It is a curious thing, this devotion Mr. Buffett – or rather, the entity now known as Berkshire Hathaway – holds for the humble dividend stock. One imagines a vast, bureaucratic office, not unlike the provincial government offices of my homeland, wherein clerks meticulously tally the incoming streams of these… fractional distributions. A tedious task, surely, yet one Berkshire pursues with the unwavering dedication of a man chasing a phantom.
Everyone speaks, of course, of the triumvirate: Coca-Cola, American Express, and Apple. Stocks practically glowing with an almost unseemly health. But allow me to draw your attention to a smaller, quieter holding, a position that, while comprising a mere 3.6% of the portfolio, possesses a peculiar… resilience. I speak of Moody’s. A name that evokes images of dusty ledgers and the solemn pronouncements of men who decide the fate of nations with a flick of a pen. A rather ominous occupation, when one considers the general state of things.
The current yield, a paltry 0.85%, might cause the common investor to scoff. But to focus solely on the immediate return is to miss the forest for the… well, for the meticulously cataloged collection of mushrooms within it. One must consider the longevity, the steadfastness of this… financial toadstool. And, naturally, the dividends themselves. For it is in the accumulation of these small sums that the true strangeness of the affair reveals itself.
Berkshire Hathaway acquired its shares of Moody’s in the year 2000, a time when the world seemed poised on the brink of… something. A spin-off from Dun & Bradstreet, it was, a shedding of one bureaucratic skin for another. Initially, 48 million shares. But Berkshire, like a restless spirit, has traded them hither and yon, settling presently on a holding of nearly 25 million. Worth, at current reckoning, approximately eleven billion dollars. A sum large enough to build a rather impressive, if utterly pointless, monument to… well, to itself, perhaps. The initial cost basis? A mere $248 million. An increase of 4,400%. One begins to suspect a certain… alchemy at play.
The annual dividend from Moody’s presently stands at $4.12 per share. And here is where the matter becomes truly bizarre. With a cost basis of $10 per share, the yield on cost is a staggering 41.2%. Forty-one point two percent! One imagines the accountants at Berkshire Hathaway, hunched over their desks, whispering incantations as the money flows in. In 2025, Berkshire received $93 million in dividends from this single holding. A sum sufficient to fund a small, but exceedingly well-appointed, provincial opera house. Or, indeed, to simply vanish into the ether, leaving no trace. The investment, at this rate, repays itself every few years. And as management continues to raise the dividend – a gesture of either benevolence or cunning, one cannot say – the yield on cost will only increase. It is a self-perpetuating cycle, a financial automaton, ticking away in the darkness.
One suspects, of course, that there is a secret to all this. A hidden clause in the original agreement, a pact made with some unseen force. Perhaps the very foundations of Moody’s are built upon a bed of… something unsettling. But then, what is finance, if not a carefully constructed illusion?
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2026-03-14 23:02