Shares in Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway group topped US$200,000 per share for the first time on Thursday, less than eight years after breaking the US$100,000 barrier.
Already the priciest stock on US markets, Berkshire shares got even more expensive for investors in a 7.5 percent climb since the company announced record quarterly earnings at the start of this month.
At the close of trade Berkshire’s A shares were up US$3,500, or 1.8 percent, to US$202,850.
Buffett has become a legend for the performance of Berkshire, which has a large number of majority and minority investments in everything from small jewelry and furniture retailers to insurance giants Geico and General Re, chemicals group Lubrizol, Coca-Cola, IBM, American Express, Wells Fargo Bank and dozens of others.
The company’s long-term gains have made Buffett the world’s third-wealthiest man, with a fortune of US$65.9 billion, according to Forbes magazine.
After crossing the US$100,000 line in October 2006, Berkshire shares have easily outperformed gauges like the S&P 500 broad-market index, up only 43 percent since then.
S&P Dow Jones senior index analyst Howard Silverblatt rued not having bought Berkshire shares early on.
“Warren has returned 22.6 percent per year compounded since it crossed US$100 in May 1977 — the month I started at S and P,” Silverblatt said. “I should have indexed my paycheck against it — I would be making almost half a million dollars a week.”
However, the question of who is set to replace Buffett, 83, means the future of the company is uncertain. He has not said when he plans to retire but regularly says a solid succession plan has been mapped out.
To make the shares more accessible to small investors, Berkshire created a second class in 1996 when Berkshire’s A shares rose to around US$33,000 each. Berkshire’s B shares, labeled “Baby Berkshires” at the time, went out at just US$1,000.
Eventually they grew out of the reach of small market players, and underwent a 50 to 1 split in 2010, a move also made to help the company finalize its takeover of Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad.
On Thursday Berkshire’s B shares finished up 1.7 percent at US$135.30.
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
VERTICAL INTEGRATION: The US fabless company’s acquisition of the data center manufacturer would not affect market competition, the Fair Trade Commission said The Fair Trade Commission has approved Advanced Micro Devices Inc’s (AMD) bid to fully acquire ZT International Group Inc for US$4.9 billion, saying it would not hamper market competition. As AMD is a fabless company that designs central processing units (CPUs) used in consumer electronics and servers, while ZT is a data center manufacturer, the vertical integration would not affect market competition, the commission said in a statement yesterday. ZT counts hyperscalers such as Microsoft Corp, Amazon.com Inc and Google among its major clients and plays a minor role in deciding the specifications of data centers, given the strong bargaining power of
TARIFF SURGE: The strong performance could be attributed to the growing artificial intelligence device market and mass orders ahead of potential US tariffs, analysts said The combined revenue of companies listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange and the Taipei Exchange for the whole of last year totaled NT$44.66 trillion (US$1.35 trillion), up 12.8 percent year-on-year and hit a record high, data compiled by investment consulting firm CMoney showed on Saturday. The result came after listed firms reported a 23.92 percent annual increase in combined revenue for last month at NT$4.1 trillion, the second-highest for the month of December on record, and posted a 15.63 percent rise in combined revenue for the December quarter at NT$12.25 billion, the highest quarterly figure ever, the data showed. Analysts attributed the
RSS