Berkshire Hathaway 2014 Annual Report Download - page 19

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Investments
Below we list our fifteen common stock investments that at yearend had the largest market value.
12/31/14
Shares** Company
Percentage of
Company
Owned
Cost* Market
(in millions)
151,610,700 American Express Company ................. 14.8 $ 1,287 $ 14,106
400,000,000 The Coca-Cola Company .................... 9.2 1,299 16,888
18,513,482 DaVita HealthCare Partners Inc. ............. 8.6 843 1,402
15,430,586 Deere & Company .......................... 4.5 1,253 1,365
24,617,939 DIRECTV .................................. 4.9 1,454 2,134
13,062,594 The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. ............. 3.0 750 2,532
76,971,817 International Business Machines Corp. ...... 7.8 13,157 12,349
24,669,778 Moody’s Corporation ........................ 12.1 248 2,364
20,060,390 Munich Re .................................. 11.8 2,990 4,023
52,477,678 The Procter & Gamble Company ............ 1.9 336 4,683 ***
22,169,930 Sanofi ....................................... 1.7 1,721 2,032
96,890,665 U.S. Bancorp ................................ 5.4 3,033 4,355
43,387,980 USG Corporation ............................ 30.0 836 1,214
67,707,544 Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. ....................... 2.1 3,798 5,815
483,470,853 Wells Fargo & Company .................... 9.4 11,871 26,504
Others ....................................... 10,180 15,704
Total Common Stocks Carried at Market .... $55,056 $ 117,470
*This is our actual purchase price and also our tax basis; GAAP “cost” differs in a few cases because of write-ups or
write-downs that have been required under GAAP rules.
**Excludes shares held by pension funds of Berkshire subsidiaries.
***Held under contract of sale for this amount.
Berkshire has one major equity position that is not included in the table: We can buy 700 million shares
of Bank of America at any time prior to September 2021 for $5 billion. At yearend these shares were worth $12.5
billion. We are likely to purchase the shares just before expiration of our option. In the meantime, it is important for
you to realize that Bank of America is, in effect, our fourth largest equity investment – and one we value highly.
************
Attentive readers will notice that Tesco, which last year appeared in the list of our largest common stock
investments, is now absent. An attentive investor, I’m embarrassed to report, would have sold Tesco shares earlier. I
made a big mistake with this investment by dawdling.
At the end of 2012 we owned 415 million shares of Tesco, then and now the leading food retailer in the
U.K. and an important grocer in other countries as well. Our cost for this investment was $2.3 billion, and the
market value was a similar amount.
17