BUFFETT: Well, my guess is that the revenue and all of that is more or less like I expected. I mean, Wells, right straight through this period has done pretty much exactly what they said they would do and they've made money consistently through it. They've run into much larger losses than anybody anticipated three or four years ago but they can handle them very easily. Last year we talked about 'em having 40 billion of pre-provision income in 2009, and you know, they had it, and that easily handles 20 billion, roughly, of losses.
BECKY: They also issued a lot more shares though, to pay back the government. What did you think of that?BUFFETT: I didn't like it. (Laughs.) No, I mean, the government forced them to issue the shares. The government's done a lot of good things for the economy and net I'm a beneficiary and Berkshire Hathaway is a beneficiary of the things overall they've done. But they cost us real money at Wells Fargo.
JOE KERNEN: Berkshire could be a Dow component. I don't - don't stop at the S&P. We'll get rid of Alcoa or something, ah, I know - that would be great. Hey Warren, the revenue number on Wells was 22.7 and the estimate was I think 21.9. So unlike any of the other banks, I think that's the first one, I mean I didn't look at US Bancorp, but the major ones that we reported on, this is the first one that's beat on the revenue and it was also a profit of eight cents with the TARP repayment, even though the Street was looking for a loss of a penny. So, seems to be a little bit better and the stock is now 29, it's almost up a dollar at this point.
BUFFETT: Wells runs a terrific bank. They're a very customer-oriented bank. They're almost like thousands of community banks when you get right down to it. They have a lot of services they sell for each customer. So their revenues are going to come through. And actually when the stress test was done in the spring of last year, that's where the people evaluating them were way off, was on the revenue number. Wells did not disagree with them on the possible losses number, but they felt that the people just didn't understand the revenue potential, that were looking at them, and I agreed with them. But unfortunately they had to issue a lot of shares in conjunction with that stress test. I don't think Wells was ever going to disappoint on revenue. They have a lot of customers and those customers do a lot of business with them.
