Subject: Why you don't want Berk to pay a dividend!
The real reason you don't want Berkshire to pay you a dividend, is because it will cost you a ton of money!
I got curious about the claim that Buffett would pay a dividend when it because untrue that $1 of retained earnings was worth LESS than $1 of increased market cap. So... how has Berkshire done by that metric? With the help of ChatGPT who turned me on to a site where I could get free financials imported into an excep spreadsheet, I got 20 years of financial information for BRK. After screwing around a bit, I determined that "retained earnings" essentially all shows up in the "Total Stockholders' Equity" on the financial spreadsheets.
So I looked at the change in Total Stockholder's equity over a 10 year lookback period and compared it to the change in the Market Cap of the company over that same 10 year period. The ratio of those two numbers gave us the amount by which Market Cap had increased in dollars for each $1 of retained earnings.
Even better, I got the CPI and adjusted all 20 years of the Market Cap and Stockholder's Equity by inflation so the whole thing is done in 2025 US dollars. So we don't have inflation making it look like we got rich where all we did was stay even.
So what was the result? With 20 years of data and 10 years of look back I could get numbers for the last 10 years. And what lovely numbers they are! Most recently we are seeing $1 of retained earnings showing up as a whopping $1.69 of additional Market Cap! This is the high end of the range, but the average over the last 10 years is $1 of retained earnings shows up as $1.40 of increased market cap.
So that's the REAL reason you don't want a dividend. It would make you 40% poorer, averaged over the last 10 years. Instead of a $1 of dividend, just go ahead and sell enough shares to pay you out $1.40.
Its as though that $300 billion or whatever cash pile Berk's got right now is worth $420 billion as long as you leave it retained by Berkshire and get your cash by selling shares instead of demanding a 40% haircut by demanding that Berkshire send you the dollars directly!
See, its not a matter of philosophy or taxes. Its just math. Or science, or one of those STEM thingys.
Yours,
R:) and (:hatGPT
d equity 10 years d market cap 10 years $ Market per $1 retained
9/30/2025 $452,158,000,000 $763,869,073,610 $1.69
6/30/2025 $421,946,000,000 $713,207,048,995 $1.69
3/31/2025 $413,013,000,000 $793,287,641,049 $1.92
12/31/2024 $409,198,000,000 $607,729,044,606 $1.49
9/30/2024 $391,613,000,000 $651,591,145,524 $1.66
6/30/2024 $367,692,000,000 $561,092,340,843 $1.53
3/31/2024 $343,878,000,000 $599,048,016,144 $1.74
12/31/2023 $339,383,000,000 $479,527,162,732 $1.41
9/30/2023 $316,948,000,000 $480,409,050,299 $1.52
6/30/2023 $337,867,000,000 $462,752,594,655 $1.37
3/31/2023 $306,483,000,000 $419,526,763,494 $1.37
12/31/2022 $285,777,000,000 $455,998,344,457 $1.60
9/30/2022 $270,828,000,000 $367,831,718,742 $1.36
6/30/2022 $283,850,000,000 $395,814,467,611 $1.39
3/31/2022 $332,144,000,000 $579,694,550,875 $1.75
12/31/2021 $341,349,000,000 $477,168,246,971 $1.40
9/30/2021 $312,523,000,000 $439,386,753,592 $1.41
6/30/2021 $307,402,000,000 $442,050,473,035 $1.44
3/31/2021 $287,932,000,000 $380,777,057,018 $1.32
12/31/2020 $285,846,000,000 $343,393,046,172 $1.20
9/30/2020 $265,484,000,000 $302,472,640,160 $1.14
6/30/2020 $250,732,000,000 $234,677,776,770 $0.94
3/31/2020 $224,356,000,000 $250,122,600,395 $1.11
12/31/2019 $293,689,000,000 $400,167,872,852 $1.36
9/30/2019 $271,536,000,000 $354,853,853,226 $1.31
6/30/2019 $268,017,000,000 $391,529,371,233 $1.46
3/31/2019 $266,079,000,000 $373,158,468,152 $1.40
12/31/2018 $239,436,000,000 $353,403,184,107 $1.48
9/30/2018 $255,451,000,000 $325,238,854,427 $1.27
6/30/2018 $240,100,000,000 $274,139,150,161 $1.14
3/31/2018 $228,029,000,000 $284,425,134,873 $1.25
12/31/2017 $227,563,000,000 $269,161,836,386 $1.18
9/30/2017 $188,375,000,000 $268,466,705,969 $1.43
6/30/2017 $185,387,000,000 $250,699,638,031 $1.35
3/31/2017 $182,960,000,000 $242,664,230,671 $1.33
12/31/2016 $173,651,000,000 $232,304,254,155 $1.34
9/30/2016 $167,020,000,000 $209,398,334,586 $1.25
6/30/2016 $165,412,000,000 $216,260,205,468 $1.31
Mean $1.40