Berkshire Hethaway is an Omaha, Nebraska-based colossus under the wing of legendary investor Warren Buffett. The holding has several subsidiaries that operate, for example, in insurance, energy, transport or wholesale. Buffet's company has more than 90 companies under management. An investor who wants to include this company in his portfolio has two choices.
Berkshire has a class A shares (BRK-A) and a class B shares (BRK-B). The most notable difference between these shares is their price. The "A" shares trade at approximately one thousand times the price of the "B" shares. Class A shares have the status of being the most expensive shares in the world. This is because the shares have never been split and dividends have been paid only during their existence. Buffett has stated that there will not even be a split during his reign. He justifies this by saying that this product is meant to be an attraction especially for long-term investors who are thinking about investing for the long term. The price of these shares is currently hovering just outside the $430,000 mark. The lower-tier shares trade only on a fragment of common stocks, but they also fall in the S&P 500 index. Owners of these shares have considerably less voting rights. However, their advantage is that they are more accessible to smaller investors.
Performance of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. in 5 years. Source: tradingview.com
Berkshire Hathaway reported a solid increase in operating profits in the third quarter of this year. In this reporting section, Warren's company recorded $7.78 billion, up 20% year-over-year. The profit in the area of investment insurance was over one billion and four hundred million, which is - again in a year-on-year comparison - almost two hundred and fifty million higher. The Omaha giant bought back over a billion dollars worth of stock in the past quarter. However, the company did not only report profit figures. The loss was nearly 2.7 billion, mainly due to the wild volatility and uncertainty in the market, which affected most of the companies Berkshire has under management. However, Warren assured the public after the earnings report, that any losses within the investments were "mostly insignificant" in the order of one quarter. The company's shares outperformed the shares of any other company most of the time. The company's A shares, with their 4% downside, only "stumbled" compared to the 20% decline in the S&P 500 index.*
* Past performance is no guarantee of future results.
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