No. of Recommendations: 15
I think the discussion about dividends is not in alignment with Mr Vegas's reasoning. I don't think he is looking for steady cash flow. Commencing a dividend would likely boost the stock price. When Apple restarted their dividend the boost was far more than the tax consequences of the dividend. As Munger has said, look at the inverse question. What would happen to Apple stock price if it cut the dividend and held the money for future investment.
I believe the thesis of your argument starts off in error, and continues down that path to making it worse with every sentence.
Apple operates in a narrow, if lucrative niche market. Their opportunities for expansion are somewhat limited to the technology field, and even certain narrow sectors in that. (We would not, for example, expect to see them trying to market internet-attached refrigerators.) Because they have been so (wildly) successful they have astonishing profits, and not really a lot to do with them except return some money to shareholders. This was a conscious decision, made at the time when they were even (allegedly) considering automotive or other possible markets.
Berkshire, by contrast, has the entire world available, although because of size they are limited to a subset of “big enough” investments that make sense. (In some ways so is Apple.) They have furniture, they have chocolate, they have railroads and energy, they have insurance and more insurance, and equity portfolios comprising everything from banking to soda pop to, uh, Apple.
Huge difference. And not that it matters, but “issuing a dividend” became trendy among the tech leaders in the early 2000’s, with Apple, Microsoft, and Google all deciding to do so within a year or two of each other - perhaps after realizing that their uses for the cash hoards piling up were limited. Perhaps Berkshire’s is too, but in such a different ball game it seems BRK is more likely to come up with a use than the aforementioned tech trio is. (I admit they have found a way to throw endless gobs of money at AI, but it remains to be seen whether that’s even a market that can be profitable, so it’s not the kind of thing Berkshire would even entertain.)
OK, so there are some funds which can’t buy BRK because it doesn’t have a dividend. Is that so important as to change how all the other current holders have viewed the stock over the past five decades? Seems fraught, at least to me.
