Give Buffet more credit; he's probably a CKFR shareholder.
First realize he's a value investor, and he can't know or follow everything. The exam question you guys quoted was proposed for a Value Investing class, and probably makes sense for strict value investors.
A young analyst once asked Buffet how he should get started in the investment business. Buffet replied, read the annual report on every publicly traded company in America. The analyst protested that there were over 12,000 publicly traded companies. Buffet replied, "Start with the As."
In that mode, Buffet owns one share of stock in thousands of companies so that he gets the annual reports. He also reads voraciously (which is maybe why he likes to buy publishing or media companies). So don't be too surprised if he owns a share of CheckFree.
Back on topic, I have re-established my position in CKFR, and plan to hold on this time. I've been using Checkfree since 1986, and I wouldn't part with it without a struggle. I like the leveraged upside from here, and my read from the conference call, is that we will see significant sequential subscriber growth as soon as the major banks start advertising their service again. Kight said they stopped pushing the service, due to system constraints at the banks. It wouldn't surprise me, if they added 500,000 subscribers per Q starting this summer.
Paul
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