Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger are wary of bank stocks and bearish on commercial real estate.
The Berkshire Hathaway duo are downbeat on the US economy and worry the government is overspending.
They also discussed Apple, AI, Japan, Taiwan, and Occidental Petroleum during their annual meeting.
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Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger revealed during Berkshire Hathaway’s annual shareholder meeting on Saturday that they are wary of owning bank stocks, bearish on commercial real estate, and pessimistic about the US economy.
The two investing icons — who are Berkshire’s CEO and vice-chairman, respectively — also touted their massive Apple stake, ruled out a takeover bid for Occidental Petroleum, and discussed the risks posed by artificial intelligence and de-dollarization.
The pair, who are both in their 90s, offered advice about success, marriage, and inheritance as well.
Here are the 10 key takeaways from Berkshire’s annual meeting:
“If the government allowed depositors to lose money, it would cause bank runs across the country and disrupt the global financial system,” he said. “That is not the way the US is going to behave, any more than they’re going to let the debt ceiling cause the world to go into turmoil.”
Buffett also blasted politicians, federal agencies, and the media for leaving people needlessly afraid.
“A lighted match can be turned into a conflagration, or it can be blown out,” he said.
The investor also emphasized that Berkshire stands ready to provide liquidity if a financial crisis grips the US economy.
“We want to be there if the banking system temporarily gets stalled in some way,” he said. “It shouldn’t, I don’t think it will, but I think it could.”
Buffett added that he’s wary of owning bank stocks at the moment, given the sector’s current challenges.
Buffett blasted the industry’s excessive reliance on debt, and argued that recklessness needs to be penalized “if you’re going to change how people are going to behave in the future.”
Meanwhile, Munger predicted a devastating blow to the commercial hearts of cities.
“The hollowing out of the downtowns in the United States and elsewhere in the world is going to be quite significant and quite unpleasant,” he said.
3. The economy is cooling
Buffett described the pandemic era of rock-bottom interest rates and freewheeling government spending as the most extraordinary period for business since World War II.
“It hasn’t ended with employment falling off a cliff or anything in the least, but it is a different climate than it was six months ago,” he said.
4. Dollar disaster
The US dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency is safe for now as there isn’t a clear substitute, Buffett said. He shrugged off the risk of de-dollarization, and dismissed the idea of bitcoin or another cryptocurrency usurping the greenback.
“It’s a joke to think of any tokens,” he said.
However, the Berkshire boss cautioned the US government’s overspending could lead to sustained inflation. That would relentlessly erode the purchasing power of Americans’ dollars, and make people think twice about saving money or building up their pensions.
“We should be very careful,” he said. “It’s very hard to see how you recover once you let the genie out of the bottle and people lose faith in the currency.”
5. Buffett won’t buy Occidental
Berkshire has spent around $11 billion to build a nearly 24% stake in Occidental Petroleum since last spring. It also owns close to $10 billion worth of the oil-and-gas company’s preferred stock, and holds warrants it can exercise to buy more common shares at a fixed price of $5 billion.
Moreover, Buffett and his team have the green light from regulators to own up to 50% of the company. Yet the investor ruled out a takeover bid for the fossil-fuel giant on Saturday.
“We will not be making any offer for control of Occidental,” Buffett said.
6. AI concerns
Munger said he was skeptical that artificial intelligence will change the world, and joked that human intelligence works just fine.
Buffett expressed his amazement at what ChatGPT and other AI tools can already do. But he also questioned what AI could be used for in the future, and compared it to the splitting of the atom as a potentially dangerous advance in technology.
7. Higher rates are helping
The Federal Reserve has hiked interest rates from nearly zero to upwards of 5% over the past 14 months, in a bid to curb historic inflation.
Experts have warned the steeper rates may crimp demand and drag the US economy into a recession, but they’re at least partly good news for Berkshire.
Buffett’s company is set to collect about $5 billion in interest from its roughly $130 billion of cash and Treasury bills this year, compared to a $50 million yield a few years ago, the investor said.
8. Nothing beats Apple
Berkshire owns scores of businesses including Geico, See’s Candies, Duracell, and the BNSF Railway. Apple outclasses every single one of them in Buffett’s view.
“It just happens to be a better business than any we own,” he said, underlining how indispensable the iPhone and other Apple devices are to consumers. Berkshire holds more than $150 billion worth of Apple shares, making it by far the most-valuable holding in its stock portfolio.
Buffett also celebrated the fact that Berkshire doesn’t have to buy more Apple shares to increase its ownership of the company, thanks to the tech titan’s stock buybacks.
“The good thing about Apple is that we can go up,” he said.
9. Picking Japan over Taiwan
Berkshire recently boosted its stakes in Japan’s five largest trading houses to around 7.4% across the board. In contrast, it slashed its Taiwan Semiconductor holdings by almost 90% in the fourth quarter of last year.
Buffett invested in the Japanese quintet because they were big enough to move the needle at Berkshire, cheaply valued, paid dividends, repurchased stock, and operated in familiar industries, he said on Saturday.
Berkshire was also able to offset the currency risks by issuing yen-denominated bonds that offered minimal yields, he noted.
Meanwhile, Buffett dumped most of its TSMC position because of Taiwan’s geopolitical tensions with China, he said.
“I don’t like its location, and I’ve re-evaluated that,” Buffett said about the chipmaker. He prefers to find great managers and businesses in the US, and feels more comfortable putting his money in Japan than Taiwan, he added.
10. Life lessons
Buffett and Munger shared several pieces of advice about personal finance, marriage, and estate planning.
Berkshire’s CEO warned people not to live beyond their means, rack up credit-card debt, or invest recklessly. The company’s vice-chairman added that having the right associates and behaving well are critical too.
“It’s so simple to spend less than you earn, and invest shrewdly, and avoid toxic people and toxic activities, and try and keep learning all your life,” Munger said. “If you do all those things, you are almost certain to succeed.”
Buffett underscored the vital importance of finding the right partner in life as well.
“If you make the right decision on a spouse, I mean, you’ve won the game,” he said.
The billionaire investor added that people should instill the right principles in their children, to ensure they pass down not just their wealth, but also their approach to using money.
“Don’t think that a cleverly drawn will, will substitute for your own behavior in teaching your kids the values you hope that they will have,” he said.
Buffett also dispensed some wisdom to people trying to figure out what to do in life. He encouraged them to write their own obituaries, and work out how to live up to them.
TOKYO (AP) — Japanese technology group SoftBank swung back to profitability in the July-September quarter, boosted by positive results in its Vision Fund investments.
Tokyo-based SoftBank Group Corp. reported Tuesday a fiscal second quarter profit of nearly 1.18 trillion yen ($7.7 billion), compared with a 931 billion yen loss in the year-earlier period.
Quarterly sales edged up about 6% to nearly 1.77 trillion yen ($11.5 billion).
SoftBank credited income from royalties and licensing related to its holdings in Arm, a computer chip-designing company, whose business spans smartphones, data centers, networking equipment, automotive, consumer electronic devices, and AI applications.
The results were also helped by the absence of losses related to SoftBank’s investment in office-space sharing venture WeWork, which hit the previous fiscal year.
WeWork, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2023, emerged from Chapter 11 in June.
SoftBank has benefitted in recent months from rising share prices in some investment, such as U.S.-based e-commerce company Coupang, Chinese mobility provider DiDi Global and Bytedance, the Chinese developer of TikTok.
SoftBank’s financial results tend to swing wildly, partly because of its sprawling investment portfolio that includes search engine Yahoo, Chinese retailer Alibaba, and artificial intelligence company Nvidia.
SoftBank makes investments in a variety of companies that it groups together in a series of Vision Funds.
The company’s founder, Masayoshi Son, is a pioneer in technology investment in Japan. SoftBank Group does not give earnings forecasts.
Shopify Inc. executives brushed off concerns that incoming U.S. President Donald Trump will be a major detriment to many of the company’s merchants.
“There’s nothing in what we’ve heard from Trump, nor would there have been anything from (Democratic candidate) Kamala (Harris), which we think impacts the overall state of new business formation and entrepreneurship,” Shopify’s chief financial officer Jeff Hoffmeister told analysts on a call Tuesday.
“We still feel really good about all the merchants out there, all the entrepreneurs that want to start new businesses and that’s obviously not going to change with the administration.”
Hoffmeister’s comments come a week after Trump, a Republican businessman, trounced Harris in an election that will soon return him to the Oval Office.
On the campaign trail, he threatened to impose tariffs of 60 per cent on imports from China and roughly 10 per cent to 20 per cent on goods from all other countries.
If the president-elect makes good on the promise, many worry the cost of operating will soar for companies, including customers of Shopify, which sells e-commerce software to small businesses but also brands as big as Kylie Cosmetics and Victoria’s Secret.
These merchants may feel they have no choice but to pass on the increases to customers, perhaps sparking more inflation.
If Trump’s tariffs do come to fruition, Shopify’s president Harley Finkelstein pointed out China is “not a huge area” for Shopify.
However, “we can’t anticipate what every presidential administration is going to do,” he cautioned.
He likened the uncertainty facing the business community to the COVID-19 pandemic where Shopify had to help companies migrate online.
“Our job is no matter what comes the way of our merchants, we provide them with tools and service and support for them to navigate it really well,” he said.
Finkelstein was questioned about the forthcoming U.S. leadership change on a call meant to delve into Shopify’s latest earnings, which sent shares soaring 27 per cent to $158.63 shortly after Tuesday’s market open.
The Ottawa-based company, which keeps its books in U.S. dollars, reported US$828 million in net income for its third quarter, up from US$718 million in the same quarter last year, as its revenue rose 26 per cent.
Revenue for the period ended Sept. 30 totalled US$2.16 billion, up from US$1.71 billion a year earlier.
Subscription solutions revenue reached US$610 million, up from US$486 million in the same quarter last year.
Merchant solutions revenue amounted to US$1.55 billion, up from US$1.23 billion.
Shopify’s net income excluding the impact of equity investments totalled US$344 million for the quarter, up from US$173 million in the same quarter last year.
Daniel Chan, a TD Cowen analyst, said the results show Shopify has a leadership position in the e-commerce world and “a continued ability to gain market share.”
In its outlook for its fourth quarter of 2024, the company said it expects revenue to grow at a mid-to-high-twenties percentage rate on a year-over-year basis.
“Q4 guidance suggests Shopify will finish the year strong, with better-than-expected revenue growth and operating margin,” Chan pointed out in a note to investors.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
TORONTO – RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust says it has cut almost 10 per cent of its staff as it deals with a slowdown in the condo market and overall pushes for greater efficiency.
The company says the cuts, which amount to around 60 employees based on its last annual filing, will mean about $9 million in restructuring charges and should translate to about $8 million in annualized cash savings.
The job cuts come as RioCan and others scale back condo development plans as the market softens, but chief executive Jonathan Gitlin says the reductions were from a companywide efficiency effort.
RioCan says it doesn’t plan to start any new construction of mixed-use properties this year and well into 2025 as it adjusts to the shifting market demand.
The company reported a net income of $96.9 million in the third quarter, up from a loss of $73.5 million last year, as it saw a $159 million boost from a favourable change in the fair value of investment properties.
RioCan reported what it says is a record-breaking 97.8 per cent occupancy rate in the quarter including retail committed occupancy of 98.6 per cent.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
