Saturday, August 7th, 2021
Cash inventory is shrinking slightly
Buffett increases profits sharply
The holding company of investment legend Warren Buffett presents strong figures: Berkshire earned a fifth more in the second quarter than in the previous year. The 90-year-old’s cash also remains plentiful. The wait for a big takeover continues.
The recovery from the corona crisis helped US star investor Warren Buffett’s investment company to make significantly more profits in the second quarter. In the three months to the end of June, the operating profit increased compared to the same period last year by a good 21 percent to 6.7 billion dollars (5.7 billion euros), as the conglomerate announced.
Berkshire Hathaway also put another $ 6.0 billion into buying back its own shares. In the first half of 2021, the company said it spent $ 12.6 billion on this type of course maintenance.
Berkshire Hathaway can afford it. Even though cash on hand fell 1.4 billion from the previous quarter, Buffett’s investment holding still had cash of around $ 144 billion at the end of the quarter.
The financial markets have been looking forward to a really big deal by the 90-year-old stock market guru for years, but Buffett is having a hard time finding suitable targets for investments and takeovers in view of the high valuations. The star investor has been increasingly using Berkshire Hathaway’s enormous cash reserves for share buybacks since the end of 2019.
Buffett’s Holding posted net income of $ 28.1 billion in the most recent quarter, a seven percent year-over-year increase. Since the accounting rules stipulate that unrealized investment gains and losses are also shown here, this balance sheet value is, however, highly prone to fluctuations and not very meaningful with regard to the actual course of business. Berkshire Hathaway owns around 90 companies, plus various blocks of shares in large listed corporations such as Bank of America, Coca-Cola and Apple.
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