Warren Buffett and Greg Abel appear at Berkshire Hathaway’s annual shareholder meeting on May 3, 2025 in Omaha, Nebraska.
David A. Grozen | CNBC
Berkshire Hathaway It reported a big fall in its operating profit in the fourth quarter, due to weakness in its conglomerate insurance business.
Earnings from operations totaled $10.2 billion in Q4. That was down more than 29% from $14.56 billion in the year-ago period.
It was the final quarter under Warren Buffett as CEO, who announced at the annual shareholder meeting last May that he was stepping down. Greg Abel took over starting in 2026, and in Berkshire’s annual letter with Saturday’s results, Buffett vowed to continue a culture of financial strength and capital discipline. Buffett remains chairman.
Insurance underwriting profit fell 54% to $1.56 billion from $3.41 billion a year earlier. Insurance investment income fell nearly 25% to $3.1 billion from $4.088 billion.
For full-year 2025, operating earnings totaled $44.49 billion. That was down from $47.44 billion in the previous year.
Profit from insurance underwriting came in at $7.26 billion, down from $9 billion in 2024. Insurance investment income for the year decreased to $12.5 billion from $13.6 billion a year earlier.
Overall earnings, which include gains or losses from consolidated company stock market investments, fell to $19.2 billion in the fourth quarter from $19.7 billion a year earlier. However, those numbers were impacted by a $4.5 billion impairment from Berkshire’s investments in Kraft Heinz and Occidental Petroleum. Investment returns came in at $13.5 billion.
Full-year overall earnings, meanwhile, fell to $66.97 billion from $89 billion a year earlier. To be sure, Berkshire always tells investors to pay little attention to the performance of its investments in short time frames.
“The amount of investment gains (losses) in any given quarter is generally meaningless and net earnings per share figures can be extremely misleading to investors with little or no knowledge of accounting rules,” the company said in its earnings release.
There is no repurchase, the cash collection drops slightly
Buffett again refrained from buying back Berkshire shares despite ending Q4 in a flatline. Despite the lack of buybacks, conglomerates’ cash holdings fell to $373.3 billion from a record $381.6 billion in the third quarter.
Berkshire Hathaway Class A shares rose 10% in 2025, trailing the S&P 500’s 16.4 advance. Yet, Buffett’s leadership has resulted in unparalleled wealth creation for shareholders.
Since 1965, Berkshire Hathaway has seen a compounded annual return of 19.7%. That’s nearly double the S&P 500’s combined increase over that time. Berkshire’s overall gains exceeded 6,000,000% during that period, while the S&P 500 gained just 46,061%, including dividends, Abel noted in his first annual letter to shareholders as CEO.
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