If they can issue shares at ~30x earnings and deploy it in an accretive way, what is the argument against doing this? It's incremental ROIC below your cost of capital. One of the smartest things you can do in business.
Offering shares doesn't introduce balance sheet risk like debt does. There is no interest expense. You dilute the shareholders by about 1.67% but if this $80b can be deployed in a way that increases the value of the firm by more than that amount over the long term, it creates value and makes everyone better off, including the diluted shareholders.
The risk if it doesn't work out is that everyone gets diluted 1.67%
Hh I didn't consider that. Produce more shares, have Berkshire buy them up at a lower price than the public, in exchange for capital right now. Berkshire can sell them for a profit later or participate in earnings. And with their shares at a premium right now, great time to do it.
They don't have the cash laying around. Their "actual" profit, meaning money added to their bank account after stock buy backs, dividends, employee stock allocations, and capex was $7B.
In this statement, their 2025 capex was $91.45B. They expect their 2026 capex to be $180B-190B. And they expect their "2027 capital expenditures to significantly
increase compared to 2026."
So they simply don't have the money. Up until now, I thought the bubble talks about AI were silly because all these companies were using cash flow to fund their capex. These numbers are so astronomical now that a company that had $132B in net income has to take debt or issue stock to pay for it.
Not nitpicking your answer, I just don't understand.