Five Highlights of Berkshire Hathaway’s Third Quarter Report
After the market closed today, Berkshire Hathaway released its 10-Q for the third quarter of 2017.
Five highlights were:
(1) Berkshire’s operating earnings declined by 29% in the third quarter as a result of underwriting losses from three hurricanes.
(2) Berkshire had $109.3 billion in cash as of September 30, 2017. Its price to book value ratio is 1.5, which is above Warren Buffett’s previously announced 1.2 threshold for its stock buybacks.
(3) Berkshire had a net additional investment of $5.9 billion in equities in “Banks, insurance and finance” during the third quarter of 2017. ($5 billion for exercise of Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) warrant.)
(4) Berkshire decreased its equity investments in “Commercial, industrial, and other” by $2.25 billion based on cost.
(5) Berkshire apparently added 3 million shares of Apple (Nasdaq:AAPL) (+ $450 million).
(Note: This blog post has been published by Investing.com and Value Walk.)
The single most impressive feat for Berkshire Hathaway in many years is reflected in the Business Segment portion of the 3rd Quarter 2017 10-Q: despite $3 billion in underwriting losses caused by the combined hurricane destruction of Harvery, Irma, and Maria, Berkshire’s Total Insurance Group has a pre-tax profit of more than $1 billion for the nine months closing 30 September 2017.
Underwriting profit at BH Primary Group of $0.4 billion, as well as $3.6 billion of investment income easily subsumed the trifecta that was HIM; and the Insurance segment still provided an extra billion dollars of walking around money.