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hello my name is joseph laprae i'm a shareholder from minneapolis minnesota and i'd like to thank you for this opportunity to ask a question mr buffett you mentioned earlier today that you'd be willing to sell insurance in exchange for stock options if possible could you please describe a methodology for the valuation of stock options particularly in cases where there is no market pricing data available for the option being valued yeah i i wouldn't i could figure out what i would pay for an option on a private business i could figure out what i could pay for an option on a public business might be a little easier uh i could figure out what i'd pay for an option on an apartment house uh or a farm uh i had a friend i mean when i was 20 years old uh we developed a big plan we were going to go out and option out up option farms you know outside of what were then the city limits of omaha and we figured that if we offered a farmer a modest amount which would be annual income to him to option his farm at double the price it was bringing then that it would you know he would be happy to sell for double the price that that year and then maybe we could do something and uh it might have worked out okay option every option has value and i've got a house worth x if you offer me a few dollars to give you an option at 2x for 10 years i'm not going to take it because there are all kinds of possibilities in terms of inflation all options have value and and people that get options usually understand that better than people that give options i'm not talking about stock options now but uh but in in other arenas so we would be happy you know i mean whether i could get let's take we'll just pull one out of the air let's take an untreated company like mars inc or um would i be happy to have an option 10-year option on on a piece of mars inc at a some given price sure i would and i there's an amount i would take for that i would take in lieu of getting cash if i was writing a big insurance policy for mars inc they're not going to do this with me but that and i would be happy you know and instead of if you buy homeowners insurance from me if you want to give me an option on your house uh for 10 years i'll take that in lieu of the premium i'll make my own calculations to value it won't be black shoals uh although that might be the best arrangement under many circumstances but i would probably crank into in my own case we bought we bought and sold options so a matter of fact on june 3rd berkshire hathaway will receive 60 million dollars if the s p 500 closes at 11 50 something or below and two years ago when the s p was 14 something we agreed for on on that june 3rd option or whatever it was 400 million dollars nominal value where in effect the counterparty uh would get the profit above 2 000 and something 42 up from this from the current cash price and we got the profit between 5 and 20 on the downside on a put people who were calculating the values of options at that time under traditional methods felt that that was a cashless transaction that the value of the call that we gave was equal to the value of the put that we received you know i decided differently so we don't accept blindly option values as determined uh by the calculations of people who win nobel prizes instead you know we actually put an aspect of judgment uh into some there would be businesses that would come out with identical black shoals values on options for 10 years and we would pay a different amount for one than the other maybe a significantly different amount but we would pay something for just about any option and you know it is the nature of prices in this world to change and economic conditions to change and an option is a chance to participate in a change uh without giving up anything other than that original premium you pay many people just don't seem to to grasp that but believe me the people are getting options on stock do grasp that and the people who are giving them which you're the shareholders you know represented by a group like this who don't have any real voice in giving it but they sometimes don't fully realize what's being given away imagine you know going up a few miles away from here and having two farms for sale and you say to the guy how much do you want from they go say a thousand dollars an acre but the one guy says but every year i want you to option you know i want you to give me two percent of the place back at a thousand so uh you know at the end of 10 years uh 20 percent of the upside belongs to me but you've got all the downside i mean which farm are you going to buy and the one without the options or the one with the options it's not it's not very complicated and we will we are dead serious when we say we will take options in lieu of cash incidentally the company that gives us those options in lieu of cash for an insurance premium has to record the expense uh in terms of the fair value of the option they've given us the only item for which they don't have to record that as expense is compensation but if they give it to us for their light bill or they give it to us for their insurance premium or they give it to us for their rent they have to call it a cost but only when it comes to the ceo's compensation and other people like it do they not have to record it as a cost and that's because they've been able to get congress to bow to their will into their campaign contributions charlie yeah the black trolls crowd really did get a nobel prize for inventing this formula to value options not executive stock options but just options generally and if you don't know anything about the company accept the past price history of stock transactions dividend benefits and the dividend being paid and if the option is over a very short term it's a very good way of approximating the value of the option but if it's a long-term option and you think you know something it's an insane way to value the option and wall street is full of people with iqs of 150 that are using black shells to value options that shouldn't be tortured into the model and all of corporate account of america is using black shells to price stock options in the footnotes of the accounting statements and they do that because it comes up with the lowest cost number well they not only do that but they assume the term is less than the actual term of the option and i mean they'll do everything they can and i've been in on these discussions they'll do everything they can to make the number look as low as possible it's that simple and they're using a phony process to determine the number in the first place so it's a mad hatter's tea party and the only thing that's consisting consistent in it is that the whole thing is disgusting hmm
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