Next Berkshire acquisition speculation

[bizaro86]

AXP; especially if there’s a swoon again similar to the Salad Oil scandal.

I suppose if they were willing to give up their Bank charter.  And if they weren't a bank, it would free up Berkshire to acquire Delta without worrying about the Fed fretting over a very material commercial relationship...

Good point. Also, Amex probably wouldn't need it's bank charter to attract funds if it was part of Berkshire.

[thepupil]

here's some heresy for ya. forget about adding any more managerial responsibility to the home office, even if Berkshire is famously decentralized.

Berkshire should buy Berkshire, and not mess around.

IPO 10% of BNSF and Berkshire Energy to increase the "public" portfolio by $130-$140 billion and put a more verifiable value on these.
Blow out of KHC at a 50% discount and lose $16 billion for tax purposes
Blow out of AAPL at market

Cash +$15 billion (IPO) + $4 billion (KHC) +$51 Billion = $70 billion

$122 billion at quarter end plus $70 billion from selling KHC, AAPL, and taking minority stakes in BNSF and BE public. = $190 billion pro-forma cash.

Tender for 27% of company ($150 billion) of stock at a 10% premium and highlight how freaking cheap and overcapitalized the company is, then we can talk about bringing more companies under the umbrella.








Use all cash flow to retire stock until the market assigns a proper value to Berkshire.

[Spekulatius]

Likely sectors are chemicals (maybe DuPont, or LYB) or aerospace. They have already toeholds in both, so there would be a knowledge base in the company about what to buy. Both are durable business that will not go away.

Buffet sold of PSX, so I don’t think he will venture in the refinery sector.

[gfp]

Yeah I agree on chemicals and aerospace.  Berkshire's preference has been for large business to business type industries for a while now.  It's hard to do well with consumer products and its hard to get consumer products companies of meaningful size.  Berkshire has probably learned its lessons with business to consumer stuff but we'll see.  I do think he would take Mars's call and he was willing to do a leveraged buyout of Unilever a few short years ago.

Likely sectors are chemicals (maybe DuPont, or LYB) or aerospace. They have already toeholds in both, so there would be a knowledge base in the company about what to buy. Both are durable business that will not go away.

Buffet sold of PSX, so I don’t think he will venture in the refinery sector.

[DooDiligence]

FUL (smallish $2.3B mkt cap.)

MMM (largish $94B mkt cap.)

or a home builder?

[BargainValueHunter]

State Street, Continental Building Products or the "Holy Grail"... Starbucks!

[BG2008]

Likely sectors are chemicals (maybe DuPont, or LYB) or aerospace. They have already toeholds in both, so there would be a knowledge base in the company about what to buy. Both are durable business that will not go away.

Buffet sold of PSX, so I don’t think he will venture in the refinery sector.

DuPont over LYB all day.  DuPont is actually a decent target IMO

[Spekulatius]

State Street, Continental Building Products or the "Holy Grail"... Starbucks!

He bought a lot of bank stocks, but hasn’t touched the trust banks. I don’t think he has got much love for them.

[gfp]

Well he has continued to add Bank of NY Mellon shares for several years.  Isn't that similar?  Either way, he's not going to own a too-big-to-fail bank outright. 

State Street, Continental Building Products or the "Holy Grail"... Starbucks!

He bought a lot of bank stocks, but hasn’t touched the trust banks. I don’t think he has got much love for them.

[CorpRaider]

$LUV, $FIZZ