(Comply with together with our full protection of Berkshire Hathaway’s annual assembly right here. Warren Buffett begins speaking at 9 a.m. ET.)
Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway reported first-quarter outcomes on Saturday that confirmed a steep drop in working earnings from the year-earlier interval. The conglomerate, which owns an enormous array of insurance coverage, transportation, vitality, retail and different companies additionally warned that tariffs might additional hit income.
Working earnings, which embody the conglomerate’s absolutely owned insurance coverage and railroad companies, fell 14% to $9.64 billion throughout the first three months of the 12 months. Within the first quarter of 2024, they totaled $11.22 billion.
On per share foundation, working earnings have been $4.47 final quarter, down from $5.20 per class B share in the identical interval one 12 months in the past. That compares to an estimate of $4.89 per class B share from UBS and an total consensus estimate from 4 analysts of $4.72 a share per FactSet.
A lot of that decline was pushed by a 48.6% plunge in insurance-underwriting revenue. That got here in at $1.34 billion for the primary quarter, down from $2.60 billion a 12 months prior. Berkshire mentioned the Southern California wildfires led to a $1.1 billion loss in Q1.
Berkshire’s backside line additionally took a success from the greenback dropping worth within the first quarter. The corporate mentioned it suffered an approximate $713 million loss associated to international trade. This time final 12 months, it benefited from a $597 million foreign exchange acquire.
The greenback index fell almost 4% within the first quarter. Towards the Japanese yen, it misplaced 4.6%.
Tariff uncertainty
Berkshire mentioned President Donald Trump’s tariffs and different geopolitical dangers created an unsure atmosphere for the conglomerate, proprietor of BNSF railway, Brooks Working and Geico insurance coverage. The agency mentioned it isn’t capable of predict any potential impression from tariffs right now.
“Our periodic working outcomes could also be affected in future intervals by impacts of ongoing macroeconomic and geopolitical occasions, in addition to adjustments in trade or company-specific components or occasions,” Berkshire mentioned within the earnings report. “The tempo of adjustments in these occasions, together with worldwide commerce insurance policies and tariffs, has accelerated in 2025. Appreciable uncertainty stays as to the last word end result of those occasions.”
“We’re at present unable to reliably predict the potential impression on our companies, whether or not by way of adjustments in product prices, provide chain prices and effectivity, and buyer demand for our services and products,” it mentioned.
BRK.A vs S&P 500 in 2025
Berkshire’s money hoard ballooned to a recent document throughout the first quarter, climbing to greater than $347 billion from round $334 billion on the finish of 2024, exhibiting that Buffett didn’t use the first-quarter drop within the inventory market to deploy the cash. In actual fact, Berkshire was a internet vendor of shares for a tenth quarter in a row.
The corporate’s total earnings additionally plunged almost 64% 12 months over 12 months, as Buffett’s portfolio of publicly traded names took a success to start out the 12 months. That mentioned, Berkshire all the time advises traders to look previous these quarterly adjustments.
“The quantity of funding features (losses) in any given quarter is often meaningless and delivers figures for internet earnings per share that may be extraordinarily deceptive to traders who’ve little or no data of accounting guidelines,” Berkshire’s launch mentioned.
The report comes as Berkshire enjoys a stellar year-to-date efficiency, whereas the broader market languishes. In 2025, Class A shares of Berkshire are up almost 19%, whereas the S&P 500 is down 3.3% as uncertainty from tariffs pressures tech and different sectors.
— CNBC’s Yun Li contributed reporting.
