Buffett’s Berkshire doubles profit

This article is more than 12 months old

Nov 05, 2018 06:00 am

NEW YORK Berkshire Hathaway Inc, the conglomerate run by billionaire Warren Buffett, on Saturday said its quarterly operating profit doubled as its insurance business dodged hurricanes and benefited from lower taxes.

The strong result gives Mr Buffett more cash to deploy even as theinvestor has admitted struggling to find a place to put those earnings to work and resorted to buying back US$928 million (S$1.28 billion) in his own company's stock in the latest quarter.

Operating profit in the third quarter doubled to US$6.88 billion from US$3.44 billion a year earlier, and higher than the US$6.11 billion expected by Wall Street, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.

"This is absolutely one of the biggest quarterly earnings reports that has ever come out of a US corporation,"said Mr Bill Smead, chief executive of Smead Capital Management, a Berkshire shareholder.

Berkshire's Class A shares closed Friday at US$308,411.01 per share, delivering a return of 3.6 per cent for the year. - REUTERS