Warren Buffet's Berkshire’s Operating Earnings Surge To $27B And Huge Cash Hoard Of $146.72B

Berkshire used $6.9 billion to buy back shares in the fourth quarter, bringing the total in share repurchases to approximately $27 billion for 2021. That’s a record amount and up from the $24.7 billion repurchased as the pandemic raged in 2020. However, the fourth-quarter buyback pace was a bit slower than the $7.6 billion repurchased in the third quarter.

Despite these aggressive buybacks, Berkshire’s cash hoard at the end of 2021 stood at about $146.72 billion. That’s down only slightly from a record $149.2 billion at the end of the third quarter.

Buffett explained in his accompanying annual shareholder letter that he and Vice Chairman Charlie Munger found little that “excites” them in terms of big acquisitions that were once their hallmark. Instead, the pair increasingly finds share repurchases as the best way to deploy cash at this time.

However, Berkshire tends to downplay the importance quarterly changes in the company’s investment gains or losses.

“The amount of investment gains/losses in any given quarter is usually meaningless and delivers figures for net earnings per share that can be extremely misleading to investors who have little or no knowledge of accounting rules,” Berkshire said.

Earnings from Berkshire’s railroad, utilities and energy business jumped 12.3% to $2.241 billion from $1.995 billion a year earlier. Meanwhile, Berkshire’s insurance-underwriting business earned $372 million after losing $299 million in the fourth quarter of 2020.

The earnings report came as Berkshire’s B shares broke out to a record high this year, up nearly 7%.

Full-year overall earnings came in at $89.795 billion, more than double 2020′s total of $42.521 billion.

SOURCE: CNBC
IMAGE SOURCE: forbes.com