QuestionerMy first question is about precision cast parts. Besides your confidence in its talented CEO, Mark Donegan, what in particular do you like about their business that gave you the confidence to pay a historically high multiple? Are there ways precision can be even more successful as essentially a private company?
WarrenYou covered the most important asset in your question, Mark Donegan, who runs precision cash parts, as an extraordinary manager. I mean, we've seen very, Charlie and I've seen a lot of managers over the years. And I would almost rank Marcus one of a kind. There's certainly no disadvantages to him to be working as a, and for that company to be a subsidiary at Berkshire and not be a public company. And I think he would say, and I think Charlie, and I would agree with him that over time, there could be some significant advantages. For one thing, he can spend 100% of his time now on figuring out better things to do with aircraft engines. And it was always his first love to be thinking about that, and he did spend most of his time, but he also had to spend some time, you know, explaining quarterly earnings to analysts and perhaps negotiating bank lines and that sort of thing. So his time, like all of our managers, can be spent exactly on what makes the most sense to them in their business. Mark does not have to come ever to Omaha to put on some show for me in terms of justifying a billion-dollar acquisition or plant investment. He doesn't have to waste his time on anything that isn't productive. and running a public company, you do waste your time on quite a bit of stuff that isn't productive. So I would say we've taken the main asset of precision cast and made it, made him in this case, even more valuable to the company. I think to some extent we've gotten almost as good at picking the superior managers as we were in the old days of picking the no-brainer businesses.