Warren Buffett Top Facts: Stocks, House, Profile Of Berkshire Hathaway, Companies Owned, Politics

Warren Buffet is a business mogul, magnate, an influential, and the most powerful investor of our time and era. He is the Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway Inc.

Warren Buffet is an American investor, entrepreneur, business mogul, and philanthropist. He is currently the fourth richest man in the world and the largest shareholder of his company, Berkshire Hathaway. He has many investments across many industries and sectors of the stock market and other private investments.

Profile of Berkshire Hathaway

Berkshire Hathaway was founded by Oliver Chace in 1839. Its business activities were mainly textiles and it was known as Valley Falls company in Valley falls. In 1929, it merged with Berkshire Cotton Manufacturing company. After a series of mergers and acquisitions by the textile company, Warren Buffet in 1962 started buying stocks of Berkshire Hathaway, which he later gained complete control over the affairs of the business as he was the majority shareholder.

Berkshire Hathaway is an American multinational holding company with its headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska, United States. Under the leadership of Warren Buffet, the company has made significant investments and wholly owns GEICO, Fruit of the loom, Long and Foster, Diary Queen, Pampered chef, and many others. Berkshire Hathaway also has minority holdings in publicly traded companies like Apple (5.4%) Bank of America(11.5%), Kraft Heinz (26.7%), American Express (17.6%), Pilot Flying (38.6%), The Coca-Cola Company (9.32%), Wells and Fargo (9.9%), Barrick Gold and others.

In comparison to the S&P 500’s 9.7% book value growth rate, Berkshire has an average growth rate of 19.0% in its book value to shareholders since 1965, which is quite impressive. This merit was achieved while employing large amounts of capital with minimal debt.

The company is well known to be under the leadership of Warren Edward Buffet who serves as the chairman and CEO and Charlie Munger one of the company’s vice-chairmen. Buffet focused on making long-term investments in publicly traded companies and he realizes a company’s great potential for growth, he buys controlling interests in them.

Berkshire has a diverse range of investments across many industries and sectors of the stock market, some are, retail, railroads, manufactures of vacuum cleaners, electric and gas utilities, confectionery, jewellery sales, amongst many others.

According to Forbes Global 2000 list and formula, Berkshire Hathaway is listed as the eighth largest public traded company in the world, by revenue generation, the tenth-largest, and the largest financial services company by revenue on the planet.

Berkshire Hathaway floated its shares in the early stages of the company’s development with its Class A shares having the most expensive share price in history costing around $300,000. per share, this is because there has never been a stock split. Buffet stated categorically in his letters to shareholders in 1984 that he never intends on splitting the stock.

In 2010, Warren Buffet said Berkshire Hathaway was the biggest investment mistake he had ever made because it made him miss out on a compounded investment returns worth about $200 billion over the subsequent 45 years. He claimed that if he had invested the money in insurance businesses instead of Berkshire, the investments would have yielded a hundredfold.

Warren Buffett’s House and Residence

Buffet lives in a very modest and decent house that is worth only 0.001% of his entire net worth. He lives in a quiet neighbourhood in Omaha, Nebraska. He bought the house in 1958 for $31,500, which is $250,000 in today’s dollars. The house now has an estimated net worth of $652,619. Warren claims the house is the third-best investment he has ever made.

The house has 6,570 sq. feet, 5 bedrooms, and 2.5 bathrooms. It is guarded by fences and security. Buffet said he is happy in his modest house when asked by BBC why he has not moved to a more extravagant house, he also said that if he thought he would be happy someplace else, he would move there.

Stocks and Companies Owned by Warren Buffett 

The following stocks and publicly traded companies are partly owned by Buffet, with the number of shares as held in September 2020.

Bank of America 1.01 billion shares, Apple 944.3 million, Coca Cola 400 million, Kraft Heinz 325.6 million, American Express 151.6 million, US Bancorp 131.9 million, Wells Fargo 127.4 million, General Motors 80 million, Bank of New York Mellon 72.4 million, Sirius XM 50 million and many more.

Buffet has significant stakes in so many businesses. He really is the most powerful investor of our time and era.