(Please follow the full coverage of Berkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting. Warren Buffett will begin speaking at 9am.)
Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway reported its first quarter results on Saturday, indicating a sharp decline in operating revenues from the previous year. Conglomerates, which own a huge number of insurance, transportation, energy, retail and other businesses, also warned that tariffs could reach even more profits.
Operating profit, including the conglomerate’s wholly owned insurance and rail operations, fell 14% to $9.644 billion in the first three months of the year. In the first quarter of 2024, it totaled $11.22 billion.
Operating income per share was $4.47 in the last quarter, down from $5.20 per Class B share in the same period a year ago. This rivals the estimate of $4.89 per Class B share from UBS and the overall consensus estimate from four analysts at $4.72 per share per fact set.
Much of that decline was driven by a 48.6% drop in insurance-based profits. This was $1.34 billion in the first quarter, down from $2.6 billion the previous year. Berkshire said the Southern California wildfires caused $1.1 billion in the first quarter.
Berkshire revenues also hit a hit from the value that lost the dollar in the first quarter. The company said it suffered a loss of approximately $713 million related to foreign exchange. This time last year, we benefited from a $597 million foreign exchange profit.
The dollar index fell nearly 4% in the first quarter. We lost 4.6% against the Japanese yen.
Tariff uncertainty
Berkshire said President Donald Trump’s tariffs and other geopolitical risks have created an uncertain environment for BNSF railroad owners, Brooks Running, Geico Insurance owners and conglomerates. The company said it cannot predict the potential impact of tariffs at this time.
“Our regular operating results may be affected in future periods due to ongoing macroeconomic and geopolitical events and industry or company-specific factors or changes in events,” Berkshire said in its revenue report. “The pace of change in these events, including international trade policies and tariffs, accelerated in 2025. There remains a considerable amount of uncertainty regarding the ultimate outcome of these events.”
“We cannot currently predict potential impacts on businesses, such as product costs changes, supply chain costs, efficiency, and customer demand for products and services,” he said.
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2025 brk.a vs S&P 500
Berkshire’s cash storage swelled to fresh records in the first quarter, rising from around $334 billion to more than $347 billion at the end of 2024, indicating that Buffett did not deploy money using the first quarter drop on the stock market. In fact, Berkshire has been a net seller of stocks for consecutive 10th quarter.
The company’s overall revenues also plummeted nearly 64% year-on-year. That said, Berkshire is always advised to look past these quarter changes.
“Income (loss) for a particular quarter is usually pointless and provides a net profit figure that can be highly misleading for investors with little or no knowledge of accounting rules,” Berkshire’s release said.
This report comes as Berkshire enjoys its annual performance, while the broader market is struggling. In 2025, Berkshire’s Class A stocks rose nearly 19%, while the S&P 500 fell 3.3% in uncertainty from tariff pressure technology and other sectors.
– CNBC’s Yun Li contributed the report.
