Buffett's annual letter to shareholders is just hours away

Warren Buffett widely-read annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders is set to be posted on the company's website tomorrow morning (Saturday) at approximately 8 AM ET.

It's part of Berkshire's annual report, which will also include its fourth quarter financial results and information about the shareholders meeting scheduled for Saturday, April 30.

In its preview piece, CNBC.com writes that "some of the biggest issues for the future of the company have not changed, even as the market tumult has, in the short-term, put its approach back into favor," helping to send Berkshire's Class B stock to gain of 6.8% so far this year.

Specifically, it has a lot of cash ($149 billion at the end of Q3, with an update coming tomorrow) and nothing priced attractively enough to spend it on, except for its own stock. (We'll also get a look tomorrow at its Q4 repurchases.) 

Another big issue is Berkshire's big Apple stake.

At today's close, it's worth $149.6 billion. That's 44% of the entire stock portfolio's market value, and roughly as much as Berkshire's end-of-Q3 cash pile.

But as George Washington University professor Lawrence Cunningham points out in the article, "Concentration has never worried them. They’ve been happy to have big percentages in just a handful of stocks."

And Edward Jones analyst James Shanahan notes that "they needed to get more exposed to tech and if you take a higher-level view, the Apple exposure isn’t particularly outsized relative to the (operating) businesses," which are currently valued by the market at around $225 billion.

He adds, "The way we’ve been thinking about it is that the operating companies are largely ‘old economy’ and industrials, manufacturing, retail, services and transportation. The pivot to tech, namely Apple, as an investment provides some balance to that."

BUFFETT AROUND THE INTERNET

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BERKSHIRE STOCK WATCH

BERKSHIRE'S TOP U.S. STOCK HOLDINGS - Feb. 25, 2022

Berkshire's top holdings of disclosed publicly-traded U.S. stocks by market value, based on today's closing prices.

Holdings are as of December 31, 2021 as reported in Berkshire Hathaway’s 13F filing on February 14, 2022, except for Apple, Bank of America, and U.S. Bancorp, which also include shares held as of December 31, 2021 as disclosed in New England Asset Management’s 13F filing on February 14, 2022.

In addition to U.S. stocks, shares held as of December 31, 2020 of China's BYD, as listed in Buffett's 2020 letter to shareholders, are included. The price of those shares in U.S. trading is used to approximate the current market value of the position. The value of the stake as a percentage of the company's market value is fixed at what was listed as of December 31, 2020 in the letter.

The full list of holdings and current market values is available from CNBC.com's Berkshire Hathaway Portfolio Tracker.

QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS

Please send any questions or comments about the newsletter to me at alex.crippen@nbcuni.com. (Sorry, but we don't forward questions or comments to Buffett himself.)

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-- Alex Crippen, Editor, Warren Buffett Watch