While speaking at the Berkshire Hathaway's AGM, Mr Buffett said, “Don't ask the barber whether you need a haircut"
Buffett was accompanies by his longtime partner Charlie Munger. He told the audience that they were once offered a thick book of $2 million worth of projections during the process of buying a business.
He further said, “You don't have to do exceptional things to get exceptional results. Some people think if you jump over a seven-foot bar that the ribbon they pin on you is going to be worth more the money than if you step over a one foot bar."
Buffet also added that the big thing to do is to avoid being wrong.
Sharing his experience, Charles also recalled that they were once offered $2 million worth of projections during the course of process of buying a business. He said, “When I was offered two million dollars worth of projections once and the course of buying a business and the book was thick."
“We almost paid $2 million not to look at it," Warren Buffett joked to the audience. "I do not understand why any buyer of a business looks at a bunch of projections put together by a seller or his agent," he added.
"If we don’t have some idea ourselves of what we think the future is, to sit there and listen to some other guy who’s trying to sell us the business or get a commission on it tell us what the future’s going to be... it’s very naive," Buffett said.
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He further added, "We had a line in the report one time, Don’t ask the barber whether you need a haircut. And it’s quite applicable to projections of by sellers of businesses."
The world's seventh wealthiest person turned 92 years old this year. Buffet bought the first stock at 11 years of age, and filed first ITR at 13. He still lives in a house that he bought in 1958 for $31,500. He was rejected from Harvard University and become a self-made billionaire. He is widely known as the ‘Oracle of Omaha' for his style of investing - value investing.
Recently, Warren Buffett's company received clearance to boost its 20 percent stake in Occidental Petroleum to as much as 50 percent, but it's not immediately clear how many more shares Berkshire Hathaway plans to buy or whether it will consider buying the entire company.
In addition to Berkshire's massive stake in Occidental's common shares, it also holds $10 billion worth of preferred stock and warrants to buy another 83.9 million Occidental shares at $59.62 apiece.
It picked up both of those in 2019 when it helped finance Occidental's purchase of Anadarko.
Besides investments, the Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire owns more than 90 companies outright including Geico insurance, several major utilities, BNSF railroad and an assortment of manufacturing and retail companies including See's Candy, Dairy Queen and Precision Castparts.
