Looking Back on Berkshire Hathaway's Outperformance

In this podcast, Motley Fool analyst Jim Gillies and host Ricky Mulvey discuss:

• How Apple has driven Berkshire's performance.
• Disney's flat returns over the past five years.
• A jeans manufacturer that is smashing the market.

Then, Motley Fool personal finance expert Robert Brokamp and host Alison Southwick discuss why you should think about taking a financial health day.

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A full transcript is below.

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This video was recorded on March 25, 2025

Ricky Mulvey: Warren Buffett's still got it. You're listening to Motley Fool Money.

I'm Ricky Mulvey, joined today by Jim Gillies. Jim, how are you doing? Good to see you.

Jim Gillies: It's good to be seen, Ricky. Thanks.

Ricky Mulvey: We're five years away from the COVID time, and it's time to check in on some of the cycles of long-term investments. I think Berkshire Hathaway is a good one to talk about. You were talking about it yesterday or a couple of days ago on the morning show, because there is something surprising for this business that is keeping about one third of its market cap in cash. Nasdaq up about 170%, S&P up a little less than 140%, Berkshire Hathaway, 200%, a three-bagger over this five-year time, outperforming the tech stocks, outperforming the broad index. Any reflections on that and maybe why the cash isn't a drag here? You always hear about that cash is a drag on your investments, not the case at Berkshire Hathaway.

Jim Gillies: Sure. I found this little factoid, as well yesterday when I was going through the Globe mail over breakfast, and Berkshire tripled over the past five years. What? I went and looked and it has, which is interesting because it's both my longest held stock as well as my largest personal holding, so it works really well when you just ignore your largest personal holding and let the magic continue happening. Now, I think, the cash, while significant, a lot of the performance, you can probably chalk up to how well the Apple investment worked out for Berkshire. A lot of that cash has been raised in the last year, as Buffett has dramatically scaled down the amount of money invested in Apple, though he's still got a fairly significant piece there.

As well, you want to look at a few of the things that Buffett has been invested into that have not worked out because he's done what I consider to be the Holy Grail and being perfectly blunt. It's something I continue to work on myself, is when you've made a mistake or an investment that's not working out, blow it out the door. Just be done with it. We saw that with the airlines during the COVID shutdowns. That may or may not have been a mistake, frankly, but I understand why Buffett got out of them, and as well, it would be very, very bad. It would be a bad look for them to have gotten bailout money when Buffett's in all of them. I think he got himself out of the way of that, the IBM thing that wasn't a great deal. I think that overall, you've got Buffett just saying, "Look, in this brave new world, we have tech stocks, growth stocks, AI, all this wonderful stuff." Buffett has just provided a really good example of, "I'm going to stay within my circle of competence. I'm going to stay with reasonable valuation." We've seen most recently is the five large Japanese trading houses that he's been very enthusiastic about, as well as up to the ante there. The famous letter to investors, Buy American. I Am, reflecting that the American market is still, and I say this as a Canadian, the place to make money.

He's stuck to his long-term principles. He has avoided the noise of the world, which I would advocate everyone should do, especially right now. It seems like there's a lot of noise going on. I think that Berkshire has done an admirable job of just sticking to what Berkshire has been doing since the 1960s and the investing that Buffett's been doing since the 1940s, arguably, at least the '50s with the Buffett partnership. It speaks well to what can happen when you buy even a large, slightly boring company at a reasonable price, which it was in 2020, I would argue is still reasonably priced today, and just get out of the way and let people cook. I think it's been an excellent case study in a world where we are. I'm as guilty as the next guy, where we're looking for signs every day, and we have to talk about investing every day. We are on an investing podcast right this very moment. Buy good companies run by good people, let them work their magic, and just step back and let it happen and pay a reasonable price, of course. Got to throw that in.

Ricky Mulvey: To be clear, Buffett engages with investing every day, and you can engage with investing in news every day. It's that you don't have to make a decision every day, which is what separates long-term investors from traders. Buffett spends a lot of time reading annual reports, doing that kind of thing, taking information in and allowing cold strikes to come. One of the things I'm seeing on the Internet right now, speaking of people making decisions is there's this take of looking at the Berkshire cash hoard. Right now, Uncle Warren has about tripled his position in cash and short-term investments in the past few years. The take is that Warren Buffett must see a crash coming. He's getting ahead of it, so he can buy stocks on the cheap when it inevitably comes. Therefore, as an individual investor, I should start selling a lot of my stocks and follow in the footsteps of this investing grip. What do you think of that?

Jim Gillies: I think that's wrong. I think it's silly. I think it's misinterpreting what Buffett is doing. I'm now going to tell you the correct interpretation of what Buffett is doing. How arrogant is that? I think what Buffett has been doing is number 1, he has raised cash, and it's been invested at the best interest rates we've seen in 15 years, so treasuries and whatever. Look, that's not going to set the world on fire, but it's better than just sitting in cash with nothing. You got a bunch at five and 6%. The second thing, though, is, let us not lose sight of the fact that Uncle Warren is 94 years old. He will be 95 in August. We're talking about the last five-year period. I hope I'm wrong, but I think over the next five-year period, I think we'll see the departure of Warren Buffett from the stage.

I think Buffett is setting up Berkshire for the next leg of Berkshire's growth and Berkshire's history without Buffett at the helm, and I think the giant cash balance, yes, if a market crash comes, he's supremely positioned, but I don't think that's why he's done it. I think he's doing it to set up for his successors. I tend to revert to the Peter Lynch, which I'm going to mangle the quote, but hopefully you'll bear with me. It's, "More money has been lost preparing for the next crash than is actually lost in the next crash." I think Warren E. Buffett is probably supremely aware of the futility of that comment. I think people who are predicting it, they're adding two and two and getting six, if you catch my meaning. I think they're going a little bit too far. It's my longest position. I've owned it since the late '97 or '98. I was trying to remember when I first bought my first shares. I've never sold a share. I was hearing then Buffett's too old. Why are you buying Berkshire now?

The best days are behind it. Buffett's too old. He's going to die soon. Twenty-eight years later, here we are. I don't think we're getting another 28 years out of Uncle Warren. Again, I hope I'm wrong. I think it's Buffett looking out as he's always done for his legacy and for the investors who have trusted him and now their families who have trusted him with their money, and I think he's setting it up for when he departs the stage, and Greg Abel and Ajit Jain have taken over and the Ted and Todd on the investment side. That's what I think's going on, but I spend almost 0% of my time worrying about what Buffett does. He's bought this or sold this. I own Berkshire because I'm going to let him do that, and I'm going to go do something else with my time.

Ricky Mulvey: Expectations for the next five years, not worrying about it too much. This is a sleeper stock, a bedrock of one's portfolio to keep moving. It's one that I have threatened to buy, the B shares. Don't get any ideas, Jim. I need to just do it at some point, and when I'm allowed to, I'm talking about it now, so I can't do it in the next few days. It's pretty hard to convince me not to buy Berkshire stock increments to hold for decades long periods. Let's talk about another American institution that has not done a whole lot for its investors over the past five years, and that is Disney. If you look at the five-year chart, it has returned 5% to investors over the past five years. If you want to be nice, we'll give them that dividend payment that started last year 1%, so maybe a 6% total return for your money for sitting on your hands for five years. When you look back at this American institution, Disney and its underperformance, over five years, which is long enough to test a thesis. What do you think?

Jim Gillies: I'm going to go you one better. Since Bob Iger became CEO, which is October 2005, don't tell me he was out of the way during COVID because he just set up his underling to get shot, and then he came back to save the company. People can't see me doing the giant air quotes when I say save. Of course, he threatens to leave every three weeks or whatever it is. Since he became CEO, total return of the S&P 500 is about 610%, 620%. It's about a 20-year period, October 2005, almost 20 years. Disney's total return is 430%, so it's underperformed the market by almost 200 percentage points. I think Disney, they're in a really tough spot because what more worlds are there to conquer?

They own childhood between the Princesses and Pixar and the Muppets and Marvel and Star Wars and insert other names here. I don't put all of this down. I'm not the world's biggest Bob Iger fan as you probably have already claimed, but I think Disney's a great investment for Bob Iger, but it's not been a great investment for other people, as you've laid out and as I up the ante on. It's not Iger's fault incomplete because the world has changed. I was saying beforehand, the Internet has ruined entertainment, because you can get everything for free, if you know how, number 1. I'm not advocating piracy, but the piracy rate's not zero, and it's easy if you are so inclined, but you've also got movies, it's almost like they've taken a page from the music industry, and the music industry held on desperately when CD sales were driving everything in the late '90s and streaming took off and piracy took off, and basically, now you've got the Sportifies or the Apple musics of the world, but artists make almost nothing now unless you're a megastar. That's what's happened to entertainment, as well.

You're scared to go out and do something new and take risks on unproven stories because movies are expensive. Maybe they don't have to be. Studio A24 could maybe give you some lessons on that, but what's happened is movie studios by and large, to make their money, they are relying on sequels, spinoffs, and remakes. The problem becomes is that in order to do these, inevitably, they have these giant budgets. I'll give you a couple. Snow White is currently out there. There are some problems with that movie. The other one I always like to talk about is Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, which was the fifth Indiana Jones movie. I know, I know. For the people out there listening and saying, "There are only three Indiana Jones movies," yes, you're correct, but there apparently was a fifth Indiana Jones movie called Dial of Destiny.

The production budgets run super long and they get super bloated. Then you have your advertising budget, which is only about 50% of the production budget, maybe a little bit more, maybe a little less. Then you don't get the full box office. Disney would get about 60% of the domestic box office, maybe 20-40 percent of the rest of the world box office. In a case like Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, because that's a movie that's largely done, their production budget was somewhere 300 and 380 million dollars. That infers an advertising budget in the 170-million range, so your profitability hurdles like about 510, $500 million. The box office was 384 million, which means that Disney's rake from that was under 200 million. They made about $11 million in domestic Blu-ray sales Blue-rays are gone. Essentially, physical media sales are basically gone. Disney took a bath on that. What does that matter with when we talk about Snow White? Well, Snow White, it's the live-action remake of a beloved film. Just like Indiana Jones, the Dial of Destiny, it's a new take on a beloved action hero, I would argue they shouldn't have done, but the production budget for this iteration of Snow Whites in the 240-270 million range. By the way, Disney has a habit of underreporting their costs.

See, the Acolyte for which they did their streaming service, Disney Plus, advertising budget 240-270 million. Let's say they did about 120, 130 million dollars. Your profitability hurdles somewhere in the 360-400 million dollar range, which means you need about 750-770 million to break even. First weekend, they did $86 million around the entire world, and box office typically falls 40-50 percent in the second week. The chances of Snow White breaking even, frankly, I think, are probably low, and you now you don't get the kicker of DVD sales or you could have a movie that lost money, but you'd make it up on DVD sales. You don't have that anymore. Sorry, Disney Plus streaming doesn't cut it. This is just Disney's problem. This is all of the streamers. I've been saying for years, streaming is a race to the bottom in the entertainment industry. I think there's one company that's figured it out and that's Netflix. Frankly, the quality of what Netflix puts out isn't that great, but then you go look at another company, so I will argue vehemently that Apple TV Plus is producing some of the best content in the world right now. We've all heard about Ted Lasso. That was a fun show. Severance is excellent. Slow Horses is excellent. For All Mankind is very good, but it came out last week that Apple has lost a billion dollars on this. They've got Shrinking with Harrison Ford and Jason Segel. They've got a Mythic Quest, which is one of the guys from Always Sunny in Philadelphia. It's his other show. They've done a really good job of presenting a lot of shows, but they're blowing a billion dollars a year. The only reason they can do that it's because they're Apple, and a billion dollars is what you'd find in Tim Cook's couch. How long can you do it?

Ricky Mulvey: You like following a lot of weird companies, companies that people don't talk about. No, that's where you often find value as an individual investors. The small caps that other people aren't talking about.

Jim Gillies: I'm mildly insulted, but OK.

Ricky Mulvey: Are there any surprising outperformers, underperformers over the past five years that you want to highlight as we close out the show here?

Jim Gillies: Sure. I'll give you one that I really like, I own it, and I've recommended it, so I'm not without bias here. We've talked about it before. Kontoor Brands, the parent company of Lee and Wrangler Jeans, and in the process of buying the Helly Hansen outdoor wear brand from Canadian Tire. That company, since it bottomed in 2020, when they cut their dividend to zero temporarily, and management went up on the mountaintop and basically proclaimed, "It's coming back. We're bringing the dividend back. Don't you worry." Didn't matter. Stock went from $45 to I think it bottomed to 12. Today, I think it's a $65 company. The interesting thing about that is about a month or so ago, it was a $90 company. Why is it $65 now and it actually dip below 60. It was very interesting to me because one of the things that happened was they preannounced their Q4 numbers and the market said, "Yay." Then a couple of weeks later, they were doing an investor conference.

They had to do it. They had to preannounce some stuff. Then when the actual numbers came out a couple of weeks later, the market said, "Boo, same numbers." Completely different reaction. As well, they are making that acquisition of Helly Hansen, which some people are a little worried about. I think it's a great move. It's a great brand. The current owner of Canadian Tire, which owns a bunch of retail stores in Canada, they've signed a deal with Canadian Tire to continue offering it, so you're not going to lose Canadian sales. It's reasonably priced. This is a company that can very easily do 300-400 million dollars in free cash flow a year without breaking a sweat.

They've generally been very good at allocating their capital. There's a lot to like there, and it's one third cheaper than it was a month ago. Again, it's the parent company of Lee and Wrangler Jeans, and over five years, it's a five-bagger before dividends, which are large. If you bought back at 12 or $15 at the bottom, when the dividend come back, I think you're making now and the dividend came back in December of 2020. Management followed through on their promise to bring it back as fast as possible. If you bought back when everything looked terrible and everyone's upset, not only have you made five times your money, but you're now getting a yield on your cost basis, I think, 12% range, which sounds good to me.

Ricky Mulvey: We literally have to end it there. Jim Gillies, appreciate you being here. Thank you for your time and insight.

Jim Gillies: Thank you.

Ricky Mulvey: Have you ever taken a financial health day? Robert Brokamp and Alison Southwick discuss how it works and why it could be worth your time.

Alison Southwick: Spring is here. It's a perfect time to throw open the windows, both figurative and literal and emerge from the funk of winter. The light starts to shine brightly on the things we've perhaps neglected like, say, wiping down your baseboards. Mentally, it's also a great time to clear some cobwebs because there are probably some dusty corners of your financial life that you've managed to avoid. But not any longer, because you, dear listener, are going to get stuff done with a financial health day.

Robert Brokamp: We the Motley Fool believe so much in having a financial health day that we've been doing it in our office, and then virtually for 15 years. It all began back in 2010. When the Fool was having what I guess you would call a regular physical health day, had classes, we did workouts together, nurses would come and take vitals and give flu shots, things like that. The idea of having a financial health day sprang from two events. One was that a visiting CEO gave a talk to a gathering of Fools and said that every employee at his company gets a financial plan based on the belief that a financially secure workforce is a more productive and dedicated workforce. At around the same time, Ron Lieber of the New York Times wrote about having his own financial health day. This was on the heels of the Great Recession.

The New York Times had temporarily furloughed some employees. Ron was one, so he decided to make the most of that time by doing things like writing his will, opening a higher-yielding savings account, submitting flexible spending receipts, stuff like that. He figured that his financial health day saved his family $2,000, and that was back in 2010 dollars, so today, there'd be almost $3,000. We at the Fool began holding our own financial help days that featured classes from internal and external experts, opportunities to meet one on one with experts and the Fool's HR team. We threw in some goofy little contests and raffles to add in some fun. The main benefit was that employees were encouraged to use company time to tackle personal financial tasks. While you may not have an employer like the Motley Fool, you can do what Ron Lieber did. Clear your calendar and focus on getting financial stuff done.

Alison Southwick: You might be thinking, "Why would I blow a whole day on doing pesky financial stuff?" Well, because, as with most smart money decisions, future you will thank you.

Robert Brokamp: For our financial health events at the Fool, we give employees a checklist of more than 40 things to consider getting done broken into various categories, such as investments, retirement, cash management, insurance, estate planning, employee benefits, other things like that. I can assure you, anyone who accomplished five to seven to 10 of those tasks is going to be a much wealthier person in the future. To illustrate the possibilities, I'm going to highlight some of the things that actual Fools have accomplished during any of our financial health events, and I'm just going to estimate how much that could pay off over a year and over 10 years. Let's say someone had $25,000 emergency fund, they were just holding it in their 0% checking account, and they move it to a 4% high-yield savings account. Well, after one year, they've increased their net worth by $1,000. After 10 years, it's more than $12,000.

What if someone analyzed their budget, found ways to save $100 per month, and they use that $100 instead to invest it and earn 8% a year? Well, after a year, you're going to have more than $1,200. After 10 years, you're going to have more than $18,000. What if you found a way to look at your budget and say, "You know what? I can boost my 401(k) contribution rate by 1%." If your household income is $150,000, you get 3% annual raises, and those investments also earn 8%. After a year, you're going to have more than $1,500, after 10 years, almost $26,000. Then finally, what if you have an old 401(k) from an old employer sitting in that 401(k), maybe it has some fees associated maybe with mediocre investments. You instead roll that over to an IRA, and you reduce your expenses and/or increase your returns by just 0.5% annually. After a year, you have more than $1,000. After 10 years, it's almost $20,000. You can see how just making a few changes on your financial health day could boost your debt worth by literally tens of thousands of dollars over the years.

Alison Southwick: The benefits aren't just financial. They're also mental.

Robert Brokamp: In his article about Financial Health Day, Ron Lieber wrote, "To be a modern American consumer is to be plagued by a never-ending guilt-inducing stream of undone tasks. Knocking these things off can get rid of that low-grade anxiety that results from the under-optimization of your financial life." I think most of us can relate. Right now, I suspect there is some undone financial task that is just nagging at you, eating at you, something that you know you should take care of, but you just haven't had the time. Your financial health day is your time to finally get it done, along with maybe a few other things, and I can guarantee that you're going to feel much better at the end of the day.

Alison Southwick: Hopefully, everyone listening is convinced like, "Yes, I am now going to have my own financial health day. Bro, you convinced me, but now how? What are some of the best practices for making the most of your financial health day?"

Robert Brokamp: I think it would certainly help to have some preplanning and prioritization beforehand so that you could hit the ground running. Maybe spend an hour or so before your actual financial health day creating a rinked to-do list so that the entire day can be spent getting stuff done. You can just start by asking yourself, "What few things can I do that will boost my net worth the most over the next one to 10 to 20 years?" That said, not everything you need to accomplish can be assigned a dollar figure.

Some of the most important things are more, you'd say, defensive in nature, such as things like freezing your credit, getting enough life insurance, getting or updating your estate plan and encouraging your relatives to do the same. Keep that in mind as you consider what to accomplish. Doing this during a weekday, I think, can be important because many of these tasks require interacting with people who work 9:00-5:00 jobs such as insurance agents, financial planners, attorneys, maybe the HR team at your office, but even doing it on a Saturday or Sunday is going to really pay off. If you're married, it will be helpful to do this together so that you can each get each other's input, and you'll reduce the number of times you can't cross something off to do this because you need something from your spouse. Then finally, just do everything you can to remove any distractions. Clear your calendar, silence your phone, turn off social media, drop the kids off with friends or relatives, and spend the day maximizing your money.

Alison Southwick: Bro, you've been touting the benefits of a financial health day for over a decade now. Has anything changed in your advice to people?

Robert Brokamp: I'll start by saying that what began as financial health day at the Fool is now financial health week, which we did just a month ago. We just realized, frankly, that we're trying to do too much in a single day with all our classes and our events and our 40 plus item checklist. If you do your own financial health day, you may feel the same way. You'll feel very good about everything that you accomplished, but you may as all feel like there's plenty more to get done. The best practice for many people might be to have a financial health day once a month, at least for a while, and then maybe once a quarter as a maintenance financial health day. As the saying goes, "Every journey starts with a single step," so start with a single financial health day. I guarantee, it'll make you richer and make you feel better.

Ricky Mulvey: As always, people on the program may have interests 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. All personal finance content follows Motley Fool editorial standards and are not approved by advertisers. The Motley Fool only picks products that it would personally recommend to friends like you. I'm Ricky Mulvey. Thanks for listening. We'll be back tomorrow.

Alison Southwick has positions in Apple. Jim Gillies has positions in Apple, Berkshire Hathaway, and Kontoor Brands. Ricky Mulvey has positions in Walt Disney. Robert Brokamp has positions in Walt Disney. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Apple, Berkshire Hathaway, International Business Machines, and Walt Disney. The Motley Fool recommends Kontoor Brands. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.