Warren Buffett thinks more and more companies are faking it, and Wall Street is helping them do it.
In his annual letter to shareholders, which was released on Saturday morning, the Berkshire Hathaway CEO took other executives to task for telling their shareholders to ignore what Buffett thinks are very real expenses. In addition, Buffett criticized Wall Street for endorsing and passing along those inflated financial figures to investors.
“Wall Street analysts often play their part in this charade, too, parroting the phony, compensation-ignoring ‘earnings’ figures fed them by managements,” Buffett writes.
Buffett says it’s possible that the offending analysts “don’t know better.” But more likely, Buffett says, the analysts go along with the phony numbers because they fear losing access to management, which is key to a Wall Street analyst’s job these days. Buffett also says analysts may be swept up by a herd mentality and go along with these inflated financials because everyone else is doing it. None of these reasons lets them off the hook, Buffett says.
“Whatever their reasoning, these analysts are guilty of propagating misleading numbers that can deceive investors,” Buffett writes.
