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Berkshire Hathaway’s money pile soared to a file $334.2bn on the finish of final yr, as Warren Buffett dumped shares and raked in billions of {dollars} in curiosity from the group’s huge holdings of Treasury payments.
Omaha-based Berkshire stated on Saturday that its money place rose by $9bn within the ultimate three months of final yr, as Buffett trimmed stakes in blue-chip US shares, together with multibillion-dollar gross sales of shares in Citigroup and Financial institution of America. The group’s money pile has nearly doubled over the previous yr.
The sprawling conglomerate reported working earnings of $47.4bn for 2024, up 27 per cent from 2023, led by a stronger efficiency by its insurance coverage enterprise.
The working outcomes exclude adjustments within the worth of Berkshire’s $272bn inventory portfolio, swings which Buffett has lengthy dismissed as largely meaningless.
Berkshire disposed of $143bn of shares in 2024, far surpassing the $9bn it ploughed into equities, and put a lot of the proceeds into short-term Treasury payments.
The group’s fourth-quarter outcomes have been launched together with Buffett’s annual letter to shareholders.
“In 2024, Berkshire did higher than I anticipated although 53 per cent of our 189 working companies reported a decline in earnings,” Buffett wrote to shareholders. “We have been aided by a predictable massive achieve in funding revenue as Treasury Invoice yields improved and we considerably elevated our holdings of those highly-liquid short-term securities.”
