Berkshire Hathaway Earnings: Cash Hits Record $380 Billion on Stock Sales and Solid Q1 Results

Key Morningstar Metrics for Berkshire Hathaway

• Fair Value Estimate
  : USD 765,000
• Morningstar Rating
  : ★★★★
• Morningstar Economic Moat Rating
  : Narrow
• Morningstar Uncertainty Rating
  : Low

What We Thought of Berkshire Hathaway’s Earnings

Narrow-moat-rated Berkshire Hathaway BRK.A reported adjusted first-quarter operating results that were in line with our expectations, with the firm continuing to benefit from solid underwriting results in its insurance businesses despite pricing coming down during the past year.

Why it matters: Berkshire has historically offset underperformance in one or more of its segments with outperformance in others.

• Following several years of outstanding results, the insurance operations have seen pricing normalize, but with no discernable catastrophe losses in the first quarter underwriting results were solid.
• BNSF continues to trail Union Pacific, despite seeing another improvement in its operating ratio (with the gap in operating ratios between the two firms at around 425 basis points) in the first quarter.
• Berkshire Hathaway Energy, meanwhile, saw an improvement in first-quarter results, but future results could still be adversely affected by wildfire litigation and legislation aimed at curbing investments in renewables.
• The manufacturing, service, and retailing division posted a decent top-line gain during the first quarter, aided by the OxyChem acquisition, but margins were impacted by higher costs.

The bottom line: With Berkshire’s first-quarter results coming in basically in line with our expectations, we expect to leave our USD 765,000 (USD 510) per Class A (B) share fair value estimate in place.

• Excluding the impact of investment gains/losses and other adjustments, first-quarter adjusted operating revenue increased 4.4% year over year to USD 93.7 billion. Meanwhile, adjusted operating earnings rose 17.7% year over year to USD 11.3 billion, as the insurance operations posted higher underwriting profits but lower levels of investment income, and the rest of the portfolio posted decent gains.
• Book value per share, which serves as a decent proxy for measuring changes in Berkshire’s intrinsic value, increased 11.1% year over year to USD 505,723 from USD 455,055 at the end of March 2025.