The Berkshire Beat: March 7, 2025

All of the latest Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway news!

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Warren Buffett does not do very many interviews anymore. But, over the weekend, he popped up on CBS News Sunday Morning to discuss the new Amazon Prime documentary about his close friend, the late Katharine Graham.

“If there’s any story that should be told,” he said, “it should be her story.”

Buffett even showed CBS’s Norah O’Donnell the famous letter that he sent Graham on June 4, 1973 — to put her mind at ease after Berkshire Hathaway purchased a substantial amount of Washington Post stock. “I said I’ll never buy another share unless you personally okay it … and we became friends.”

What started as a typical Buffett bargain hunt — “[The Washington Post] was worth at least $500 million and it was selling for $100 million” — blossomed into a close collaboration between two of the defining business leaders of their era. In footage from the documentary, Graham described how Buffett would bring stacks of annual reports to WaPo board meetings and walk her through them step by step. Basically, a crash course in business from the master himself.

Under her stewardship — and despite very tumultuous times in our nation’s capital — the Post hit new heights and became one of Berkshire’s most profitable investments.

Graham, for her part, tried to steer Buffett’s diet in a healthier direction. “Yeah,” he laughed, “but she didn’t convert me.” As Buffett told O’Donnell, his eating habits best resemble those of a six-year-old. He even rattled off some of his staples: “Hot dogs and hamburgers and Coke and ice cream sundaes. Root beer floats are my favorite. I frequently have a dinner of a root beer float.”

Buffett waved off any questions about the economy. “I think it’s the most interesting subject in the world,” he said, “but I won’t talk about it.” Nor politics. “Washington is Washington,” he lamented. “The problem with politics is that you tend to have to make tiny compromises as you go along.”

And, while he’s still not a big fan of tariffs, his faith in the American Tailwind remains undimmed. “The majority of any money I manage will always be in the United States,” he said. “It’s the best place. I was lucky to be born here.”

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And, now, the latest news and notes out of Omaha…

On Monday, Whitney Tilson released his current intrinsic value estimates for Berkshire Hathaway: $742,000 for Class A shares and $495 for Class B shares. “You should have modest expectations right now,” he wrote, “namely, that Berkshire will likely perform in line with the S&P 500. It remains a good foundation for the portfolio of those practicing ‘stay rich’ investing rather than ‘get rich’ investing.”

Bill Ackman talked about Warren Buffett on a recent episode of “The World According to Boyar” podcast — and it caused a bit of a stir. Ackman seemed to criticize Buffett for freezing up during the Covid-19 pandemic and for becoming too rigid when making investment decisions. “Warren sort of has this price discipline where if [something] trades for more than 10x operating income — no matter how good the business is — he won’t buy it. That’s worked really well for him for 60 years. Why should he change? But we’re in a world where there are some amazing businesses that have very long-term growth trajectories where you have to pay more than 10x operating income to succeed in buying a stock or a business.” Ackman later clarified on X that he was just describing — not criticizing — Buffett’s approach, “which has led to arguably the best long-term investment record ever”.

• On the podcast, Ackman also claimed that vice chairman Greg Abel will get down into the trenches and fix some of Berkshire’s ailing subsidiaries when he becomes CEO. “Greg Abel is more of an operator,” he said. “I think there’s a lot of value that can be created at Berkshire with better operations. I mean, Burlington Northern, for example, is the biggest railroad but it’s probably the least efficiently operated of all the railroads. I think the next generation of leadership will be a little more disciplined about making sure the right people run the companies.”

  • Again, he took to X to clarify his comments: “I was explaining my view that the next generation of Berkshire leadership is likely to be more focused on improving operations —and won’t have the same relationship history that has likely constrained Buffett from taking steps to improve operations.” Ackman added, “There is a lot to be said about the loyalty [Buffett] has shown to the leaders he has hired over time.”

Buffett’s shoutout to the late Pete Liegl in his annual letter put a well-deserved spotlight on the Forest River founder’s remarkable life and career. This week, the Wall Street Journal wrote about the “Unknown Oracle of Elkhart” and revealed a couple of interesting new tidbits about Liegl.

• Brad Gerstner, founder of Altimeter Capital, got his start under Liegl. “I earned an MBA from Pete before I graduated from high school,” he told the WSJ. Albeit a pretty unglamorous MBA. “When Liegl feared he was overpaying for waste management, he made Gerstner measure the inside of dumpsters to calculate the cubic feet of garbage. With that data, he renegotiated the deal and saved money on literal excess waste.”

• Liegl had a Buffett-like skepticism about computers. He did not use email himself — but his assistant would print out any message sent to him and Liegl would send a handwritten reply.

In the private jet game, there’s NetJets — and then there’s everybody else. According to ARGUS TRAQPak data, the Columbus-based private jet operator remained atop the industry in 2024 with flight hours up 9.2% to 665,349 hours. That’s more than the next six companies combined. NetJets market share is at 12.7% — the only one in double digits. In fact, it’s the only one over 5%. One more crazy number: If you only take the number of flight hours that NetJets gained last year — 55,834 — that alone would rank #6 across the entire industry.

And a few odds and ends to finish off the week…

• Over the past few days, Berkshire collected $16 million in quarterly dividends from Kroger, $4.9 million from Visa, and $4.5 million from Capital One Financial.

• Novel Investor shared some of the most important takeaways from Buffett’s new annual letter — highlighting the Oracle’s rare ability to admit (and quickly rectify) mistakes and play the long game when it comes to his investments.

• I guess it’s still the Wild West after all. BNSF Railway has been hit by a string of train robberies in recent months — with millions of dollars of Nike merchandise (including thousands of unreleased Air Jordan sneakers) carried off by suspects connected to the Sinaloa cartel. BNSF trains running east through California and Arizona have been targeted — using cut air hoses to force automatic emergency stops — with at least ten of these robberies occurring in the past year.

• See’s Candies CEO Pat Egan was named 2025 Advocate of the Year by the National Confectioners Association. In particular, Egan helped NCA members “collaborate with labor unions to support U.S. sugar program reform”.

• In his 2024 letter to Markel shareholders, CEO Tom Gayner wrote: “When we recently analyzed our shareholders versus a large peer group, we found that only Berkshire Hathaway’s shareholder base turns over less frequently than ours.”