Berkshire Hathaway - 2018 Warren Buffett Letter

[MaraMan]

The 2018 letter from Warren Buffett is now available on the Berkshire Hathaway web site

http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2018ltr.pdf

MM

[monabri]

Kraft fell 27% yesterday...

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-berk ... SKCN1QC0H1

[Dod101]

Many thanks for that. A vintage Letter, not so much with investment homilies, but on the wider investment picture and an American history lesson!

Dod

[SalvorHardin]

Yesterday (25th Feb) CNBC broadcast a long interview with Warren Buffett (he normally appears on CNBC on the Monday following the publication of the annual report). It's now online.

Link below (before the interview starts there's an advert for Turkish Airlines which wouldn't look out of place in a spy movie!)

https://www.cnbc.com/video/2019/02/25/w ... haway.html

[SalvorHardin]

I should add that in the CNBC interview there is an extensive discussion of KraftHeinz, starting at 17 mins 30 seconds (lasting about 11 minutes).

Major topics are the asset writedown, branded goods, the strength of supermarkets' own brands (in particular Costco's "Kirkland") and changing shopping habits. A key comment for me was when Buffett talked about KraftHeinz's negotiations with retailers and how they discovered that its bargaining position wasn't as strong as they thought (starts around 25:45).

To me this is a case of the strength of brands, with weaker brands losing out to stronger brands and being more easily influenced by the big supermarkets' buying power.