Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger were center stage for around five hours Saturday at the annual shareholders meeting of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE:BRK.B), and they did not disappoint the faithful who converged on the company's headquarters city of Omaha, Nebraska.
Buffett, Berkshire's chairman and CEO, and Munger, its vice chairman, tackled topics ranging from Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Wells Fargo & Co. (NYSE:WFC) to bitcoin and women in the C-suite during their question-and-answer session with the adoring masses.
Regarding Apple, which has grown into Berkshire Hathaway's biggest holding, Buffett voiced his approval of the iPhone maker's plans to buy back US$100bn of its own stock.
"I love the idea of having our 5% or whatever it may be grow" to 7% or more "without us laying out a dime," Buffett said.
As for Wells Fargo, Berkshire is sticking with the banking giant despite the black eye it gave itself by creating millions of fake bank and credit card accounts.
"If I had to say which bank is more likely to behave the best in the future, it might be Wells Fargo," Munger said.
Munger and Buffett both expressed their disdain for bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, which they view as nonproductive assets. Buffett called it "probably rat poison squared" and Munger deemed it a "turd."
When asked about gender equality in the workplace and what Berkshire is doing to promote it, Buffett noted that women now head six of the 60-plus businesses that Berkshire owns. Buffett said it was hard to find qualified women to lead companies because of what he termed a "pipeline problem." But, he added, "You can't use that excuse forever."
Separately, Berkshire reported a first-quarter net loss of US$1.14bn because of a change this year in Generally Accepted Accounting Principles that now requires the company to include the changes in unrealized gains and losses of its equity security investments as a component of investment gains and losses in its earnings statements. Consequently, Berkshire's latest first-quarter results include a loss of about US$6.2bn in the unrealized losses in equity security investments held at March 31, 2018.
Berkshire said its operating earnings rose nearly 49%, to US$5.29bn from US$3.56bn.