Berkshire Meeting: What Is McLean?

From the floor of the arena, a shareholder from Florida asks about McLean, a subsidiary that shows a lot of revenue in Berkshire filings. He asks, effectively, what the business is.

McLean is a food, candy and cigarette distributor that Berkshire bought from Wal-Mart in 2003. Mr. Buffett says it's a business that earns good returns on invested capital and good returns relative to its purchase price, but it operates on very thin margins. It operates very efficiently, but has to in order to turn any sort of profit at all.

"It sort of has an outsized appearance" when you look at Berkshire's revenues, Mr. Buffett says.

Click here to see the full live coverage of Warren Buffett at Berkshire Hathaway's annual meeting:

http://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/berkshire-hathaway-2017-annual-meeting-analysis

Write to Erik Holm at erik.holm@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

May 06, 2017 16:33 ET (20:33 GMT)