Berkshire shareholders are eagerly awaiting the release of the 2008 Annual Report tomorrow at 8am Eastern Time.  I am planning to review the report in detail and will update my intrinsic value models accordingly.

Obviously the data in the 2008 report will only reflect results up to December 31, 2008.  Q1 2009 has been anything but uneventful so far in the financial markets.  The market carnage this quarter has not spared Berkshire holdings.  While using the 2008 annual report to come up with an intrinsic value forecast will be useful, that data will produce an estimate as of 12/31/2008.  It will then be necessary to examine the impact of Q1 and make any necessary adjustments. 

Fortunately, we do not have to wait until tomorrow to look at the impact of Q1 on Berkshire’s holdings.  Berkshire has already disclosed all stock holdings as of 12/31/2008 in the 13F filing on February 17.  I wrote about the filing briefly last week. 

I decided to look at the data in more detail.  Using the 13F, I put together a listing of all positions along with the market valuation on December 31.  I then obtained quotes for all positions as of the close of the markets today (February 27). 

For simplicity, I assumed that no changes were made to open positions since the start of the year.  We know that this is not entirely accurate since there have been reports of some changes (such as the sale of some shares in Constellation Energy).  However, this simple analysis provides at least a rough idea of how Berkshire holdings have fared so far in Q1.

Based on this rough analysis, it appears that Berkshire holdings have declined by over $13 Billion over the first two months of 2009.  While none of this will be reflected in tomorrow’s report, it is relevant for those of us trying to determine Berkshire’s intrinsic value as of today rather than as of December 31.

Please click on this link for the spreadsheet containing details on each position in the 13F Report.