Company Press Release (a brief summary)
Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Reports a Solid 20% Increase in Operating Income in the First Quarter (Fool)
Ahead of its annual shareholders meeting over the weekend, Berkshire Hathaway reported first-quarter results for 2015. Operating earnings, which exclude the impact of gains or losses in its equity and derivatives contracts, jumped by 20%, to $4.24 billion, up from $3.53 billion in the first quarter of 2014. Net income also jumped 9.7%, to $5.16 billion, or $3,143 per Class A share.
Investment results were less than spectacular, largely the result of losses from its outsize public stock portfolio. The company reported losing $1.02 billion from its equity portfolio. [...]
Berkshire Profit Climbs 9.8% on Burger King, Railroad Gain (Bloomberg)
Berkshire’s biggest unit, the BNSF railroad, contributed $1.05 billion to quarterly earnings, compared with $724 million a year earlier. The railroad said last week that it won back market share for grain and agriculture commodities that it lost to Union Pacific Corp. in 2014. [...]
The manufacturing, service and retail segment, which includes toolmaker Iscar and chemical company Lubrizol, added $1.12 billion to earnings, compared with $933 million a year earlier. Profit climbed 59 percent to $230 million at the segment selling building products as the Shaw carpet business and Johns Manville insulation provider benefited from higher sales and lower costs for energy and raw materials.
Profit at the utility unit, Berkshire Hathaway Energy, fell to $421 million from $452 million a year earlier as milder weather limited demand. The business operates natural-gas pipelines that stretch from the Great Lakes to Texas and power companies in states including Iowa and Nevada. [...]
Berkshire Starts 2015 on a More Solid Note (Morningstar)
Book value per Class A equivalent share at the end of the first quarter was $146,963--up 6% year over year and basically flat when compared with the fourth quarter of 2014. This was lower than our forecast, which had book value per share increasing to $149,841 at the end of the first quarter. The company closed out the first quarter of 2015 with $63.7 billion in cash on its books, up marginally from $63.3 billion at the end of last year, even though the firm spent $4.1 billion to close out the Van Tuyl deal in early March. Berkshire did not buy back any shares during the first quarter of 2015.
Looking more closely at Berkshire's insurance operations, only two of the firm's four insurance lines--Geico and Berkshire Hathaway Primary Group--posted earned premium growth during the quarter, with General Re and Berkshire Hathaway Reinsurance Group reporting another quarterly decline. [...]
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