No. of Recommendations: 3
$0.50 on today's BRK-B is 0.11%. That is still insignificantly small.
What exactly would be the point of a tiny insignificant dividend like that?
If you recall, this whole conversation started because the level of cash has become so high, and apparently Berkshire hasn't found a good place for that cash for a relatively long while (even before the Apple and BofA sales the cash level was quite high). And over the years, many have suggested that if "they don't know what to do with the cash, they should distribute it to the shareholders". But what good is distributing only ~$1B (0.11% of market cap) to the shareholders? After that is done, the "too much cash problem" goes from $300B to $299B. Big deal, it's the same problem. Not only that, but if free cash flow continues, and if BofA sales continue, the $299B becomes $319B next year, and then you distribute another "insignificantly small" dividend of ~$1B to bring it down to $318B. Woo hoo!
The history of dividends never really works that way. Dividends grow. Take Apple for example (that I own since 2008). They reinstated the dividend only 11 years ago at $.095 (split adjusted) and now it is already at $0.25. Or take UnitedHealth as another example (that I own since 2006), dividend back then was $0.03, now it's $8.40. The "insignificantly small" dividend, after decades have passed, suddenly becomes a huge dividend.
