{"id":2816,"date":"2007-03-01T17:30:41","date_gmt":"2007-03-01T17:30:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zmetro.com\/?p=2816"},"modified":"2007-03-01T17:30:41","modified_gmt":"2007-03-01T17:30:41","slug":"2006_letter_to","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=2816","title":{"rendered":"2006 Letter to Shareholders"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Warren Buffett [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.berkshirehathaway.com\/letters\/2006ltr.pdf\">pdf<\/a>]:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>Our gain in net worth during 2006 was $16.9 billion, which increased the per-share book value of both our Class A and Class B stock by 18.4%.  Over the last 42 years (that is, since present management took over) book value has grown from $19 to $70,281, a rate of 21.4% compounded annually.* <\/p>\n<p>We believe that $16.9 billion is a record for a one-year gain in net worth &#8211; more than has ever been booked by any American business, leaving aside boosts that have occurred because of mergers (e.g., AOL&rsquo;s purchase of Time Warner).  Of course, Exxon Mobil and other companies earn far more than Berkshire, but their earnings largely go to dividends and\/or repurchases, rather than to building net worth. <\/p>\n<p>All that said, a confession about our 2006 gain is in order.  Our most important business, insurance, benefited from a large dose of luck:  Mother Nature, bless her heart, went on vacation.  After hammering us with hurricanes in 2004 and 2005 &#8211; storms that caused us to lose a bundle on super-cat insurance &#8211; she just vanished.  Last year, the red ink from this activity turned black &#8211; very black. <\/p>\n<p>In addition, the great majority of our 73 businesses did outstandingly well in 2006.  Let me focus for a moment on one of our largest operations, GEICO.  What management accomplished there was simply extraordinary. <\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Warren Buffett [pdf]: Our gain in net worth during 2006 was $16.9 billion, which increased the per-share book value of both our Class A and Class B stock by 18.4%. Over the last 42 years (that is, since present management took over) book value has grown from $19 to $70,281, a rate of 21.4% compounded [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,32,35],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2816"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2816\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}