(BRK.A), (BRK.B)
Berkshire Hathaway, a company that does a Texas-sized amount of business in Texas, including being the home state for BNSF Railway, had an unexpected bump in the road created by its 2015 acquisition of the Van Tuyl Group.
Berkshire bought the auto dealership group for $4.1 billion after company CEO Larry Van Tuyl approached Berkshire in late-2014 and proposed the acquisition.
Unfortunately for Berkshire, Texas state law prohibited owning dealerships if you manufacture vehicles, something Berkshire does through its wholly-owned Forest River, Inc., a leading manufacturer of RVs and small buses.
Van Tuyl Group, which was rechristened Berkshire Hathaway Automotive, ran afoul of the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles when in 2017 the Department decided to look at whether Berkshire Hathaway was violating state law and might be subject to fines.
Berkshire Hathaway Automotive CEO Jeff Rachor testified before State Sen. Kelly Hancock’s committee that applying the law to auto dealerships because of owning a motorhome manufacturer was an “unintended consequence.”
Unfortunately, Texas regulators didn’t relent and Berkshire’s first push at a legislative fix, which included some glad-handing by Warren Buffet himself, came up empty when the Tea Party coalition helped kill a bill to fix the problem.
Fast forward a couple of years and cooler heads have prevailed.
This time, the bill State Sen. Hancock sponsored, SB 1415, passed, and Gov. Greg Abbott has signed it into law.
The new law, which takes effect Sept. 1, 2019, means that manufacturers are now only prohibited from owning dealerships that sell the same vehicles that they produce, which is not something that Berkshire Hathaway Automotive Group does.
Problem solved, and Warren Buffet can now breath a Texas-sized sigh of relief.
© 2019 David Mazor
Disclosure: David Mazor is a freelance writer focusing on Berkshire Hathaway. The author is long in Berkshire Hathaway, and this article is not a recommendation on whether to buy or sell the stock. The information contained in this article should not be construed as personalized or individualized investment advice. Past performance is no guarantee of future results.