No. of Recommendations: 31
I guess my short view:
Investments doing well, but operating subsidiaries are still weak.
Earnings in operating subsidiaries are better than they were, but still struggling. Valuations that use a multiple of those earnings as the non-investment leg are giving me much lower valuations than a multiple of book, with multiples chosen to give about the same numbers several years ago.
For example, Manufacturing/Service/Retail rolling-four-quarters real earnings peaked around the first half of 2022 and are down about 12% since then. That's not a one-off quirk, it has been a continuous gentle slide. Rails down 10% in the same time, but everybody knows that. A true optimist could see that as merely comparing current figures to a prior coal shipment bubble that we didn't appreciate at the time, but it's still down. Utilities are now merely weak rather than terrible.
Comparing the 2025 figure to three years earlier (actually the average 2-4 years earlier to avoid the quirks of any single number):
Inflation-adjusted book per share up inflation + 9.6%/year.
My inflation-adjusted value metric using a multiple of earnings for non-investments, up inflation + 5.2%/year.
That latter figure includes a cyclical adjustment upwards for Berkshire's share of KHC earnings. No impairment, and filling in the missing quarter.
Jim
