Buffett's confidence in troubled decade-old acquisition finally pays off

(This is the Warren Buffett Watch newsletter, news and analysis on all things Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway. You can sign up here to receive it every Friday evening in your inbox.) Six years ago, when Berkshire Hathaway took an $11 billion write-down of its $37.2 billion 2016 acquisition of Precision Castparts, Warren Buffett wrote in his annual letter to shareholders he had paid "too much" for the company, which makes " complex metal components and products ." While it was a "fine company – the best in its business," he had been "simply too optimistic" about its profit potential, a "miscalculation ... laid bare" by the enormous downturn for the aerospace industry, Precision Castparts' largest customers, amid the Covid pandemic.