The CEO of Berkshire Hathaway is a celebrity investor.
(Photo: Reuters)
omaha The investment company Berkshire Hathaway, owned by US star investor Warren Buffett, only kept operating profit constant at the start of the year due to larger burdens in parts of the insurance business. Increased damage claims at the primary insurer Geico weighed on the results in the area, as Berkshire Hathaway announced in Omaha on Saturday.
Operating profit in the first quarter was a good 7 billion US dollars (6.7 billion euros) at the level of the previous year. In contrast, the reinsurance business, the rail freight company BNSF, manufacturing companies and retail trade were better than a year ago.
Meanwhile, Berkshire Hathaway’s net income fell by a good half to $5.5 billion. However, strongly fluctuating unrealized book profits and losses of the many shareholdings are also shown here.
Therefore, the informative value with regard to the course of business is limited. Buffett advises against paying much attention to the metric. Berkshire Hathaway owns many companies. There are also blocks of shares in corporations such as Apple and Coca-Cola.
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Berkshire’s cash holdings fell. However, they had grown well in recent years because Buffett struggled to find acquisition targets given the company’s high valuations.
Recently, however, Berkshire Hathaway found it again. In March, the company announced it would buy US insurance group Alleghany for $11.6 billion.
At the beginning of April it was announced that Buffett and his holding company had entered the computer group HP Inc on a large scale. He bought 121 million shares, which based on the closing price at the time, resulted in a package value of approximately $4.2 billion.
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