This post is part of our Battle of the Brands feature. Let us know which brand you prefer, and check out other Battle of the Brands posts.

Cold Stone Creamery vs. Dairy Queen? This is Liston vs. Ali, American Idol vs. 60 Minutes, Sacha Baron Cohen vs. Woody Allen. The young, brash upstart vs. the wily veteran champion. With butterfat.

Dairy Queen is, of course, the veteran. At 4,500 readily recognizable locations throughout the U.S., the Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A) company serves up a time-tested menu of coney dogs, Dilly Bars, and Blizzards at prices that the average Joe can afford. So what if the décor is 1980s, and its ice cream is to cream as bologna is to steak?

Cold Stone is the brash upstart, starting in 1988 in Tempe, Arizona. Owned by the privately-held Kahala Corp., it has grown to over 1,400 outlets in strip malls across the country. The super-premium product it serves is hand-scooped, full of butterfat and bounteous flavor. The price is also bounteous, though; in my neighborhood, a single scoop of vanilla on a wafer cone sets me back $3.58.

From its origin in textiles in the nineteenth century, Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK.A) has grown to become the monster holding company that it is today. Though its core business is now insurance, BRK has fingers in many pies: from owning Geico, Dairy Queen and Fruit of the Loom, to its pieces in the Washington Post Co. (NYSE:WPO), UPS Inc. (NYSE:UPS), and Target Corp. (NYSE:TGT), among many others.

It's all led by investment sage Warren Buffett, the so-called Oracle of Omaha. Buffett is well-known for his philosophy of value investing for the long run, and has often discouraged focusing on quarterly reports. That may be why I had such a hard time finding a confirmed release date for BRK's next earnings report. It also may be why so few analysts closely cover BRK, even though multitudes of individual investors hang on Buffett's every word and move.

The consensus estimate, to the extent that one can truly reach a consensus with only two or three analysts' opinions, is for $1452.36 per share, or growth of 21.4%, according to Thomson Financial. As diversified as BRK is, it's hard to imagine it having a weak quarter, yet BRK.A is rated as a hold by analysts, for reasons our own Jonathon Berr recently explored. The median target price is $123,000. BRK class A shares closed Wednesday at $110,050 (class B shares at $3,667).

That may be neither here nor there for investors, who, like Buffett, are in it for the long haul. BRK will report sometime between now and March 1, and when it does, will it beat the expectations of those who suggest holding (or even selling) the stock, few as they may be? Or will analysts be right and BRK will somehow fall short? What do you think?

Also check out some other earnings reports that we're following, and let us know what you're expecting.

This post is written as part of AOL Money & Finance's Best & Worst of 2006. Check out the other nominees for Most Annoying Money Expert of 2006. Be sure to cast your vote.

Billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban is best known as the eccentric owner of the Dallas Mavericks, an NBA team. But he got his start as an entrepreneur at the age of twelve, selling garbage bags. His other early money-making efforts included providing disco dancing lessons and a chain letter that earned him more than $1,000. The foundation of his fortune, though, came about through starting and selling technology companies. Unlike so many others in that field, Cuban managed to avoid the dot-com bust by diversifying his portfolio. He's now one of the world's 500 richest people, according to Forbes.

Cuban is a confessed admirer of Ayn Rand, particularly a fan of her novel, The Fountainhead, and also of objectivist philosophy; he leans toward the libertarian end of the political spectrum, though he doesn't get much involved in politics. A casual man, Cuban rarely wears a suit and never wears a watch. He purchased his stake in the Dallas Mavericks from H. Ross Perot in 2000, and has since been a very visible and outspoken supporter of the team, often appearing at games in a Mavericks jersey. He's been fined a number of times by the NBA for criticism of referees and league officials, though he matches his fines with donations to charity. In one notable incident, Cuban's complaint that a league manager wasn't smart enough to run a Dairy Queen eventually resulted in Cuban working the counter at a Dairy Queen in Texas, where delighted fans lined up around the block to be served by him.

Other widely reported incidents include a 2003 scuffle with professional wrestlers Eric Bischoff and Randy Orton, which turned out to be a scripted stunt. In 2006, when film director M. Night Shyamalan expressed concern over the marketing experiment of simultaneously releasing Steven Soderbergh's film Bubble in theaters and on DVD, Cuban called Shyamalan an "idiot."

Makes one wonder who Mr. Shyamalan might vote for as the Most Annoying Money Expert of 2006.