington Northern; Geico, the No 3 U.S. auto insurer; and MidAmerican Energy, a utility conglomerate that owns U.S. and U.K. electric companies and two natural-gas pipelines.
Geico and MidAmerican could each be worth more than $15 billion.
Berkshire's insurance operations also include General Re, a large reinsurer, and the specialty-reinsurance unit run by underwriting genius Ajit Jain. It has made billions for Berkshire over the years by shrewdly handling big-ticket risks like potential damage from hurricanes and earthquakes. (It did, however, suffer losses from BP's Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.)
Berkshire also houses a grab bag of other businesses, including Benjamin Moore, Dairy Queen, Fruit of the Loom and See's Candies.
BUFFETT'S STRATEGY of steadily adding unrelated businesses runs counter to the trend in Corporate America, where companies such as Fortune Brands (FO), ITT (ITT, see Follow-Up),Wendy's/Arby's (WEN) and others are breaking apart to form more manageable businesses and eliminate "conglomerate discounts." Many investors like focused companies. Buffett doesn't buy that idea.
Then there is Berkshire's hands-off approach, with "minimal involvement" by Buffett and Berkshire's tiny corporate staff in the day-to-day activities of its businesses.
Operating units are unfettered by the head office, but this can also let problems fester before they get Buffett's attention. For example, Berkshire's NetJets unit, the leading purveyor of fractional ownership of private jets, overexpanded during the boom years of 2006 to 2008 and got stung when the recession hit, resulting in losses of $711 million in 2009. NetJets was subsequently slimmed down under the leadership of David Sokol, MidAmerican's chairman. It earned $158 million before taxes in 2010's first nine months.
For years, we've speculated Sokol will succeed Buffett as CEO, and he's now the consensus pick. It's less clear who will run Berkshire's investments after Buffett's departure, but one clear possibility is Todd Combs, the little-known money manager that Buffett brought on board last year.
The reality is that the investment role probably won't be so important post-Buffett because some of Berkshire's largest equity holdings -- Coca-Cola (KO), American Express (AXP), Wells Fargo(WFC) and Procter & Gamble (PG) -- are unlikely to be touched, owing in part to large embedded gains. That will leave the chief investment officer with the job of investing the part of Berkshire's annual cash flow that isn't going toward acquisitions and a likely dividend.
Our guess is that the stock will fall 10% whenever Buffett steps down. But it could appreciate substantially before then and resume its ascent in the post-Buffett era, as book value grows and Wall Street gets comfortable with his successors.
The Burlington deal looks like one of Buffett's best, done in November 2009, when the economy was just starting to recover and there was little competition from private-equity or other buyers. Berkshire offered a 33% premium, paying $26.4 billion for the 77.4% of the company that it didn't already own. That initially looked overly generous, at about 20 times then-current estimates of 2010 profits. Yet Burlington's earnings -- and those of the rest of the railroad industry -- surged in 2010 and are expected to increase another 15% or so this year. Burlington could earn $3 billion after taxes in 2011 -- it netted $706 million in the third quarter. So, Berkshire paid only about 11 times projected 2011 profits for Burlington. Burlington probably is worth $40 billion to $45 billion now.
BUFFETT ALSO SCORED with roughly $50 billion of investments made during the 2008-2009 financial crisis. Some are likely to be repaid this year, including $5 billion of 10% preferred stock from Goldman Sachs and $3 billion of 10% preferred from GE. Both companies will pay a 10% premium to get rid of the high-cost preferred. In addition, Berkshire got equity warrants on both stocks. Those on Goldman are worth $2 billion now. Swiss Re, a European reinsurer, just repaid $4 billion to Berkshire from a very lucrative investment by Buffett. These repayments will swell Berkshire's coffers.
Berkshire also holds $7.5 billion of junk debt and preferred issued by Wrigley in connection with the gum maker's purchase by privately held candy giant Mars in 2008. Berkshire's investment income probably will decline because of the investment repayments, but that could be partly offset by higher dividend income on its equity portfolio.
Buffett hasn't paid a dividend on Berkshire shares since he took control in 1965, preferring to invest the company's profits. That's been the right move, given the 6,000-fold increase in Berkshire's stock since then. Buffett's aversion to dividends could change if cash continues to build and he can't find a big acquisition. A dividend also could take some pressure off his successors to invest the company's profits.
Berkshire's initial dividend, whenever it comes, is expected to be modest, at 2% or less.
INVESTORS GENERALLY TAKE a long view and don't pay much attention to Berkshire's quarterly results, but T2's Tilson has said a strong fourth-quarter earnings report next month could act as a catalyst by highlighting the company's earnings power. Tilson called it the "mother of all earnings reports" in a note to MarketWatch, which, like Barron's, is published by Dow Jones.
Profits this year could run at $7,500 to $8,000 per share -- or $12 billion to $13 billion -- up from an estimated $6,700 in 2010. Berkshire trades for about 15 times forward earnings, in line with the Standard & Poor's 500, which is valued at 14 times projected 2011 net. It's rare for Berkshire to trade near a market multiple rather than at a big premium.
Barclays analyst Jay Gelb sees Berkshire's fourth-quarter profit rising 43%, to almost $1,800 per Class A share, boosted by strong gains in manufacturing, Burlington Northern and other divisions. Nonetheless, he carries a Neutral rating on the stock.
One reason for Wall Street's attitude toward the stock: The analysts who cover Berkshire tend to be insurance specialists, and this may color their thinking. That's because conditions in the property-casualty insurance market are tough, with pricing in many segments under pressure.
With little revenue growth and soft pricing, most P&C insurers and reinsurers -- includingTravelers (TRV), Chubb (CB) and Ace (ACE) -- trade close to book value. To some P&C analysts, Berkshire therefore looks unexceptional at 1.3 times book.
Yet insurance underwriting is a relatively small part of the company, and Berkshire is on a roll, led by a CEO still at the top of his game. That's why its stock could hit an all-time high this year.
E-mail: editors@barrons.com
Buffett's Berkshire Gets Big Barron's Boost
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It's also predicting Berkshire's stock price, which "hasn't budged in nearly a year," could top its all-time high this year.
For Class A, that's about $149,000 a share.
Any close above $125,612 would be a new 2-1/4 year closing high.
At 1p ET, they're at $124,982, up 3.7 percent.
Current real-time price: [BRK.A 124300.00 
-250.00 (-0.2%) 
]
In the cover story, Mr. Moneybags, Andrew Bary points out that Berkshire is "piling up cash so quickly that it could be sitting on close to $50 billion at its core insurance operation alone by year end."
Bary writes, "The flood of cash could prompt Berkshire to finally start paying a cash dividend in the next 12 to 18 months, particularly if the 80-year-old Buffett is unable to find what he calls an 'elephant,' or a large acquisition."
Late in 2009, Berkshire announced a stock-split for its Class B shares after years of rejecting any suggestion of a split. Just before it was approved by shareholders the following January, CNBC's Becky Quick asked Buffett if there might be more unexpected changes.
BECKY: Some people are asking if you are completely changing your stance on a lot of different issues.
BUFFETT: No.
BECKY: Some people are saying, 'Is this going to mean a dividend's coming soon, too?'
BUFFETT: No, I don't think it means that. It made sense in terms of the Burlington Northern acquisition.
Bary notes that a Buffett-Berkshire dividend would be unprecedented:
Buffett hasn't paid a dividend on Berkshire shares since he took control in 1965, preferring to invest the company's profits. That's been the right move, given the 6,000-fold increase in Berkshire's stock since then. Buffett's aversion to dividends could change if cash continues to build and he can't find a big acquisition. A dividend also could take some pressure off his successors to invest the company's profits.
He adds that "Berkshire's initial dividend, whenever it comes, is expected to be modest, at 2% or less."
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