Reference no: EM131627216

Warren E. Buffett is an extremely successful investor and CEO for Berkshire Hathaway Inc. and considering this was his largest deal since 1998, the second largest in his entire career, the acquisition of PacifiCorp renewed public interest in Buffett. Buffett's investments are based on the intrinsic value of a company, he says, "intrinsic value is all important and is the only logical way to evaluate the relative attractiveness of investments and businesses" and he also says maximizing Berkshire's average annual rate of gain in intrinsic business on a per-share basis is their long-term economic goal which gives the investors the belief that the acquisition will be very beneficial to the company. These beliefs could possibly be the cause for the $2.55-billion gain in Berkshire's market value of equity, which implies the intrinsic value of PacifiCorp must be very favorable.

MidAmerican is purchasing PacifiCorp from Scottish Power plc for $5.1-billion in cash and $4.3-billion in liabilities and preferred stock for a total of $9.4-billion. Based on the multiples for comparable regulated utilities the range of possible values for PacifiCorp is from about $3.4-billion to $5.9-billion. The purchase bid compared to the implied intrinsic value of PacifiCorp is considerably larger, once again showing that Buffett believes the possible return on the investment will be well worth the risk. Buffett assesses intrinsic value as the present value of future expected performance and says it's the discounted value of the case that can be taken out of a business during its remaining life. He uses the gain in intrinsic value to measure performance not accounting profit because he says doesn't like to measure performance by its size but by per-share progress. He also argued that he should use a "risk-free" discount rate in determining intrinsic values because he avoids risk, saying that his firm focused on companies with predictable and stable earnings.