9 ms·

Why Warren Buffett Just Bought Duracell

71 points by fraXis 12y ago

joosters 12y ago
In two words: tax dodge
- aarondf 12y ago
  This is terrific tax avoidance, which is legal. It's tax evasion that you gotta look out for
  - brc 12y ago
    More correct is tax deferral.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- tptacek 12y ago
  It's a strategy that has a lot to do with taxes, but it's more complicated than a dodge. The idea seems to be that BH wanted to exit their P&G position, but their cost basis was so low that the tax hit would be high. But P&G had something other than cash that BH wanted, so they traded instead of doing a cash transaction.
programminggeek 12y ago
Duracell is a smart company and has been for a long time. Batteries are a largely disposable thing and so the customer LTV is pretty awesome. Rechargable batteries haven't really hurt the business signficantly and the need for electronics keeps going up. Even more, the R&D side of a battery company could be incredibly lucrative with all the electric vehicles, portable electronic devices, and so on. Buying a battery company in this day and age is a smart investment in tech, even for a non tech investor like Buffet. After all, every electronic device needs power right?
- analog31 12y ago
  >>> Even more, the R&D side of a battery company could be incredibly lucrative with all the electric vehicles, portable electronic devices, and so on. The manufacturing technology too. There's a reasonable chance that batteries of the future will still require handling and dispensing of chemicals, making and sealing the cells, etc.
zem 12y ago
is it just me, or has the page actually broken scrolling down?! that's a whole new level of wtf. edit: works in an incognito window, so it seems like some extension is blocking it, but i can't think of anything an extension could block that should be required to simply scroll down in a block of text.
- alistairjcbrown 12y ago
  Can't scroll down on my phone; dolphin browser on an S3. On top of the multiple certificate errors, it's not a great experience from such a major site...
- thecoffman 12y ago
  Its NoScript. I had the same exact issue. Its a ridiculous world when I need to enable Javascript just to view static text on a plain background. Sigh.
  - theg2 12y ago
    As a web developer, people like you always make me wonder why I try. Yes, some sites abuse javascript for terrible purposes, but as CSS becomes more powerful, are you going to start blocking that too? Complaining that a site doesn't work because you purposely disabled part of the code is akin to complaining your car doesn't work because you pulled the alternator.
    - teddyh 12y ago
      More like the car won’t start because the AC is off.
      - voronoff 12y ago
        The car won't start because you are wearing a personal EMP that is disabling the electronics. While older cars work fine, and some newer ones can fall back to just using analog mechanics, more and more require the electronics to work.
jstsch 12y ago
Wow, I thought most consumers these days know that generic alkaline batteries are just as good as Duracell alkaline batteries. Also, many gizmos come with cheap lipo built in + an USB port these days, that seems to be the trend. I'd think this is a business on the decline...
- gilgoomesh 12y ago
  Like the article says: it's about buying commodities (alkaline batteries or their components) and selling a brand. The difference in value is entirely in people's heads but that's still profitable. From my perspective, I haven't bought an alkaline battery in years. Low self-discharge batteries (especially newer Eneloops) are so much better for most tasks that disposable batteries seem crazy.
  - p1mrx 12y ago
    The problem with NiMH is that lots of cheap devices are designed to run at 1.5 volts, and have dim lights or sluggish movement when used with 1.2 volt cells. It'd be nice if there were a voltage regulator product that could fit into a standard battery compartment. One option I've considered is to replace 2AA/2AAA with Li-Ion plus a dummy cell. But Li-Ion is around 4.2 volts fully charged, which might be too much.
- dingaling 12y ago
  Anecdotally, Duracell cells are the only ones in recent memory that have consistently leaked when installed, on numerous occasions. Isn't that a solved problem? So in my experience generics are actually better; Golden Sunrise or whatever, I don't care so long as they are on spec and don't ruin my gadgets.
  - CamperBob2 12y ago
    Absolutely. Duracells haven't been allowed in my house for three or four years now. Stay far, far away from these pieces of crap.
- tormeh 12y ago
WhitneyLand 12y ago
The tax break and branding make sense, but EBITDA seems like such a poor metric for valuation it's hard to understand why it's taken seriously. I'm guessing that point in the article was emphasized more by Money mag than by Buffet.
- mbesto 12y ago
  You do realize that a majority of all PE-type transactions are based on EBITDA multiples right? VC-type (the ones you and I read every day on TechCrunch) are multiples on users/revenues because they are high-growth. Duracell is not a high growth equity.
- Havoc 12y ago
  >EBITDA seems like such a poor metric for valuation Why? Its got stacks of research & history behind it so you'll have to provide something a bit more substantial than "it's hard to understand why it's taken seriously". In fact I'm struggling to see anything of substance in that post.
  - waps 12y ago
    Well it's just like the government inflation "measurement". Everytime it shows something they don't like, they remove stuff. I believe oil was the first "WTF", then energy, and they just kept going. You see, according to the government, oil prices high or low don't affect the lives of Americans. Not that European governments did differently. Or that they stopped there. Then housing was removed. Americans don't see their budgets affected by housing, right ? Not according to the government. (this is talking about the measures the government reports, ie. Core CPI (previously) and PCE-Deflator (now)). I mean it's a question of degrees. Were the pre-1972 adjustments in the core CPI fraud ? No, not really. Then with oil you start to have this nagging feeling, and what they did last year ... well sorry to say, but that's cheating. That's fraud, no question about it. And EBITDA, sure. People used to use profit, for 50+ years. Then EBITDA. Why ? Because if you loan money for paying dividends or doing share buybacks profit will drop like a stone, EBITDA will be unaffected. But hell, if they had stopped there, that would have been reasonable. But they started cheating. Then came GAAP. This was modified 10 times over the last 2 decades or so, never to the advantage of investors of course, every single time it was to make companies look better than they did. And now most companies report non-GAAP EBITDA ... Differences are such things as that in non-GAAP future obligations (like a loan that's payment-free for a year) doesn't get counted until the payments start. Non-money agreements (e.g. we're going to build machines for X, they already paid 40% of the price, but we will only start delivery next quarter), the 40% is counted, the future obligation is not. I mean again there is a spectrum here. Profit vs EBITDA ... probably not fraud. GAAP "adjustments" ... I think we can all agree that this is very dangerous territory. Non-GAAP reporting, for me at least that crosses the line.
jsonau 12y ago
A bit off topic. Looks like Duracell has a cloud storage service, which is really strange.. https://www.duracellcloud.com/ https://www.duracellcloud.com/
- ctennis1 12y ago
  It's just a licensed use of their name. It's run by a company named Condre Storage, and the devices shown are rebranded CTera networks storage appliances.
AceJohnny2 12y ago
"[Proctor & Gamble's] goals in the process of exiting this business are to maximize value to P&G’s shareholders and minimize earnings per share dilution." It was a sick joke in Snow Crash in the 90s, and it hasn't changed.
- Chinjut 12y ago
  As someone who hasn't read Snow Crash, I'm curious what this means; could you explain the reference?
  - yzzxy 12y ago
    You're not missing anything by not reading it. [0] The above poster believes that the phrase > maximize shareholder value originated as a joke in the writing of Neal Stephenson and is not simply the financial terminology it appears to be. [0] It was Cryptonomicon, not Snow Crash.
    - hobs 12y ago
      Disagree, Snow Crash is fun, and the intro about the Deliverator is great! "Enough power to shoot a pound of bacon into the asteroid belt." How can you not like that!?
      - yzzxy 12y ago
        No, I mean he wasn't missing the joke... I obviously enjoy Stephenson way too well for my own good if I can spot an oblique reference to the wrong book.
    - AceJohnny2 12y ago
      Woops, you're right of course, it's Cryptonomicon. I'm well aware that it's standard financial terminology, but I was referring to how Stephenson satirized it and showed how it provided perverse and destructive incentives.
gopi 12y ago
Buffett has every right to consider taxes as part of a investment decision and legally minimize it as much as possible. But he should quit saying that tax rates don't matter to business decisions
- 3am 12y ago
  You're referring to this OpEd piece he wrote: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/26/opinion/buffett-a-minimum-tax-for-the-wealthy.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/26/opinion/buffett-a-minimum-... To quote: "Would your reply possibly be this? “Well, it all depends on what my tax rate will be on the gain you’re saying we’re going to make. If the taxes are too high, I would rather leave the money in my savings account, earning a quarter of 1 percent.” Only in Grover Norquist’s imagination does such a response exist." He was saying that raising top marginal tax rates would not result in rational investors withholding their capital. This is entirely consistent with the Duracell acquisition, which was tax efficient for both sides involved. Your interpretation is completely wrong. The correct comparison would be if Buffett did not do the Duracell acquisition because he didn't want to pay capital gains on the increased value of his BRK-A holdings (which would be idiotic, and further reinforces the point he made)
  - zaroth 12y ago
    Perhaps OT, but a smallish successful US startup is nearly half-owned by the government due to taxes due post-acquisition. That's anything in the $1MM - $10MM range... beyond which you can afford to spend more on lawyers to spend much less on taxes. It definitely does enter into the equation... do I really want to take all that personal risk when a silent partner actually owns half the company?
- lambdasquirrel 12y ago
  Well for him it might not matter. My line of thinking is this. He's an investor. From a macro level, taxes should (in theory) impact a firm as much as its competitors, and in finance, you're trying to beat everyone else. So it doesn't really matter then because Duracell is being taxed as much as say, Energizer. He's making a bet that Duracell is going to do better than Energizer in the long term.
tomrod 12y ago
> When P&G released its earnings for the first quarter of fiscal 2015 Is the 2015 a typo, or has the financial industry operated in this quarter-ahead method for awhile?
- SoftwareMaven 12y ago
  Many companies have fiscal years that don't match the calendar year. The government goes Oct to Sept. The company I work for goes July to June.
- milesskorpen 12y ago
  Fiscal year != calendar year. It seems like P&G's fiscal Q1 = Q3 of the previous calendar year.
  - tomrod 12y ago
    Ah, that makes a lot more sense. Thanks!
nabla9 12y ago
Typical Buffet deal. 1) >Interbrand estimated that the brand value of Duracell stood at $4.9 billion 2) >Duracell maintains over 25% of the global battery market share. Duracell has both brand and volume advantage over competitors in battery business. Warren Buffett coined the term economic moat to describe the advantages companies like Duracell have. >INVESTOPEDIA EXPLAINS 'Economic Moat' >The wider the moat, the larger and more sustainable the competitive advantage. By having a well-known brand name, pricing power and a large portion of market demand, a company with a wide moat possesses characteristics that act as barriers against other companies wanting to enter into the industry.
wtbob 12y ago
For some reason, articles on time.com don't scroll…
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- exo762 12y ago
  You need to enable JS from time.com and akamai.com. Yes, there is no real need to construct pages this way.
shoesfullofdust 12y ago
In my world, AA batteries are all about door locks. There are a lot of card-reading door locks that depend on them. Whenever a lock fails, step one or two or three is replace the batteries. That's 4-6 batteries per lock. As a maintenance/security procedure, once every couple of years, every battery in every lock in the entire building is replaced. Doesn't matter if they are dead, weak or brand new. That's hundreds/thousands of batteries. That's a lot of batteries. And Duracell has multiple levels of "pro"/"industrial grade" batteries. We buy them by the case. I'm sure the markup on consumer batteries are huge, but I'd also think the commercial use of double-As must dwarf the consumer market. Smart buy by Warren is my guess. What's needed in this space is a door lock that winds itself much like a "perpetual" watch. Something that takes the mechanical energy used to turn the door handle and turns it into stored energy that can be used to read the card and unbolt the door. And there you go. Make this thing :)
- btgeekboy 12y ago
  It already is, though not for hotel room doors/etc. I used to have access to a colo where racks rented individually (i.e. not in a cage) had a combination lock that was electronic. To use it, you first "charged" it by turning the knob back and forth a few times, then entering your code. The correct code mechanically connects the knob to the locking mechanism, so turning the knob unlocked the door. In the case you mentioned, I do wonder if you could get a bit more energy from the door itself rather than just the handle. For example, if the spring-loaded self-closing mechanisms weren't just mechanical, but used that energy to generate electricity, you might get a bit more out of it.
  - lamby 12y ago
    > To use it, you first "charged" it by turning the knob back and forth a few times, then entering your code. Reminds me of the telephones where you had to wind them before using them..
- dingaling 12y ago
  > And Duracell has multiple levels of "pro"/"industrial grade" batteries What are the differences between those and the retail cells, in your experience? I've seen people quoting P&G reps that the only difference is the glossiness of the labels and the cardinality of the package, but I haven't found any definitive statement online one way or the other.
TheAlchemist 12y ago
It´s funny to note that the longest discussion in this thread is about the time.com page not scrolling rather than about the deal itself ! As for the deal it´s classic Buffett - almost a sure win, little downside risk, perfect timing. If you didn't read his biography yet (The snowball: Warren Buffett and the business of life) I highly recommend ! One of the wisest man alive.
DonGateley 12y ago
Yet another brilliant cigar butt find. It would be fun as well as rewarding to be able to see through Buffet's eyes.
cheriot 12y ago
It looks like there's a lot of performance difference between battery brands, but Duracell isn't a high performer. http://www.batteryshowdown.com/ http://www.batteryshowdown.com/ > Buy commodities, sell brands > Consistent cash flow This is a very Buffet style company acquired in a very Buffet kind of way.

71 points by fraXis 12y ago

joosters 12y ago

In two words: tax dodge

aarondf 12y ago
This is terrific tax avoidance, which is legal. It's tax evasion that you gotta look out for
- brc 12y ago
  More correct is tax deferral.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
tptacek 12y ago
It's a strategy that has a lot to do with taxes, but it's more complicated than a dodge. The idea seems to be that BH wanted to exit their P&G position, but their cost basis was so low that the tax hit would be high. But P&G had something other than cash that BH wanted, so they traded instead of doing a cash transaction.

programminggeek 12y ago

Duracell is a smart company and has been for a long time. Batteries are a largely disposable thing and so the customer LTV is pretty awesome. Rechargable batteries haven't really hurt the business signficantly and the need for electronics keeps going up. Even more, the R&D side of a battery company could be incredibly lucrative with all the electric vehicles, portable electronic devices, and so on. Buying a battery company in this day and age is a smart investment in tech, even for a non tech investor like Buffet. After all, every electronic device needs power right?

analog31 12y ago
>>> Even more, the R&D side of a battery company could be incredibly lucrative with all the electric vehicles, portable electronic devices, and so on. The manufacturing technology too. There's a reasonable chance that batteries of the future will still require handling and dispensing of chemicals, making and sealing the cells, etc.

zem 12y ago

is it just me, or has the page actually broken scrolling down?! that's a whole new level of wtf. edit: works in an incognito window, so it seems like some extension is blocking it, but i can't think of anything an extension could block that should be required to simply scroll down in a block of text.

alistairjcbrown 12y ago
Can't scroll down on my phone; dolphin browser on an S3. On top of the multiple certificate errors, it's not a great experience from such a major site...
thecoffman 12y ago
Its NoScript. I had the same exact issue. Its a ridiculous world when I need to enable Javascript just to view static text on a plain background. Sigh.
- theg2 12y ago
  As a web developer, people like you always make me wonder why I try. Yes, some sites abuse javascript for terrible purposes, but as CSS becomes more powerful, are you going to start blocking that too? Complaining that a site doesn't work because you purposely disabled part of the code is akin to complaining your car doesn't work because you pulled the alternator.
  - teddyh 12y ago
    More like the car won’t start because the AC is off.
    - voronoff 12y ago
      The car won't start because you are wearing a personal EMP that is disabling the electronics. While older cars work fine, and some newer ones can fall back to just using analog mechanics, more and more require the electronics to work.

jstsch 12y ago

Wow, I thought most consumers these days know that generic alkaline batteries are just as good as Duracell alkaline batteries. Also, many gizmos come with cheap lipo built in + an USB port these days, that seems to be the trend. I'd think this is a business on the decline...

gilgoomesh 12y ago
Like the article says: it's about buying commodities (alkaline batteries or their components) and selling a brand. The difference in value is entirely in people's heads but that's still profitable. From my perspective, I haven't bought an alkaline battery in years. Low self-discharge batteries (especially newer Eneloops) are so much better for most tasks that disposable batteries seem crazy.
- p1mrx 12y ago
  The problem with NiMH is that lots of cheap devices are designed to run at 1.5 volts, and have dim lights or sluggish movement when used with 1.2 volt cells. It'd be nice if there were a voltage regulator product that could fit into a standard battery compartment. One option I've considered is to replace 2AA/2AAA with Li-Ion plus a dummy cell. But Li-Ion is around 4.2 volts fully charged, which might be too much.
dingaling 12y ago
Anecdotally, Duracell cells are the only ones in recent memory that have consistently leaked when installed, on numerous occasions. Isn't that a solved problem? So in my experience generics are actually better; Golden Sunrise or whatever, I don't care so long as they are on spec and don't ruin my gadgets.
- CamperBob2 12y ago
  Absolutely. Duracells haven't been allowed in my house for three or four years now. Stay far, far away from these pieces of crap.
tormeh 12y ago

WhitneyLand 12y ago

The tax break and branding make sense, but EBITDA seems like such a poor metric for valuation it's hard to understand why it's taken seriously. I'm guessing that point in the article was emphasized more by Money mag than by Buffet.

mbesto 12y ago
You do realize that a majority of all PE-type transactions are based on EBITDA multiples right? VC-type (the ones you and I read every day on TechCrunch) are multiples on users/revenues because they are high-growth. Duracell is not a high growth equity.
Havoc 12y ago
>EBITDA seems like such a poor metric for valuation Why? Its got stacks of research & history behind it so you'll have to provide something a bit more substantial than "it's hard to understand why it's taken seriously". In fact I'm struggling to see anything of substance in that post.
- waps 12y ago
  Well it's just like the government inflation "measurement". Everytime it shows something they don't like, they remove stuff. I believe oil was the first "WTF", then energy, and they just kept going. You see, according to the government, oil prices high or low don't affect the lives of Americans. Not that European governments did differently. Or that they stopped there. Then housing was removed. Americans don't see their budgets affected by housing, right ? Not according to the government. (this is talking about the measures the government reports, ie. Core CPI (previously) and PCE-Deflator (now)). I mean it's a question of degrees. Were the pre-1972 adjustments in the core CPI fraud ? No, not really. Then with oil you start to have this nagging feeling, and what they did last year ... well sorry to say, but that's cheating. That's fraud, no question about it. And EBITDA, sure. People used to use profit, for 50+ years. Then EBITDA. Why ? Because if you loan money for paying dividends or doing share buybacks profit will drop like a stone, EBITDA will be unaffected. But hell, if they had stopped there, that would have been reasonable. But they started cheating. Then came GAAP. This was modified 10 times over the last 2 decades or so, never to the advantage of investors of course, every single time it was to make companies look better than they did. And now most companies report non-GAAP EBITDA ... Differences are such things as that in non-GAAP future obligations (like a loan that's payment-free for a year) doesn't get counted until the payments start. Non-money agreements (e.g. we're going to build machines for X, they already paid 40% of the price, but we will only start delivery next quarter), the 40% is counted, the future obligation is not. I mean again there is a spectrum here. Profit vs EBITDA ... probably not fraud. GAAP "adjustments" ... I think we can all agree that this is very dangerous territory. Non-GAAP reporting, for me at least that crosses the line.

jsonau 12y ago

A bit off topic. Looks like Duracell has a cloud storage service, which is really strange.. https://www.duracellcloud.com/ https://www.duracellcloud.com/

ctennis1 12y ago
It's just a licensed use of their name. It's run by a company named Condre Storage, and the devices shown are rebranded CTera networks storage appliances.

AceJohnny2 12y ago

"[Proctor & Gamble's] goals in the process of exiting this business are to maximize value to P&G’s shareholders and minimize earnings per share dilution." It was a sick joke in Snow Crash in the 90s, and it hasn't changed.

Chinjut 12y ago
As someone who hasn't read Snow Crash, I'm curious what this means; could you explain the reference?
- yzzxy 12y ago
  You're not missing anything by not reading it. [0] The above poster believes that the phrase > maximize shareholder value originated as a joke in the writing of Neal Stephenson and is not simply the financial terminology it appears to be. [0] It was Cryptonomicon, not Snow Crash.
  - hobs 12y ago
    Disagree, Snow Crash is fun, and the intro about the Deliverator is great! "Enough power to shoot a pound of bacon into the asteroid belt." How can you not like that!?
    - yzzxy 12y ago
      No, I mean he wasn't missing the joke... I obviously enjoy Stephenson way too well for my own good if I can spot an oblique reference to the wrong book.
  - AceJohnny2 12y ago
    Woops, you're right of course, it's Cryptonomicon. I'm well aware that it's standard financial terminology, but I was referring to how Stephenson satirized it and showed how it provided perverse and destructive incentives.

gopi 12y ago

Buffett has every right to consider taxes as part of a investment decision and legally minimize it as much as possible. But he should quit saying that tax rates don't matter to business decisions

3am 12y ago
You're referring to this OpEd piece he wrote: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/26/opinion/buffett-a-minimum-tax-for-the-wealthy.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/26/opinion/buffett-a-minimum-... To quote: "Would your reply possibly be this? “Well, it all depends on what my tax rate will be on the gain you’re saying we’re going to make. If the taxes are too high, I would rather leave the money in my savings account, earning a quarter of 1 percent.” Only in Grover Norquist’s imagination does such a response exist." He was saying that raising top marginal tax rates would not result in rational investors withholding their capital. This is entirely consistent with the Duracell acquisition, which was tax efficient for both sides involved. Your interpretation is completely wrong. The correct comparison would be if Buffett did not do the Duracell acquisition because he didn't want to pay capital gains on the increased value of his BRK-A holdings (which would be idiotic, and further reinforces the point he made)
- zaroth 12y ago
  Perhaps OT, but a smallish successful US startup is nearly half-owned by the government due to taxes due post-acquisition. That's anything in the $1MM - $10MM range... beyond which you can afford to spend more on lawyers to spend much less on taxes. It definitely does enter into the equation... do I really want to take all that personal risk when a silent partner actually owns half the company?
lambdasquirrel 12y ago
Well for him it might not matter. My line of thinking is this. He's an investor. From a macro level, taxes should (in theory) impact a firm as much as its competitors, and in finance, you're trying to beat everyone else. So it doesn't really matter then because Duracell is being taxed as much as say, Energizer. He's making a bet that Duracell is going to do better than Energizer in the long term.

tomrod 12y ago

> When P&G released its earnings for the first quarter of fiscal 2015 Is the 2015 a typo, or has the financial industry operated in this quarter-ahead method for awhile?

SoftwareMaven 12y ago
Many companies have fiscal years that don't match the calendar year. The government goes Oct to Sept. The company I work for goes July to June.
milesskorpen 12y ago
Fiscal year != calendar year. It seems like P&G's fiscal Q1 = Q3 of the previous calendar year.
- tomrod 12y ago
  Ah, that makes a lot more sense. Thanks!

nabla9 12y ago

Typical Buffet deal. 1) >Interbrand estimated that the brand value of Duracell stood at $4.9 billion 2) >Duracell maintains over 25% of the global battery market share. Duracell has both brand and volume advantage over competitors in battery business. Warren Buffett coined the term economic moat to describe the advantages companies like Duracell have. >INVESTOPEDIA EXPLAINS 'Economic Moat' >The wider the moat, the larger and more sustainable the competitive advantage. By having a well-known brand name, pricing power and a large portion of market demand, a company with a wide moat possesses characteristics that act as barriers against other companies wanting to enter into the industry.

wtbob 12y ago

For some reason, articles on time.com don't scroll…

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
exo762 12y ago
You need to enable JS from time.com and akamai.com. Yes, there is no real need to construct pages this way.

shoesfullofdust 12y ago

In my world, AA batteries are all about door locks. There are a lot of card-reading door locks that depend on them. Whenever a lock fails, step one or two or three is replace the batteries. That's 4-6 batteries per lock. As a maintenance/security procedure, once every couple of years, every battery in every lock in the entire building is replaced. Doesn't matter if they are dead, weak or brand new. That's hundreds/thousands of batteries. That's a lot of batteries. And Duracell has multiple levels of "pro"/"industrial grade" batteries. We buy them by the case. I'm sure the markup on consumer batteries are huge, but I'd also think the commercial use of double-As must dwarf the consumer market. Smart buy by Warren is my guess. What's needed in this space is a door lock that winds itself much like a "perpetual" watch. Something that takes the mechanical energy used to turn the door handle and turns it into stored energy that can be used to read the card and unbolt the door. And there you go. Make this thing :)

btgeekboy 12y ago
It already is, though not for hotel room doors/etc. I used to have access to a colo where racks rented individually (i.e. not in a cage) had a combination lock that was electronic. To use it, you first "charged" it by turning the knob back and forth a few times, then entering your code. The correct code mechanically connects the knob to the locking mechanism, so turning the knob unlocked the door. In the case you mentioned, I do wonder if you could get a bit more energy from the door itself rather than just the handle. For example, if the spring-loaded self-closing mechanisms weren't just mechanical, but used that energy to generate electricity, you might get a bit more out of it.
- lamby 12y ago
  > To use it, you first "charged" it by turning the knob back and forth a few times, then entering your code. Reminds me of the telephones where you had to wind them before using them..
dingaling 12y ago
> And Duracell has multiple levels of "pro"/"industrial grade" batteries What are the differences between those and the retail cells, in your experience? I've seen people quoting P&G reps that the only difference is the glossiness of the labels and the cardinality of the package, but I haven't found any definitive statement online one way or the other.

TheAlchemist 12y ago

It´s funny to note that the longest discussion in this thread is about the time.com page not scrolling rather than about the deal itself ! As for the deal it´s classic Buffett - almost a sure win, little downside risk, perfect timing. If you didn't read his biography yet (The snowball: Warren Buffett and the business of life) I highly recommend ! One of the wisest man alive.

DonGateley 12y ago

Yet another brilliant cigar butt find. It would be fun as well as rewarding to be able to see through Buffet's eyes.

cheriot 12y ago

It looks like there's a lot of performance difference between battery brands, but Duracell isn't a high performer. http://www.batteryshowdown.com/ http://www.batteryshowdown.com/ > Buy commodities, sell brands > Consistent cash flow This is a very Buffet style company acquired in a very Buffet kind of way.