No. of Recommendations: 6
In 2025, Berkshire produced $46 billion of net cash flows from operating activities, compared to a five-year average of more than $40 billion
In 2025, BNSF ...returned $4.4 billion of that cash to Berkshire through dividends. For context, its average annual dividend over the past five years was $4.1 billion.
Reading those sentences carefully, it seems 2025 is being compared with the five-year period 2021-2025, inclusive.
Perplexity: "By standard index-level measures, S&P 500 revenues had more than recovered from the pandemic shock by 2021 and were growing solidly by 2022"
Perplexity again: average CPI 2021-2025 was 4.9%/year bc this period includes the pandemic bump.
So presenting a nominal ten-ish percent increase in any revenue metric over a five year average as a positive finding seems...maybe not milking the data, but not entirely disingenuous, either.
In a rolling five-year period, isn't our IV supposed to increase after inflation?
--sutton
