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But underlining his extreme aversion to financing purchases with stock or selling an existing business to raise cash, Buffett says, "We can't do a really big elephant now and we won't stretch."
That's a reference to his February letter to shareholders in which he talked about the need for more "major" acquisitions. "Our elephant gun has been reloaded, and my trigger finger is itchy."
On the same theme, Buffett says he would have liked Johnson & Johnson's acquisition of Synthes "a whole lot more" if it had been all cash.
J&J's $21.6 billion purchase price of the Swiss medical devices maker consisted of two-thirds stock and one-third cash.
Buffett says when a company uses its own stock to make a purchase, one can infer it believes those shares are undervalued.
Our Berkshire Hathaway Portfolio Tracker shows that Buffett's company reported owning 42.6 million J&J shares at the end of December. At Friday's closing price of $65.72, that stake would be worth $2.8 billion. Current price: [JNJ 65.72 
0.34 (+0.52%) 
]
Just over a year ago, Buffett told CNBC he would have voted against Kraft's use of stock to purchase Cadbury. He's also criticized Nestle's sale of its pizza business.
In late 2009, Berkshire did use some stock to help pay for its $26 billion acquisition of Burlington Northern Santa Fe. In an interview on CNBC, Buffett said, "I don't like to use stock, but on this one, because of the size and because they wanted a tax-free option for shareholders, we're doing it 40 percent stock and 60 percent cash."
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