When Will Berkshire Hathaway Be Ready to Spend?

In this podcast, Motley Fool contributor Matt Frankel and host Deidre Woollard discuss:

• Berkshire Hathaway's massive pile of cash.
• If the National Association of Realtors lawsuit damages Berkshire's real estate prospects.
• Why it has been a good year for insurance.

Motley Fool host Mary Long and analyst David Meier explore the big cybersecurity opportunity facing Palo Alto Networks.

To catch full episodes of all The Motley Fool's free podcasts, check out our podcast center. To get started investing, check out our quick-start guide to investing in stocks. A full transcript follows the video.

This video was recorded on Nov. 06, 2023.

Deidre Woollard: When will Berkshire Hathaway be ready to spend? Motley Fool Money starts now. Welcome to Motley Fool Money, I'm Deidre Woollard here with Motley Fool analyst Matt Frankel. Matt, good to see you today.

Matthew Frankel: Good to see you as well. Always fun. I work four Saturdays a year and they are Berkshire's earnings reports, so it's doesn't even feel like a Monday I worked over the weekend.

Deidre Woollard: [laughs] Exactly, I mean, I think they're the only company that reports on a Saturday. Either way, it is always a special event. Not as special as, you know, the big conference in the spring, but I think the headline for at least for most of the news reports I saw was that 157 billion numbers. That's the amount of cash Berkshire has on hand new record, I think about 126 million of it is sitting in short term treasuries. You know, because we tend to respect Warren Buffett so much, we tend to look at his activity and in this case, the lack thereof, as a signal. Is this a signal? He's not buying, should we be buying?

Matthew Frankel: There's three pieces of the cash hoard growing, there's the operating income from the businesses that gets put in the pile. There is how much Berkshire spent or did not spend on buying more stock for its portfolio, which it looks like it was a net seller of stocks. We don't know exactly what it bought and sold, but the cost basis of its portfolio declined quarter of a quarter, so that's usually the clue that that it was a net seller and Berkshire isn't buying back as much stock. The company bought back 1.1 billion dollar of stock in the quarter, that's a notable decline because during the first two quarters, they bought back a total of $6 billion, put all those three things together, and the cash soared by about $10 billion this quarter and is now sitting at a record. But like you said, it's mostly sitting in treasuries and that means that Buffett doesn't really have to care about being able to find a deal as much as he did when the treasury yields were 1% because now that portfolio is putting out seven to $8 billion of interest income for Buffett every year and he needs to take that into consideration when, you know, assessing a potential deal, like would a potential deal definitely be able to do better than that? It wasn't that long ago where you could find any deal that would do better than treasuries, but that's not really the case anymore, I'd prefer treasuries over a certain real estate stocks that we talk about at the moment. It's interesting that the cash is getting that big and the market is down from its summer peak, so the universe of companies that Buffett could potentially buy with that cash has gotten even larger than the number implies.

Deidre Woollard: Yeah and I think it's interesting you mentioned that 1 billion number. I love that defines like he's buying back less and and the number is 1 billion in stock buybacks, but that also is a reflection of the fact that, Berkshire stock has been up and he's savvy, he's not going to buy when the opportunity to buy isn't there.

Matthew Frankel: Yeah. But I mean, at the same time, you have to remember by definition, in order to buy back stock at all, whether we're talking about one share or 1 billion shares, Buffett and Charlie Monger both have to agree that the stock is trading for below its intrinsic value, so the lower buyback rate implies that Buffett doesn't like the stock as much as he did before, but thinks it's still a good value relative to the intrinsic value of the business.

Deidre Woollard: One something he is buying bite by bite by bite is the pilot travel centers that has been in the works for a long time there is, I think it's around 25% of the business left. But last week it came to light that the founders of pilots, the Haslem families, they sued Berkshire over a change in accounting methods that they say may have valued their shares. This seems to me like like battle of billionaires over price, is that what this is or is there something more profound here?

Matthew Frankel: Yeah, I just took a road trip this past weekend, and every time I stopped at a pilot travel center, Warren Buffett got that much richer. [laughs] But so people need to realize that you're a Berkshire customer if you're taking a road trip and you stop at a pilot, especially if there's one with a Dairy Queen in it. But the accounting change happened earlier this year. I mentioned when I covered earnings for Motley Fool Live earlier that Berkshire's revenue was up 21% year every year, but most of that's due because pilot is recognized differently on the balance sheet now that they have a majority stake. I think the initial investment, Berkshire bought a little over 40%, now they bought in the 35 percentage range more recently. The stakes close to 80% now the Haslem family still owns a little more than 20% of it. Berkshire has already paid around $12 billion for the 80% that it owns. The second part of the investment was much more highly valued, like three times as highly valued as the first. This does seem like a pickiness between billionaires, how you account for revenue of an acquisition when you've already bought 80% of the company from the seller and there's the other 20%. Like how much of a difference does it really make at that point, I've never had to deal with billion dollar deals of selling my own family's business, so I can't really speak to how the emotions involved in it, but I mean, the change in accounting methods, it had more to do with the fact that Berkshire is now the majority owner and can account for whoever it wants to. Warren Buffett's always thought of as a warm and fuzzy character, but he's a very smart businessman, if he could figure out how to get a better deal for a transaction within the terms of the transaction. I'm not a CPA, but at first glance, he didn't violate any terms of the contract by changing the accounting method, it just didn't work out in the favor of the seller. The question is, do they have the right to get evaluation under the old accounting methods or not? But we'll let the courts decide that. But Buffett's not warm and fuzzy when it comes to his business dealings.

Deidre Woollard: No, he is not speaking of the courts deciding things, last week on the show, Dylan and as talked a little bit about the National Association of Realtors lawsuits, Home Services of America, that's Berkshire's real estate arm. That was one of the companies named in the suit, so they're going to be responsible for part of that multi billion dollar judgment, if appeals fail, we know there's going to be a lot of appeals. But thinking about this change that we're seeing in real estate, is that a long term threat for Berkshire Hathaway? I mean, I know this part of the business did not do well for them, I think it was down like 81% year over year, which is to be expected.

Matthew Frankel: I've been saying for years that the real estate commission structure is very outdated, that the 6% standard commission structure needed to go. It was the last holdout of the antiquated fees era in general financial services and it turns out that might have been for a reason. It turns out that there might have been some, I don't want to say collusion, I don't want to say Berkshire was colluding with with the National Association of Realtors to keep prices high.

Matthew Frankel: But at the same time, when you think of all the other financial service fees that we pay, that technology has disrupted and made it more efficient and easier. I don't know when the last time you paid a stock trading commission is, but I haven't paid one in years.

Deidre Woollard: No.

Matthew Frankel: I don't think that it's a long-term threat to the industry any more than I thought that $0 stock commissions were a threat to companies like Schwab and Fidelity. They just find ways to adapt, figure out other ways to make money off the process. There's a lot more that goes on in a real estate transaction other than the sale and the purchase. There's title insurance, there's homeowners insurance, there's a mortgage that takes place. This is the whole central thesis of Zillow right now, is the all in one nature of a real estate transaction. There are other ways to involve yourself. Generally speaking, the lawsuit, it has to do with the fact that the National Association of Realtors essentially pressures its users to have the seller pay both sides of the commission, pay the buyer's agent commission and the seller's agent commission. There's a big argument to be made that if the buyer had to pay that part of the commission themselves, that it would create a lot more price competition and things like that. Because the seller obviously has the money to pay any commission that they want because they're the ones getting hundreds of thousands of dollars in the home sale. Whereas the buyer, if they actually had to come up with money up front to pay realtor's commission, might not put up with a 3% commission.

The argument from the National Association of Realtors is, well, commissions have always been negotiable. I've bought and sold, including investment properties, eight properties in my lifetime. I have never been offered a total selling commission below 5.5%. Maybe by Redfin. Redfin is the exception that wants to disrupt on price. But generally speaking, every realtor know this is what it is, this is what the commission is. I can bend a little bit. I'll do 2.5% on my selling commission, but you still have to pay the 3% buyer's agent or things like that. My realtor friends hate it when I say this, I'm sure I'll get some nasty Facebook messages after this, is why is the commission for selling a home the same as it was 20 years ago when agents had a whole lot more they had to do? Think of the home selling process 20, 25, 30 years ago. Agents had to physically drive around and find properties for their clients. They had to take them on 20 home tours because the Internet hadn't evolved to where you could have high resolution home tours. There was a lot more phone work that had to be done.

A lot more driving around to various offices to get paper signed. The job of a realtor has become so much more automated these days. They still are working hard. They still deserve some money. But 6% of the transaction, is that still the appropriate commission? Like I said, I'm not a realtor. My friends who are realtors tell me that, no, we earn our money. Of course, they're going to say that. I've never had anyone of any profession tell me they don't earn their money. But at the same time, it's not a long-term threat to the real estate business. I'm definitely getting off on a tangent here, but it's not a long-term threat to the real estate business in general. Real estate is the largest industry in the world. Something like $6 trillion of transaction volume in an average year changes hands in the United States in real estate. Companies like Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices that are an industry leader are going to figure out how to make money off of this even if commissions are more left up to the market than the National Association of Realtors.

Deidre Woollard: I think that's absolutely true. The other part of the real estate business that Berkshire has that I find really interesting is manufactured housing, things like Clayton Homes. When I was looking through Berkshire's report, one of their only major financial receivables are the loans for both manufactured and site built. They said they've got around 96% of loans are current, but they are putting money away to protect against losses. I'm torn between wanting a lot of manufactured homes to be built and also seeing the potential for some risk there. How do you think about it?

Matthew Frankel: Well, manufactured homes today are filling an affordability gap.

Deidre Woollard: Absolutely.

Matthew Frankel: In a lot of ways. But there's a lot to unpack there. You're right that if we fall into a deep recession, for example, we could definitely see default rates start to tick upward. You mentioned 96% of their loans are current as of the end of the third quarter. Of the 4% that aren't, not all of those are going to turn into foreclosures. That includes loans that are 30 days late, that people just may be behind a payment or two on. The majority of loans that fall behind by a payment or two don't end up in foreclosure. That's one thing to unpack. The actual amount of net charge offs they had during the first nine months of this year were about $52 million. They put away an additional $122 million to provide for future loan losses. As you mentioned, they're building up their reserves. They have a total of $856 million in reserves for loan losses compared to that $52 million over nine months in actual loan defaults. My short answer is there's a lot of way to go before it would actually become a problem. They seem to be over planning, which is a good thing. A smart bank will overplan for loan losses and release some of their reserves when you see a coast is clear signal. The majority of these loans, I'm looking at it right now, about 85% of them were originated when mortgage rates were low. People are going to do what they can to keep those. There are a lot of bills that if I were facing hard times that I would give up before my 3% mortgage rate. Because even if I got foreclosed on or whatever, I would still have to go rent a home at the current market price or something to that effect. The bulk of the loans are lower interest rate loans. The bulk are performing very well. Like I said, looking forward, Clayton Homes and other manufactured housing companies are filling a nice affordability gap in the United States. I don't think it's going to be a big problem. It's definitely worth keeping an eye on. If we see a 2008 style recession, could it be a problem? Absolutely. But at the current rate, looks like the company is over planning for any downturn.

Deidre Woollard: Well, we can't talk Berkshire without talking insurance. Good quarter for them for insurance. Really a major driver of growth for them in the quarter, underwriting. Smart underwriting is such an important consideration, I think especially now. I'm thinking about some of the climate change stuff. I've talked to a couple of insurance companies about what they're seeing. How do you think about that volatility and the need to underwrite smartly?

Matthew Frankel: I think Berkshire did have a great insurance quarter. The natural disasters in 2023 weren't nearly as bad as they were in previous years. We've seen that throughout the insurance industry that it's a more steady underwriting environment than it was a year ago. That could change at any time. The nature of the reinsurance business is you're going to absorb those big natural disaster losses. Reinsurance, if you're not familiar, is insurance for insurance companies. If an insurer has too much exposure to a certain market, they'll buy a reinsurance contract that will take care of any losses over a certain amount. In natural disaster times, that could be a lot of money. Berkshire is one of the leading reinsurers. They're best known for GEICO, but General Re and a few other reinsurance subsidiaries of theirs are very big businesses. There's a lot of reinsurance exposure there. Natural disasters could play a big part of it. I think Berkshire plans really well. They have a history of excellent underwriting. Berkshire hand picks all of its insurance businesses for a reason. It's because they're good at predicting losses. Berkshire has the capital to absorb short-term losses on its balance sheet. One of the reason Buffett insists on keeping at least $30 billion of cash on the balance sheet at all time is specifically to absorb any kind of losses or volatility that take place. But the insurance business had a great quarter. You can't deny that.

Deidre Woollard: Well, I want to take us away from Berkshire before we wrap up because Brookfield Asset Management, they reported this morning, not over the weekend. They've got about 102 billion in dry powder to deploy. Talk about cash hoards. We've got a different one here because they really have to spend it. The interesting thing I thought was in their shareholder letter, they said they really feel like next year is going to be this robust deal making time because interest rates stabilize, valuations become clear. I want to see them spend. Sometimes I hear dry powder and then I hear nothing happen, but Brookfield pretty much has to. Looks like they're going to be spending on renewables, they're going to be spending on infrastructure.

Deidre Woollard: What are you thinking about Brookfield Asset Management right now? How fast do you think that that dry powder comes into use?

Matthew Frankel: Well, there's a little bit to unpack there. Next year, yes. I've been hearing that the interest rate environment was going to stabilize for a while now. I think 2023 was supposed to be the year that we saw interest rates stabilize and valuations become clearer as you just said. I think that was actually one of my bold predictions in my 2022 year-end article. So far it really hasn't come to fruition. Mortgage rates went the opposite way of what most people, including me, thought. But at the same time. It's not a bad time to have dry powder, especially to put to work in real assets whose valuations have come down quite a bit lately, it's not a great time to necessarily own office properties, but it's not the worst time If you have billions of dollars and someone says you have to buy office properties, you're going to get a good deal, compared to a year or two ago. We're seeing cap rates come down all across the real estate industry. Stag Industrial is one that I recently did on the earnings show. They put more money to work in the third quarter than the first two combined by it's a significant margin because and one of the reasons is they're starting to see cap rates really come down and catch up to the market and see opportunities emerge.

Right now you're absolutely right. The interest rate environment and the valuation environment is not what I would call stable, but it's definitely more attractive than it was a couple of years ago for the type of assets that Brookfield, as you put it, has to invest in. They can't raise $50 billion for an infrastructure fund and then not spend that money. They don't have to, I wouldn't use the word have to, to the point where they have to take on bad deals, but they have to to the point where their investors expect them to deploy that capital in a business-like time frame and in infrastructure, in energy, in real estate. There are some impressive valuations right now compared to a couple of years ago. It's a situation where to buy those assets right now, you have to be willing to look stupid in the short term. If I buy a property today, I could look like an idiot two months from now. If mortgage rates continue to go up and I can't sell it and things like that, but in a couple of years from now, eventually interest rates and valuations are going to stabilize. I don't know if it happens in 2024 like Brookfield just said. I thought it was going to happen this year, it didn't. But it's going to be really interesting to see them put that capital to work because it's a really good time to have that type of war chest of investor capital because you're not seeing that everywhere. [MUSIC].

Deidre Woollard: I think that's been the theme of today's show, is that the people who have the most money to spend are poised at the starting line. Not necessarily ready to go, but hopefully more next year. Well, Matt, thanks for your time today.

Matthew Frankel: Thanks for having me.

Deidre Woollard: If you're a regular Motley Fool Money listener, you're probably well aware of how dividend stocks can potentially supercharge your portfolio's returns. Dividends have accounted for around 40% of the total return of the S&P 500 since 1930. Of course, have been an important tool for all-time greats like Benjamin Graham and Warren Buffett. Our top-notch analysts at Motley Fool Stock Advisor certainly agree and have put together a list of five quality dividend payers that are also recommendations in our stock advisor service. The report is free to you just as a thank you for listening to our podcast. No purchase necessary, just go to fool.com/dividends and we'll email it directly to your inbox. That's fool.com/dividends to claim your five dividends stock recommendations now. Curious about cybersecurity? Mary Long and David Meier dive into Palo Alto Networks. This was recorded before its most recent acquisition of talent but gives insights into why it's time for the company to be making bold moves.

Mary Long: Regular listeners may be familiar with the name Palo Alto Networks. But for those who aren't deep into the world of cybersecurity, can you explain in layman's terms what this company does and how they do it?

David Meier: Layman's terms, yes. Cybersecurity is definitely a complicated issue with all technical jargon and whatnot. But essentially, Palo Alto does three things. It has what's called network security, which is if you own a network if you own computers that talk to each other, you as a business want to make sure that you understand what's coming into your network, and if something gets into your network, what might be going out of it? Palo Alto built its reputation on the firewall which stands in between your network and whoever is accessing it or trying to get stuff data from it. It built essentially its reputation on network security. But today, we don't just have networks, we have the ability to do computing in the cloud. Network security is actually now a subset of Cloud security. In Cloud security, you do, again, it's accessing a network, making sure that who gets into the network is supposed to be there. If they get in, making sure that they don't take something you don't want them to take.

But what Cloud does is it says, OK, I know that now I'm using Amazon Web Services. In addition to the network that I have. I have to be able to protect my business, my customers, my employees, and frankly my proprietary technology that's in my software from anybody accessing the cloud part of my business as well. It's all the same things, it's just across a different ecosystem. Then the last thing is they have security operations. The best way to think of this is like, this is the operating system with so many different ways. I'm trying to protect myself, how do I manage this? That's what security operations does. It basically gives the operators a way to look into all the things that are happening, whether it's outside devices, whether it's on my current network, whether it's in my cloud network or the operator needs to be able to look at all that, assess, maybe I have a weakness here. I need to do something about it. My goodness, I have a threat vector coming in here. I need to do something about it. The operations piece of it gives you the look and to be able to control all of the security that is protecting your business.

Mary Long: It sounds like based on that cloud security might be where the world is going if it's not already there. But our most companies, most enterprise customers getting some combination of all three of these different security services or are they focused mostly on one offering?

David Meier: At the enterprise level, they're big enough where they're mostly focusing on all three, which is exactly what Palo Alto wants. They've built their business to be able to cater to the enterprise customer. They started with smaller customers, just with the firewall, and then expanded over time to the larger enterprise-level customers.

Mary Long: Let's talk about that expansion and growth a little bit. The current CEO of Palo Alto, Nikesh Arora, he came to the helm in June 2018. Since then, Palo Alto's market cap has gone from $18 billion to about 73.7 billion today. I would say that that's quite the jump. How did that happen?

David Meier: Well, let's establish something right off the bat, it didn't happen smoothly [laughs]. Nikesh Arora had a huge task on his hands when he came to Palo Alto because basically, he was going to take it from the firewall expert into the current cybersecurity as a whole expert. The way he did that was he looked and said, our platform needs this security.

David Meier: This security technology and that security technology and another security technology. He went out, and frankly, if he couldn't develop them in-house, he bought them. If the technology wasn't mature, he would do what's called an aqua hire. Meaning I want to buy a business even though its technology is still nascent, but I think it's going to be important or we think it's going to be important and we want to be ready to put that on our platform. The other thing that he had to do, and this is what caused some bumps along the road, is he had to change the way his sales force operated. If you're good at selling one thing, a specific product and service, it doesn't necessarily mean you're good at selling a solution or a Palo Alto as now a one-stop shop, if you will. They had to change the incentives. They had to change the management structure of the sales organization, and quite frankly, there were some bumps along the way, and if you look at the stock chart from 2018 to about 2020, you'll see some pretty big draw-downs where again, they had some problems. But again, it wasn't smooth, but to his credit, he has proven himself to be a fantastic leader, bringing all these technologies together, making sure the platform works, making sure the sales and marketing teams know how to sell the product to these enterprise customers. Quite frankly, the proof that he's done well is in the results.

Deidre Woollard: You mentioned changing up the sales force, and I'm curious about how in this business you actually go about taking and growing market share.

David Meier: It's not easy. Let's put it that way. There are a very large number of competitors. This is a very fragmented industry. Despite being an enormous one, there's no what you would call winner-take-all aspect to this industry. That's because frankly, there's a lot of great competing technologies. For a company like Palo Alto, there's a few big players that try to make themselves into a one-stop shop. But there are also a lot of smaller competitors that say, hey, my niche in cyber security is here or here. Quite frankly, if they're able to say, hey, I can do a better job and I can price it right, they can create their own little niche that can be very profitable. It's not an easy market because there are so many different types of competitors, both big and that try to do the one-stop shop approach and there's a lot of price competition as well. As well as on the technology side. That's the one thing about innovation, it never stops. It just never does, and so new technologies are being created all the time, and if they catch hold in the marketplace, they can create a nice little niche for themselves.

Deidre Woollard: That innovation piece just seems so true in this sector especially. At any business, you're constantly trying to innovate and stay ahead. But in cyber security specifically, you're not just competing against other business competitors, you're competing against cyber criminals. It's like a constant cat and mouse game in which they're trying to outsmart you always.

David Meier: That is the perfect summation of what the situation is in cyber security. Yes, that's exactly right. Not only are you competing against, again, your competitors for someone's business, but you're competing against very smart hackers that have a huge incentive. People don't necessarily realize this, but there can be big payoffs in terms of money if you can hack into somebody's business and essentially hold them for ransom. That is an enormous incentive to be innovative in how you create an attack vector. What Palo Alto and competitors have done as well, Palo Alto actually has a unit within its business called Unit 42, and all they do is look for and study emerging attack vectors. What they want to do is to say, hey, yes, I got to be competitive on the business side of things, but I have to be even more competitive on the technology side of things because someone is out there, a bad actor is out there trying to do harm, and my job is to protect my customers from harm. Yes, they spend a lot of money on research and development in there to try to get ahead of the problems.

Deidre Woollard: Because of all that, I think, it's pretty hard to bet against this industry. You're easy to imagine a world in which it just only gets bigger. The threats only become greater. The payoffs that you mentioned for hacking into a company only become greater. With all that said, what do you see the next 10 years looking like for Palo Alto Networks specifically?

David Meier: I see them continuing to run as fast as they can on the treadmill [LAUGHTER] to keep innovating. One of the underappreciated things in business is if you have the ability to integrate an acquisition, that is an enormous advantage. When I went to business school and we'd study cases, integrating acquisitions is something that's very difficult to do. The fact that they have a playbook based on their past success of how to take technology at whatever maturity level it's at, integrate it into its platform, integrate it into its sales organization and sell it profitably into the marketplace is trying to serve, they're going to continue to do that. In addition, like I said with Unit 42, they're going to look at attack vectors and if they can develop technologies in-house, they'll continue to do that. If they're going to run as fast as they can, they're just never going to stop. It is pretty interesting when you think about how unique this industry is. Again, not only is there business competition, but there's outside competition ratcheting up the competition level. I would be very surprised if the cyber security market was ever smaller on a year over year basis. It can't be because the incentives drive the behaviors of everyone to, hey, the cost of doing this is just more and more, so we got to figure out ways to do it.

Deidre Woollard: Let's play devil's advocate first, and maybe not with the shrinking of the cyber security business, but with Palo Alto in particular. What could go wrong? In what ways might this investing thesis not be intact?

David Meier: A perfect question, because there's always risk in every investment that we make. If there was a major attack vector that Palo Alto's platform just missed and it really caused harm to one of its larger customers, reputation, they're hard to build, but if you really mess up, completely drop the ball type of a situation, you can ruin your reputation. If you're serving big customers with a one-stop shop type of approach, word can get around very quickly that, hey, we had a problem here. The ramifications could be two-fold. One, your customers might say, hey, if you want to stick with us, you're going to have to give us at an X% discount right now, or they could go to somebody else. That's the other risk is that the things unravel. From that standpoint, again, Palo Alto, as well as its competitors, have a huge incentive to make sure they get this right as often as they can and to the level of right magnitude. Breaches are going to happen, but you don't want to have a bad actor get into an enterprise and really cause damage. That's the big risk, and that's why Palo Alto spends hundreds of millions of dollars every year on research and development.

Deidre Woollard: To say that the stakes are high feels like an understatement, but the opportunity is large as well.

David Meier: Absolutely.

Deidre Woollard: As always, people on the program may have interest in the stocks they talk about, and The Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against, so don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear. I'm Deidre Woollard. Thanks for listening. We'll see you tomorrow.