Dhe legendary American financier Warren Buffett's investment company Berkshire Hethaway has once again reported record profits. Net income doubled to $37.57 billion in the fourth quarter, Berkshire announced on Saturday. This brings the annual profit to $96.2 billion, surpassing the old record from 2021 by around $6.3 billion. Operating profit rose by 21 percent to 37.4 billion.
Buffett assured investors that Berkshire would be a good investment in the long term. The $900 billion conglomerate has become a fortress that can withstand even an unprecedented financial collapse. “Berkshire is built to last,” the 93-year-old investor wrote in the letter to shareholders. However, he dampened expectations for the share price. The enormous size of the company leaves “no possibility for breathtaking performance”.
Buffett praises his companion Munger
Buffett confirmed that current deputy CEO Greg Abel would succeed him one day. Buffett also spoke warmly to former Berkshire co-boss Charlie Munger, who died in November at the age of 99. Munger once urged him to “buy wonderful companies at fair prices rather than fair companies at wonderful prices.” The deceased was the true architect of Berkshire Hathaway, emphasized Buffett. For himself, Munger was “partly an older brother, partly a loving father”.
Bekshire currently has cash balances of $167.6 billion – also a record. This is also due to Berkshire's reluctance to make large acquisitions at inflated prices. At the moment, Buffett hardly sees any exciting investment properties. There are only “a handful” of companies in the United States that could make big leaps for his holding company Berkshire Hathaway – and he and others have had their eyes on them for a long time.
Buffett sees no suitable candidates for investing abroad. Berkshire Hathaway owns, among others, the insurer Geico, the railway company BNSF and the battery manufacturer Duracell. The insurance business was a driver for the increase in operating profit last year.
The holding company's high net profit of $96 billion follows a loss of $23 billion a year earlier. But Buffett himself described this number as “worse than useless” because it is distorted by book profits and losses and only provides limited information about the economy in a certain period of time. In the final quarter of last year, operating profit increased year-on-year from $6.6 billion to around $8.5 billion.
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