Overview
The Hathaway Manufacturing Company was started in 1888 by Horatio Hathaway, a China trader, with profits from whaling in the Pacific (Livy, 2013).
A man by the name of Seabury Stanton, put a lot of his own money into the company to keep it going. After the Depression, the company start doing well again, every once in a while it would have a bad year. In the 1950s, Stanton merge the Hathaway Company with Berkshire Fine Spinning Associates Inc, a milling company. By the end of 1950 the company was not doing well (Livy, 2013).
In 1963 Warren Buffett started to buy shares in the company. After Warren Buffett took control of Berkshire Hathaway, the company operated in dual roles, textiles and investment vehicle (Livy, 2013).
In 1967,
…show more content…
This led to a bottom line growth from $14.8B to $19.5B (CSI Market, 2014). The subsidiary companies that make up Berkshire Hathaway are GEICO, BNSF, Lubrizol, Dairy Queen, Fruit of Loom, Helzberg Diamonds, Flight Safety International and NetJets, owns half of Heinz and has an undisclosed percentage of Mars Incorporated (CSI Market, 2014). Additional has significant minority holdings in American Express, Coca-Cola Company, Wells Fargo and IBM has help grow the Berkshire Hathaway company. The average annual growth in book value of 19.7% to its shareholders for the last 49 years(compared to 9.8% from the S&P 500 with dividends included for the same period),while employing large amounts of capital and minimal debt (CSI Market, …show more content…
The median was 7.03% (Securities and Exchange Commission, 2014).
To get the Return on equity, you take net income and divided by the average shareholder equity. The net income for the quarter of Sept 2014 which was $18,468 million (Securities and Exchange Commission, 2014). The average shareholder equity for the quarter that ended in Sept 2014 was $235,731 million. So the annualized return on equity for the quarter that ended in Sept 2014 was 7.83% (Securities and Exchange Commission, 2014).
Conclusion
Today Berkshire Hathaway is strong than ever. In July, Buffett gave away Berkshire shares worth $2.8 billion, primarily to the Gates Foundation but also to children’s foundations (CSI Market, 2014). This company is the fifth most valuable public company in the U.S., with a market cap of nearly $350 billion. Just think the company first started out in 1888 has a textile (Livy, 2013).
References
CSI Market. (2014, December). Berkshire Hathaway. Retrieved from CSI Market:
Wolford General Partnership (WGP) operates plumbing supply business which is also an exclusive supplier for certain stable construction firms. Because of its excellent reputations and services, WGP is able to an extremely profitable entity for the business. WGP uses an accrual method of accounting and has been using June 30 fiscal year for the tax report purpose after its election of §444 since its formation.
As he recounts in "Doing What Matters," Mr. Kilts was fortunate to have a wise board that included Warren Buffett and Henry Kravis. Mr. Kilts says that in Mr. Buffett's view, unrealistic earnings estimates were the problem. Mr. Buffett made his opinion known "both at Gillette board meetings and in public comments," Mr. Kilts writes, quoting him saying: "For a major corporation to predict that its per share earnings will grow over the long term at, say, 15 percent annually, is to court trouble." And: "Managers that always promise to 'make the numbers' will at some point be tempted to 'make up' the numbers.
Return on equity (ROE) measures profitability from the stockholders perspective. The ROE is a calculation of the return earned on the common stockholders' investment in the firm. Generally, the higher this return, the better off the stockholders are. Harley Davidson's return on equity was 24.92% for 2001, 24.74% for 2000. They have sustained consistent, positive, returns for their shareholders for the past two years.
The Boeing Company originally started out as the Pacific Aero Products Co., which was founded on July 15, 1916. The name was changed about a year later to The Boeing Airplane Company. The Boeing Company stayed relatively small until World War I when they were selected by Navy officials to produce an order for 50 model C's planes for the war efforts. The company continued to prosper and by the late 1950s, Boeing President William Allen knew that the company had the scientists, the experience and the facilities to lead the company into uncharted territories. He was right, Boeing has emerged as the leading aerospace company in the world today.
Vauxhall was founded in 1857 by Alexander Wilson and they began manufacturing vehicles in 1903. Then Vauxhall was bought out by GM (General Motors) in 1925.
Now, Berkshire Hathaway is primarily an insurance company, which holds 73 businesses. According to Robert G. Hagstrom, the company owns an investment portfolio that consists of a newspaper, a candy company, an ice cream/hamburger chain, several furniture stores, a carpet manufacture, a paint company, a building-products company, a company that private jets to businesses on a time-share basis, a jewelry store, an encyclopedia publisher, a vacuum cleaner business, a public utility, a couple of shoe companies, and a company that manufactures and distributes uniforms.
On May 1, 1954, Nash and Hudson joined, forming American Motors. (Foster 11) Mason was named chairman of the board, president, chief executive officer, and general manager. His assistant George Romney was named vice president, and Barrit became a director of the company.
It was started by Elizabeth Holmes at the age of 19 when she was a student Stanford University. She used her educational trust fund as start up capital for the company and recruited a Stanford professor to be on the Board of Directors. A year after it was established the company had raised six million dollars from its investors and the company’s net worth was estimated to be around thirty million. By 2010 the company had raised about ninety million dollars
For one of my selections for buying stock, I invested into Starbucks, this company has attracted me with their wonders of different coffees, and I knew many others were interested in the very popular coffee company. Starbucks all started 1971 in Seattle Washington. With three men which were Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegel and Gordon Bowker each of them put in one thousand three hundred and fifty dollars along with a barrowed five thousand from the bank to start up there small coffee shop in pick place market, witch is located in down town Seattle. The name for this company was inspired from the character Starbuck from Moby Dick; this character was a coffee lover. There close friend designed there well known logo. These men never thought of this small company to get large they just thought of it as a small coffee shop. Out of all three men Siegel was the only one that work at it full time. The men depened on a man named Alfred Peet for there coffee beans but soon then started there own blends of coffee beans. With in a year opening the first store they were able to open a second store. When the 1980’s rolled around, it was a thriving company, in the Seattle area. However, the co-founders began to have other interests and were involved in other careers simultaneously. Despite that, the company was about to undergo a major turning point. A man by the name of Howard Schultz started to pursue an interest in the company. He noticed that the coffee shop had a wonderful environment. He started asking a questions and becoming more and more interested by every moment. He loved how the founders had so much knowledge on the coffee and each blend. In 1982, Schultz became director of retail operation. This was just the start to a new phase with the company.
Today, Blackberry’s share price around the $7 mark which left the company with a market cap of about $3.8B!
Platt, E., & Wile, R. (2013, February 14). How HJ Heinz Turned His Bankrupt Hhorseradish Buiness into a Billion Dollar Ketchup Conglomerate. Retrieved March 20, 2014, from Bussiness Insider: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-story-of-heinz-ketchup-2013-2?op=1
Right from the get-go, Jeff Immelt had an uphill battle taking over as CEO of GE. Several factors caused this to be a more difficult time than might otherwise have been. First, he assumed the role on September 7th, and of course a few days later, the United State was attacked. Immediately, he had to deal with GE casualties and donate cash and equipment towards the efforts at the World Trade Center. Second, Immelt came in on the heels of an economy that was cooling from the internet bubble a few years earlier. In September of 2000, the S&P 500 was over 1500, and a year later it was just above 1000. The attack on 9/11 further destabilized the weakened economy and sent investors scurrying for cover. According to the article by Christopher
We are here analyzing the deal of Heinz which happened with 3G capital and Berkshire Hathaway.
The analysis of these ratios shows how Ford stands as a company for the past five years. Return on equity (ROE) reveals how much profit a company earned in comparison to the total amount of shareholder equity on the balance sheet. For long-term investing with great rewards, companies that have high return on equity ratios can provide the biggest payoffs. This ratio also tells investors how effectively their capital is being reinvested, so it is a good gauge of management's money handling skills. Ford is showing a considerable turn around in this area this past year, which could easily be due to changes in management. They are also reasonably following the industry in this area.
Every year there is lists put out that show the largest U.S. Corporations. From that list th...