Does Warren Buffett or Berkshire Hathaway hold certain stocks forever?

Does Warren Buffett or Berkshire Hathaway hold certain stocks forever?

To answer this question, one needs to go back to Berkshire Hathaway’s 2016 Annual Report 2016, in which chairman Warren Buffett said:  “Sometimes the comments of shareholders or media imply that we will own certain stocks “forever.” It is true that we own some stocks that I have no intention of selling for as far as the eye can see (and we’re talking 20/20 vision). But we have made no commitment that Berkshire will hold any of its marketable securities forever.”

What could have prompted the implication by shareholders and the media that Warren Buffett holds certain stocks forever?

Warren Buffett said in Berkshire Hathaway’s 2016 Annual Report: “Confusion about this point may have resulted from a too-casual reading of Economic Principle 11 on pages 110 – 111, which has been included in our annual reports since 1983. That principle covers controlled businesses, not marketable securities. This year I’ve added a final sentence to #11 to ensure that our owners understand that we regard any marketable security as available for sale, however unlikely such a sale now seems.”

What is Warren Buffett’s Economic Principle 11 and what is the final sentence that was added in 2016 to this principle? Let’s explore.

Background: In June 1996, Berkshire’s chairman Warren Buffett  issued a booklet entitled “An Owner’s Manual” to Berkshire’s Class A and Class B shareholders. The purpose of the manual was to explain Berkshire’s broad economic principles of operation.

There were originally 13 economic principles which Warran Buffett set up in 1983. The 2016 Annual Report provided an updated version of “An Owner’s Manual”.

Economic Principle 11 goes like this:

“You should be fully aware of one attitude Charlie and I share that hurts our financial performance: Regardless of price, we have no interest at all in selling any good businesses that Berkshire owns. We are also very reluctant to sell sub-par businesses as long as we expect them to generate at least some cash and as long as we feel good about their managers and labor relations. We hope not to repeat the capital-allocation mistakes that led us into such sub-par businesses. And we react with great caution to suggestions that our poor businesses can be restored to satisfactory profitability by major capital expenditures. (The projections will be dazzling and the advocates sincere, but, in the end, major additional investment in a terrible industry usually is about as rewarding as struggling in quicksand.) Nevertheless, gin rummy managerial behavior (discard your least promising business at each turn) is not our style. We would rather have our overall results penalized a bit than engage in that kind of behavior.
“We continue to avoid gin rummy behavior. True, we closed our textile business in the mid-1980’s after 20 years of struggling with it, but only because we felt it was doomed to run never-ending operating losses. We have not, however, given thought to selling operations that would command very fancy prices nor have we dumped our laggards, though we focus hard on curing the problems that cause them to lag. To clean up some confusion voiced in 2016, we emphasize that the comments here refer to businesses we control, not to marketable securities.”

The last sentence in Berkshire Hathaway Economic Principle 11 made it clear that Warren Buffett’s comments refer to businesses that Berkshire Hathaway owns and not to marketable securities.