No. of Recommendations: 1
Still, there are worse outcomes than watching Berkshire's ownership stake in one of America's premier businesses grow from roughly 6.2% to 9.3% without Berkshire investing another dollar.
Since money is fungible, foregoing received money is equal to "investing another dollar". I'll explain. If the choice is between buying back shares and distributing dividends, and it often/usually is for mature companies*, then for every $100M that KO used to buy back shares instead of distributing as dividends, Berkshire gave up $9.2M. So in effect, for every $100M shares bought back, Berkshire did effectively "invest 9.2M more dollars".
* Obviously this isn't strictly true because using retained earnings for strategic purchases of other businesses (Monster?) can sometimes earn a [much] greater return. Of course the converse is also true, sometimes strategic purchases of other businesses can lose you lots of money.
