Dividend Tree 7 January 2009 Commentary  Email This Post  Print This Post

That should be easy to answer. Buffet is a not a dividend investor. Instead, he is a value investor. Ask this question to any investor in financial world and he/she would respond with this answer with a blink of an eye. Let us take a little deeper look into Berkshire Hathaway’s (BRK) holdings and analyze them from dividend investing perspective.

We can calculate the annualized total dividend based on share count and dividends per share. It can be observed that from top 10 holdings, BRK receives annualized dividend of USD 1.644 billion (as of end of 2008). It would be safe to assume that since last few years (perhaps 4 to 5 years) BRK’s portfolio companies have been provided dividends in excess of USD 1.0 billion. The other fact is Buffet did not initiate these investments in recent past. However, he may have continued to add to an existing position. We know that he started investing in KO, AXP, PG, WFC, and WSC in late 80s and early 90s. These are the companies that have consistently increased their dividends over the past 15 to 20 years. With those assumptions, we can say that these were Buffett’s investments in dividend growth companies. I would presume that the yield-on-cost for these investments would easily surpass 10 to 15% (depending upon timeline for additional investments).

It seems that Buffett has anchored his portfolio with dividend growth companies which provides consistently increasing cash flow.

So do you still believe Buffett is a value investor? Does Buffett evaluate value using company’s cash flow? What are your observations and thoughts?

Adding Note (January 13, 2009): A reader of this blog pointed out a similar article published (prior to this one) at Dividend Growth Investor.