No. of Recommendations: 10
Inflation is the wild card that is hard to predict and overcome.
Indeed.
Especially since I think revenues are quite easy to adjust for inflation, but book value not so much.
If some division owns a factory with a certain depreciated value that approximates its true value, they can raise the prices of the things they're making (fixing revenue) but the book value of the productive assets will stay in nominal terms.
On the revenue and profit side I have been tentatively concluding that Berkshire has not done so fantastically during the inflation spike...either some cyclical slowdown, and/or pricing not keeping up with inflation. Measured a number of ways the inflation-adjusted observable value growth recently has not been on trend.
Jim
