Last night, as I was drifting off to sleep, a question occurred to me... does WEB count the market value of the securities portfolio or intrinsic value when calculating the IV of BRK? Theoretically, intrinsic value would make more sense because those securities are (presumably) owned because they're at a discount to IV. In practice, if this difference was large enough, they'd simply buy more of those stocks. On the other hand, they own others like KO, where I'm pretty sure WEB wouldn't buy more stock today. Also in practice, float is often an issue (10%+) as are taxes. It's not a huge deal, just something fun to think about. So I figured I'd ask the group's thoughts. Thanks!
Fascinating question and would add that future opportunities will come from what is available at a cheap price wherever that may be.
Your question is difficult to answer because one has to rely on what is written between the lines and is subject to personal interpretations.
I guess we all have, to varying degrees of formalness, a list of owned stocks and a watchlist tabulating the ratio of price to intrinsic value, that we update on a regular basis. For Mr. Buffett, this may be recorded in a book slipped into his drawer but may simply be in his brain.
The 1979 annual report has useful comments (annual performance based on investments at cost and longer term performance OK with investments at market value) and more recently, Mr. Buffett has described his 2-column valuation "model". If interested, Mason Hawkins at Southeastern Asset Management periodically discusses this aspect when "monitoring" portfolios.
As value investors, typically, our recorded price to intrinsic value ratio should be below one as we allocate entries and exits in our portfolios. At Berkshire, there is a long term mindset and the turnover is relatively low but, in the main and long-term wise, the market has recorded the closing gap between intrinsic value at acquisition and at every year-end reporting. All that to say that I suspect the price to intrinsic value ratio at Berkshire is below 1 but not by much, especially since it has grown so much and because of present circumstances.
Wondering if Mr. Buffett makes adjustments or not, would say that the price to intrinsic value for marketable securities held may have gone down to some degree when capital constraints are felt and when maximum pessimism abounds (time for juicy returns, especially in the early days but also more recently, to a lesser extent) and may have come closer to one in different 180-degrees scenarios. However, I don't think Mr. Buffett needs to make adjustments, especially for the more recent period, for the following conceptual reason. My understanding is that the cash position at Berkshire tends to "naturally" increase when the price to intrinsic value gap decreases in BH portfolios. This happens because, despite cash being associated with an opportunity cost, I assume that Mr. Buffett considers that the temporal optionality value provided more than compensates for the opportunity cost and "naturally" allows to benefit from the widening gap opportunity occasionally seen.
In summary, I think Mr. Buffett does not adjust for the fluctuations of the intrinsic value gap for the marketable securities in his portfolios because of his long term and opportunistic valuation approach using financial flexibilty as an input.
As an aside, the recent "evolution" on the buyback stance may be related to evolving thoughts on the present opportunity cost of cash and the opportunity set (or absence thereof) on the horizon.
