Posted on 08/06/2010 2:45:14 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc (BRKa.N) (BRKb.N) on Friday said second-quarter profit fell 40 percent, as declining stock prices depressed the value of his derivative contracts.
Operating profit nevertheless soared 73 percent, helped by the takeover of railroad operator Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp, improvement in insurance underwriting results, and a turnaround in performance at the NetJets corporate plane unit.
Net income fell to $1.97 billion, or $1,195 per Class A share, from $3.3 billion, or $2.123, a year earlier.
Excluding investments, operating profit rose to $3.07 billion, or $1,866 per share, from $1.78 billion, or $1,147.
Analysts on average expected operating profit of $1,360 per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
Berkshire recorded $1.41 billion of losses on derivatives, including long-term contracts tied to equity indexes, compared with a year-earlier $1.53 billion profit.
Book value per Class A share, Buffett's preferred measure for performance, fell 3 percent to $86,661 as of June 30 from $89,374 as of March 31.
Results included $603 million of profit from Burlington Northern, in the first full quarter since Berkshire in February paid $26.5 billion for the 77.5 percent it did not already own of the second-largest U.S. railroad company.
Insurance operations, Berkshire's biggest business, saw operating profit jump 23 percent to $1.55 billion, including a sevenfold increase in underwriting profit to $462 million.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Perhaps he won’t be giving away squat! lol
Billionaire investor Warren Buffett (R) and Microsoft Corporation founder Bill Gates (L) at Columbia University in New York, November 12, 2009. More than 30 U.S. billionaires pledged on Wednesday to give away at least 50 percent of their wealth to charity as part of a campaign by investor Buffett and Gates. REUTERS/Mike Segar/Files
He may get his wish well before his death.
What a shame. Couldn’t happen to a nicer POS. I wonder if he’ll now stop lecturing the rest of us about how we need to pay higher taxes.
I hope it tanks to $0.05 a share, screw that POS Obama supporter Buffet
Buffett loves OBama.
I don't even care to eat at Dairy Queen anymore because I know he owns a piece of that. Even now that ObaMao has thrown him under the bus, he won't speak out and recant his endorsement. I could have a little respect for him if he did.
Ditto for that fool Colin Powell. He should have known better as well.
Operating profit nevertheless soared 73 percent, helped by the takeover of railroad operator Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp, improvement in insurance underwriting results, and a turnaround in performance at the NetJets corporate plane unit.
Looks like Warren may end up giving away half of his wealth on half of his wealth.
Live by the sword, die by the sword ...
It was a helluva run..
If you could afford the shares a few years ago, them dividend checks must have looked mighty nice when they came.. sigh,, the bush years raised all the boats including buffett and his barge
speaking of sword.. (I saw Conan on the tube last night.. geeesh). wilt looked a lot shorter to me in this version for some reason. (drink) :-)
and to add insult, Buffett gave us aRnold the SChwarzenKennedy too .. talk about shooting oneself in the foot..
Thank goodness all Soros had on the shelf was Airoheadianna Huffington.
"We didn't truly know the dangers of the [DERIVATIVES] market, because it was a dark market," says Brooksley Born, the head of an obscure federal regulatory agency -- the Commodity Futures Trading Commission [CFTC] -- who not only warned of the potential for economic meltdown in the late 1990s, but also tried to convince the country's key economic powerbrokers to take actions that could have helped avert the crisis. "They were totally opposed to it," Born says. "That puzzled me. What was it that was in this market that had to be hidden?"
And in 2002 Warren Buffet declared derivatives to be weapons of mass financial destruction
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