6 Quotes From Warren Buffett’s Letter to Shareholders and Berkshire Annual Report

HFA Padded
Dr. David Kass
Published on

(1) Warren Buffett: “When you are told that all repurchases are harmful to shareholders or to the country, or particularly beneficial to CEOs, you are listening to either an economic illiterate or a silver-tongued demagogue (characters that are not mutually exclusive).”

On This Page

Q4 2022 hedge fund letters, conferences and more

Buffett
From Investment Masters Class

(2) Warren Buffett: “At yearend 2022, Berkshire was the largest owner of eight giants: American Express, Bank of America, Chevron, Coca-Cola, HP Inc., Moody’s, Occidental Petroleum and Paramount Global.”

(3) Warren Buffett: “Our CEO will always be the Chief Risk Officer – a task it is irresponsible to delegate. Additionally, our future CEOs will have a significant part of their net worth in Berkshire shares, bought with their own money.”

(4) Warren Buffett: “Berkshire’s contribution via the corporate income tax was $32 billion during the [past] decade, almost exactly a tenth of 1% of all money that the Treasury collected.”

(5) Warren Buffett: “Charlie and I firmly believe that near-term economic and market forecasts are worse than useless… Huge and entrenched fiscal deficits have consequences.”

(6) Warren Buffett (on Geico): Premiums written increased 1.9% in 2022 due to rate increases. Voluntary auto policies in-force declined 8.9% in 2022… GEICO’s loss ratio increased by 10.9 percentage points…We currently expect GEICO to generate an underwriting profit in 2023.

HFA Padded

David I Kass Clinical Associate Professor, Department of Finance Ph.D., Harvard University Robert H. Smith School of Business 4412 Van Munching Hall University of Maryland College Park, MD 20742-1815 Phone: 301-405-9683 Email: dkass@rhsmith.umd.edu (link sends e-mail) Dr. David Kass has published articles in corporate finance, industrial organization, and health economics. He currently teaches Advanced Financial Management and Business Finance, and is the Faculty Champion for the Accelerated Finance Fellows. Prior to joining the faculty of the Smith School in 2004, he held senior positions with the Federal Government (Federal Trade Commission, General Accounting Office, Department of Defense, and the Bureau of Economic Analysis). Dr. Kass has recently appeared on Bloomberg TV, CNBC, PBS Nightly Business Report, Maryland Public Television, Business News Network TV (Canada), Fox TV, American Public Media's Marketplace Radio, and WYPR Radio (Baltimore), and has been quoted on numerous occasions by Bloomberg News and The Wall Street Journal, where he has primarily discussed Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway. He has also launched a Smith School “Warren Buffett” blog. Dr. Kass has accompanied MBA students on trips to Omaha for private meetings with Warren Buffett, and Finance Fellows to Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meetings. He is an officer of the Harvard Business School Club of Washington, DC, and is a member of the investment and budget committees of a local nonprofit organization. Dr. Kass received a Smith School “Top 15% Teaching Award” for the 2009-2010 academic year.