Buffett has pulled it off again. He’s made a creative, favorable bet that may pay off handsomely for long-term Berkshire shareholders.

Over the past year, Berkshire Hathaway sold put options on the S&P 500 and three foreign indices. Expiration of these puts range from 12 to 20 years out, and Berkshire collected $4.5 billion in premiums. Unlike regular puts, these are exercisable only at their expiration dates. On those dates, Berkshire makes a payment only if the index has lost money over the period of the option.

Selling these puts is essentially saying: In 15 years, I promise to buy the S&P 500 from you at a price of $1,468 (closing 2007), if it trades below that price. In exchange, you give me $4.5 billion right away.

Buffett doesn’t disclose the size of the actual options. The $4.5 billion in premiums tells you they are big, but apparently not big enough relative to Berkshire to cause any problems.

The counterparties (the people who made the agreement and paid the premium) are most likely large financial institutions who are hedging their long-term bets in favor of the market. So it may turn out to be a dumb bet for them, but they’re essentially purchasing insurance on what they have or will have in the market.

For Berkshire to lose money, a few things have to happen. To keep it simple, let’s just talk about the S&P 500, because we don’t know which foreign indices were used.

1. First, over the next 12 to 20 years, the market would have to have a negative cumulative return.
2. Second, that negative return would have to be large enough to overcome the premiums received.

How large? Once again, we don’t know the size of the options. But the premiums, which were $4.5 billion at the time they were written, will have compounded for more than 15 years by the time of expiration. If Buffett (or future Berkshire managers) can achieve 15% annual returns, the premium cash will have grown to over $36 billion. So the aggregate losses on the put options—the size of the options times the amount of negative returns—would have to exceed $36 billion for any profits to be erased.

Because of their long-term length, it mitigates the risk of a short-term Black Swan-type event affecting the options. A “Black Monday” one day anomaly would have little effect, other than a temporary quarterly adjustment. Something could still happen (i.e. a long depression, or a nuclear war, God forbid) that would cause losses. But this bet seems pretty favorable as long as the world economy does alright in the long run. Chalk one up for the Oracle of Omaha.

You’ve probably read Warren Buffett’s 2007 letter to shareholders that was released a week ago. If not, stop everything you’re doing, and read it now.

Below are a few comments I have on some of the things Buffett mentions in the letter. The second part of this post should be up later today.

On See’s Candy

The best part of the letter is the section entitled “Businesses - The Great, The Good, and the Gruesome.” In it, Buffett talks about the qualities of a great business using See’s Candy as an example.

Six months ago I wrote a two part story on See’s Candy. In Part I of Quality Without Compromise I talk about the history and background of the See’s acquisition. In Part II, I discuss some of the technical and qualitative aspects of the purchase. (Click here for a single PDF version of the articles.)

In the letter, Buffett reveals some interesting new information about See’s and his mindset regarding the business.

Fun with numbers:

• Pre-tax profits in 2007 were $82 million.
• Over the years, total profits distributed come to $1.32 billion.
• Current Return on Capital is 205%.
• Since the purchase, only $32 million in additional capital was required.
• Profits at acquisition were about $5 million, so total increase has been $77 million over the 35 year period. This comes out to a return on incremental capital invested of 241% ($77/$32).
• For every $1.00 Berkshire sent to See’s, they got back $41.19.

Talking about some of the reasons for the high Return on Capital, Buffett made the comment: “First, the product was sold for cash, and that eliminated accounts receivable. Second, the production and distribution cycle was sort, which minimized inventories.” Working capital is one of the major reasons businesses must invest more capital to keep up with sales growth. Fixed assets are another requirement where See’s has advantages. There are relatively few production facilities. More recently, the internet has allowed See’s to sell more pounds of candy (to anywhere in the country) with little to no additional capital expenditures.

Low volume is a problem at See’s, but the ability to raise prices made up for it: “Last year See’s sold 31 million pounds [of candy], a growth rate of only 2% annually.” In See’s early years (the 11 years after Buffett’s purchase), prices per pound of chocolate were raised about 10% per year. These increases accounted for 86% of sales gains over the period. Small volume gains accounted for the rest.

See also: Shai Dardashti asks if See’s Candy is a Magic Formula Stock from 1972. I like Shai’s conclusion that “See’s Candy is effectively a (rising) royalty on love men pay, annually, in the state of California.”

On PetroChina

Buffett goes into a little more detail on the sale of Berkshire’s stake in PetroChina. In October I wrote up a short case study on the investment in PTR, which you can see here. He confirms in writing that when they sold PTR back in September, he believed it was fairly valued. This echoes the research I did on the gap between price and value over the years (and the effect of oil prices on that value).

“By 2007, two factors had materially increased its value: the price of oil had climbed significantly, and PetroChina’s management had done a great job in building oil and gas reserves. … We paid the IRS tax of $1.2 billion on our PetroChina gain. This sum paid all costs of the U.S. government - defense, social security, you name it - for about four hours.”

On Selling Market Puts

Stay tuned for Part 2…

By the time Buffett finished buying in 2003, Berkshire’s total cost for the 2.3 billion shares was $488 million. This gives the investment an average cost per share of about $21 for the ADSS (for the rest of the post, all figures will be in US$ and refer to the PTR shares traded on the NYSE). On October 18, Buffett sat down with Liz Clayman for an interview on the Fox Business Network where she asked him about his investment in PetroChina. In addition to confirming they had sold the entire stake, Buffett mentioned that at the time of purchase he read through the annual report and pegged PetroChina’s intrinsic value at around $100 billion.

PetroChina was established in 1999 as the publicly traded arm of China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), the largest producer of oil in China. PetroChina is vertically integrated where it explores, refines, and sells oil and natural gas. Because of the company’s duopoly in China with Sinopec, PetroChina is the most profitable company in Asia¹.

Continue reading… »

1. Wikipedia: PetroChina [ ^ ]