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Buffett Shareholder Letters - 1978 Letter

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BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY INC. To the Shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway Inc.: First, a few words about accounting. The merger with Diversified Retailing Company, Inc. at yearend adds two new complications in the presentation of our financial results. After the merger, our ownership of Blue Chip Stamps increased to approximately 58% and, therefore, the accounts of that company must be fully consolidated in the Balance Sheet and Statement of Earnings presentation of Berkshire. In previous reports, our share of the net earnings only of Blue Chip had been included as a single item on Berkshire ? s Statement of Earnings, and there had been a similar one-line inclusion on our Balance Sheet of our share of their net assets. This full consolidation of sales, expenses, receivables, inventories, debt, etc. produces an aggregation of figures from many diverse businesses - textiles, insurance, candy, newspapers, trading stamps - with dramatically different economic characteristics. In some of these your ownership is 100% but, in those businesses which are owned by Blue Chip but fully consolidated, your ownership as a Berkshire shareholder is only 58%. (Ownership by others of the balance of these businesses is accounted for by the large minority interest item on the liability side of the Balance Sheet.) Such a grouping of Balance Sheet and Earnings items - some wholly owned, some partly owned tends to obscure economic reality more than illuminate it. In fact, it represents a form of presentation that we never prepare for internal use during the year and which is of no value to us in any management activities. For that reason, throughout the report we provide much separate financial information and commentary on the various segments of the business to help you evaluate Berkshire ? s performance and prospects. Much of this segmented information is mandated by SEC disclosure rules and covered in ? Management ? s Discussion ? on pages 29 to 34. And in this letter we try to present to you a view of our various operating entities from the same perspective that we view them managerially. A second complication arising from the merger is that the 1977 figures shown in this report are different from the 1977 figures shown in the report we mailed to you last year. Accounting convention requires that when two entities such as Diversified and Berkshire are merged, all financial data subsequently must be presented as if the companies had been merged at the time they were formed rather than just recently. So the enclosed financial statements, in effect, pretend that in 1977 (and earlier years) the Diversified-Berkshire merger already had taken place, even though the actual merger date was December 30, 1978. This shifting base makes comparative commentary confusing and, from time to time in our narrative report, we will talk of figures and performance for Berkshire shareholders as historically reported to you rather than as restated after the Diversified merger. With that preamble it can be stated that, with or without restated figures, 1978 was a good year. Operating earnings, exclusive of capital gains, at 19.4% of beginning shareholders ? investment were within a fraction of our 1972 record. While we believe it is improper to include capital gains or losses in evaluating the performance of a single year, they are an important component of the longer term record. Because of such gains, Berkshire ? s long-term growth in equity per share has been greater than would be indicated by compounding the returns from operating earnings that we have reported annually.

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