CNBC’s Becky Quick interviewed Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK-A) at a very unusual venue this morning…. Fortune’s Most Powerful Womenconference. The mainstay part of the discussion was the ‘one-year later after” that we have seen so much this week. The issue for the public is that Buffett is still leaning toward improvement after having been so negative just in early summer. More importantly for investors, he opined on the Kraft Foods Inc. (NYSE: KFT) and Cadbury plc (NYSE: CBY) deal and partly on healthcare or health insurance in the sale of WellPoint Inc. (NYSE: WLP) and UnitedHealth Group, Inc. (NYSE: UNH).
Buffett noted to Becky that …”we’re certainly through the worst of it in residential real estate in all probability.” He did note that a lot fewer houses are being built and that there will be “unusual losses in credit cards and in commercial real estate, all of that.”
Buffett is maintaining that things a lot better off than a year ago, although frankly you might expect a “Thanks for nothing” comment from the public on that notion. He noted, “I think the odds are very much against getting significantly worse…. we’re past the critical point…. and we have not bounced, but we’ve quit going down.”
But he also noted that some of the toxic assets have been flushed through the system and that there has been capital raised to offset much of the bad assets.
Buffett keyed in on the Kraft Foods Inc. (NYSE: KFT) and Cadbury plc (NYSE: CBY) deal that Kraft is paying a full price if they can get the deal done. Buffett feels their stock is undervalued and it is being used as the currency to do the deal, so the company is paying a full price.
Becky Quick also asked Buffett about the sale of healthcare stocks like WellPoint Inc. (NYSE: WLP) and UnitedHealth Group, Inc. (NYSE: UNH) to see if he was worried about healthcare proposals and how D.C. was treating them, but Buffett noted that those are Lou Simpson’s holdings inside Berkshire and not his own. While he said he had not ever bought healthcare stocks, Buffett did note, “We’re really talking about reforming health insurance more than health care.” Buffett believes this will be an opportunity missed if the whole system is not reformed.
As always, you can see the full Buffett Holdings here. Also, you can join our open email distribution list which goes out several times per week for guru investor data on Buffett and others, top analyst upgrades and downgrades, top day trader alerts, IPO’s, key secondary offerings, mergers, and more.
The three segments from CNBC can be found here at the CNBC video area of the site.
Jon C. Ogg
September 16, 2009
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