See's Candies: The 50-Year Economic Goodwill Laboratory cover

See's Candies: The 50-Year Economic Goodwill Laboratory

Published in Subsidiaries / Service-Retailing
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See's Candies cost $25 million in 1972 and has since generated nearly $2.8 billion in cumulative pre-tax earnings on barely $65 million of invested capital. But its real return was intellectual: the laboratory where Buffett and Munger discovered economic goodwill, the concept that enabled Coca-Cola, GEICO, and every great investment that followed.


Dairy Queen at 85: The Soft-Serve Empire Berkshire Barely Mentions cover

Dairy Queen at 85: The Soft-Serve Empire Berkshire Barely Mentions

Published in Subsidiaries / Service-Retailing
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Dairy Queen turns 85 this year with 7,800 restaurants across 27 countries, a $6.4 billion system generating nearly $100 million in annual profit for Berkshire — yet it barely rates a paragraph in the annual report. From a 1940 soft-serve stand in Joliet, Illinois to a $10 billion growth target by 2030, this is the story of Berkshire's most delicious invisible subsidiary.