Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc on Friday reported a 77 percent drop in third-quarter earnings, hurt by declining insurance profits and a US$1.01 billion investment loss.
Net income fell to US$1.06 billion, or US$682 per Class A share, in the quarter ending Sept. 30. That’s down sharply from profit a year ago of US$4.55 billion, or US$2,942 per share, which included a US$2 billion gain aided by the sale of PetroChina stock.
Berkshire generated US$27.9 billion in revenue during the quarter, down from US$29.9 billion a year ago.
Berkshire began the year with an unrealized US$1.67 billion loss on its derivative contracts and posted a pretax loss of US$2.21 billion on these contracts through the first nine months of the year.
But Berkshire has no plans to sell the long-term derivative contracts before they mature, and Buffett has predicted they will ultimately be profitable.
Andy Kilpatrick, stockbroker and author who wrote Of Permanent Value: The Story of Warren Buffett, said he was impressed with the results Buffett delivered, given the difficult economic environment.
“Very few people are making money,” Kilpatrick said. “He’s still making money with some extraordinary paper losses.”
Berkshire finished the third quarter with US$33.4 billion cash on hand. That is up from the end of the second quarter when the company had US$31.2 billion cash on hand.
Year to date, Berkshire’s net worth slipped to US$120.15 billion from US$120.73 billion, but price declines in investments and increased liability for equity index put option contracts last month accounted for a US$9 billion decline in net worth.
Through the first three quarters of this year, Berkshire generated a net income of US$4.88 billion, or about US$3,149 per share.
That’s down from the US$10.27 billion, or about US$6,644 per share, that Berkshire reported a year ago.
Berkshire owns more than 60 subsidiaries including insurance, clothing, furniture, candy companies, restaurants, natural gas and corporate jet firms. Berkshire also has major investments in such companies as Coca-Cola Co, Anheuser-Busch Cos. and Wells Fargo Co.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day