Taxes, investments and what’s next: Warren Buffett spoke to investors

“We expect to pay a lot more in taxes over the next decade. We owe the country no less: America’s dynamism has been a great contribution to Berkshire’s achievements.”he asserted.

Balance: what were your best investments

On the idea of ​​long-lasting investments, Buffett recalled that in 1994, Berkshire completed the seven-year purchase of 400 million Coca-Cola shares. That business had a total cost of US$1.3 billion, receiving, in 1994, a cash dividend of US$75 million. By 2022, said dividend reached $704 million.

A similar example was that of American Express. In 1995, Berkshire’s shares also cost $1.3 billion. Annual dividends received they went from US$41 million to US$302 million.

“These dividend earnings, while nice, are far from spectacular. But they bring with them significant gains in stock prices. At the end of the year, our investment in Coca-Cola was valued at $25 billionwhile Amex was registered at US$22,000 million”indicated Buffett in this regard.

The journey to being a company like Berkshire is now, Buffett recalled, began in 1967 with the acquisition of the National Indemnity insurer:

“We redirected our resources towards insurance. Thus began our journey to 2023, a bumpy road that involved a combination of continued savings by our owners (i.e. retaining their profits), the power of compounding interest, our avoidance of major mistakes, and most importantly of everything, the American tailwind. America would have been fine without Berkshire. The opposite is not true”.

The Oracle of Omaha, however, explained that Berkshire Hathaway’s commitment is not so much to have immediate results in their investments, but rather that they seek to make them “significant in businesses with lasting favorable economic characteristics and reliable managers.”