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BRK-B, Berkshire Hathaway Inc.
Berkshire Hathaway is a holding company. It owns insurance businesses outright and puts the premiums it holds before claims come due — the float — to work as investable capital, and it owns whole operating companies in railroad, energy, manufacturing, services, and retail and wholesale distribution, alongside large stakes in public companies. It earns money two ways: the profits of the businesses it controls, and the return on the capital it invests.
The business
What it sells, where the money comes from, the kind of company it is.
The business in brief
read the 10-K →What this business is and what moves its needle, from its own SEC filings.
- What it is
- Revenue is led by Insurance Corporate and Other (29%) and Manufacturing (21%), with 5 more segments behind.
- What moves the needle
- The enduring test is whether the float can be had cheaply — through underwriting that does not lose money over the cycle — and whether the capital it frees can be placed at a worthwhile return, a harder task the larger the pile that must be put to work. Many of the owned businesses look like price-takers rather than franchises: the distribution arm runs on thin margins and leans on a few large customers, and the building-products lines meet demand and pricing they do not set. So the question is not the breadth of the holdings but the discipline of the underwriting and the quality of each dollar reinvested; the record below carries the margins and the returns.
Drafted from the company's filings and reviewed by hand; every number is shown in full in the sections below.
Where the money comes from
read the 10-K →Revenue spreads across 7 segments, the largest Insurance Corporate And Other at 29%.
- Insurance Corporate And Other29%$108.4B
- Manufacturing21%$78.4B
- McLane14%$50.2B
- Service and Retailing11%$42.6B
- PTC11%$42.2B
- BHE7%$26.3B
- BNSF6%$23.4B
From the segment footnote of the company's own 10-K. Shares are of total revenue; the profit bar shows each segment's share of segment operating profit, before unallocated corporate costs.
The record
Ten years of arithmetic, read across the cycle.
The record, 2016–2025
realized figures from each filing · older years to the left| 2016’16 | 2017’17 | 2018’18 | 2019’19 | 2020’20 | 2021’21 | 2022’22 | 2023’23 | 2024’24 | 2025’25 | TTMTTMMar 2026 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Income statement | |||||||||||
| $215.1B | $239.9B | $247.8B | $254.6B | $245.6B | $276.2B | $302.0B | $364.5B | $371.4B | $371.4B | $375.4B | RevenueRevenue |
| $24.3B | $18.7B | $28.6B | $28.9B | $14.3B | $32.4B | $35.5B | $43.3B | $55.7B | $53.0B | $21.6B | Operating incomeOp. inc. |
| 11.3% | 7.8% | 11.5% | 11.4% | 5.8% | 11.7% | 11.8% | 11.9% | 15.0% | 14.3% | 5.8% | Operating marginOp. mgn |
| $24.1B | $44.9B | $4.0B | $81.4B | $42.5B | $89.9B | ($22.8B) | $96.2B | $89.0B | $67.0B | $72.5B | Net incomeNet inc. |
| 28% | — | -9% | 20% | 23% | 19% | — | 19% | 19% | 18% | 19% | Effective tax rateTax rate |
| Cash flow & returns | |||||||||||
| $32.6B | $45.7B | $37.4B | $38.7B | $39.8B | $39.4B | $37.4B | $49.2B | $30.6B | $46.0B | $45.5B | Operating cash flowOp. cash |
| $8.9B | $9.2B | $9.8B | $10.1B | $10.6B | $10.7B | $10.9B | $12.5B | $12.9B | $13.5B | $13.7B | DepreciationDeprec. |
| ($328M) | ($8.4B) | $23.6B | ($52.8B) | ($13.3B) | ($61.2B) | $49.2B | ($59.5B) | ($71.3B) | ($34.5B) | ($40.7B) | Working capital & otherWC & other |
| $13.0B | $11.7B | $14.5B | $16.0B | $13.0B | $13.3B | $15.5B | $19.4B | $19.0B | $20.9B | $21.6B | CapexCapex |
| 6.0% | 4.9% | 5.9% | 6.3% | 5.3% | 4.8% | 5.1% | 5.3% | 5.1% | 5.6% | 5.8% | Capex / revenueCapex/rev |
| $23.7B | $36.5B | $27.6B | $28.6B | $26.8B | $26.2B | $26.5B | $36.7B | $17.7B | $32.5B | $31.8B | Owner earningsOwner earn. |
| 11.0% | 15.2% | 11.1% | 11.2% | 10.9% | 9.5% | 8.8% | 10.1% | 4.8% | 8.7% | 8.5% | Owner earnings marginOE mgn |
| $19.7B | $34.0B | $22.9B | $22.7B | $26.8B | $26.2B | $21.9B | $29.8B | $11.6B | $25.0B | $23.9B | Free cash flowFCF |
| 9.2% | 14.2% | 9.2% | 8.9% | 10.9% | 9.5% | 7.2% | 8.2% | 3.1% | 6.7% | 6.4% | Free cash flow marginFCF mgn |
| $31.4B | $2.7B | $3.3B | $1.7B | $2.5B | $456M | $10.6B | $8.6B | $396M | $1.1B | $10.7B | AcquisitionsAcquis. |
| — | — | $1.3B | $4.8B | $24.7B | $27.1B | $7.9B | $9.2B | $2.9B | — | — | BuybacksBuybacks |
| 9% | 13% | 1% | 19% | 10% | 21% | -5% | 17% | 14% | 9% | 10% | Return on equityROE |
| 9% | 13% | 1% | 19% | 10% | 21% | −5% | 17% | 14% | 9% | 10% | Retained to equityRetained/eq |
| Balance sheet | |||||||||||
| $28.0B | $31.6B | $30.8B | $64.6B | $48.4B | $88.7B | $36.4B | $38.6B | $48.4B | $52.6B | $58.8B | Cash & investmentsCash+inv |
| $15.7B | $17.4B | $19.1B | $19.9B | $19.2B | $21.0B | $25.4B | $25.9B | $24.0B | $24.4B | $25.5B | InventoryInvent. |
| $15.7B | $17.4B | $19.1B | $19.9B | $19.2B | $21.0B | $25.4B | $25.9B | $24.0B | $24.4B | $25.5B | Operating working capitalOper. WC |
| $79.5B | $81.3B | $81.0B | $81.9B | $73.7B | $73.9B | $78.1B | $84.6B | $83.9B | $83.1B | $83.2B | GoodwillGoodwill |
| $620.9B | $702.1B | $707.8B | $817.7B | $873.7B | $959.4B | $948.5B | $1.07T | $1.15T | $1.22T | $1.25T | Total assetsAssets |
| 6.5× | 4.3× | 7.4× | 7.3× | 3.5× | 7.8× | 8.2× | 8.7× | 10.7× | 10.4× | 4.2× | Interest coverageInt. cov. |
| $282.1B | $348.3B | $348.7B | $424.8B | $443.2B | $436.7B | $473.4B | $561.3B | $649.4B | $717.4B | $727.2B | Shareholders’ equityEquity |
| — | — | — | $90M | $10.0B | — | — | — | — | — | $10.7B | Goodwill written downGW imp. |
The year, in the company's words
the filing →Verbatim from the 10-K's management discussion. Each sentence is shown only because its subject, direction, and stated figures check out against the filed numbers on this page. The words are the company's; the arithmetic is the record's.
- McLane-1.7%
“McLane’s retail and restaurant businesses generate very high sales volumes and low profit margins. 2025 versus 2024 McLane’s revenues declined $909 million (1.8%) in 2025 compared to 2024, reflecting one less week in its fiscal year, lower volumes and higher prices attributable to inventory cost inflation.”
✓ figure matches the filed record
Owner earnings vs. net income
Owner earningsNet incomeThe accountant's number, and the cash an owner can take; the gap is the tell.
Where the cash went
ReinvestBuybacksDividendsAcquisitionsRetainedBeyond op. cashEach year's outlays against its operating cash: the mix, and how it drifts. The hatched cap is spending beyond that year's operating cash — financed from the balance sheet or borrowing, not operations.
Net income is the accountant's number; owner earnings is the cash an owner could take out. The walk between them, off the cash-flow statement, and whether the gap is widening or holding.
In fiscal 2025 the business earned $32.5B of owner earnings, the operating cash left after the $13.5B it takes just to hold its position. It put $7.5B more into growth; free cash flow, after that spending, was $25.0B.
| FY2025 | FY2024 | FY2023 | FY2022 | FY2021 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reported net income | $67.0B | $89.0B | $96.2B | ($22.8B) | $89.9B |
| Depreciation & amortizationnon-cash charge added back | +$13.5B | +$12.9B | +$12.5B | +$10.9B | +$10.7B |
| Working capital & othertiming of cash in and out, other non-cash items | −$34.5B | −$71.3B | −$59.5B | +$49.2B | −$61.2B |
| Cash from operations | $46.0B | $30.6B | $49.2B | $37.4B | $39.4B |
| Maintenance capital expenditurethe spending needed just to hold position and volume | −$13.5B | −$12.9B | −$12.5B | −$10.9B | −$13.3B |
| Owner earnings | $32.5B | $17.7B | $36.7B | $26.5B | $26.2B |
| Growth capital expenditurediscretionary; spent to get bigger, not to stand still | −$7.5B | −$6.1B | −$6.9B | −$4.6B | — |
| Free cash flow | $25.0B | $11.6B | $29.8B | $21.9B | $26.2B |
| Owner-earnings marginowner earnings ÷ revenue | 9% | 5% | 10% | 9% | 9% |
Owner earnings is the cash an owner could pull out without starving the business: operating cash less the maintenance capital it must spend to hold its position (here about $13.5B, roughly its depreciation, the rate its assets wear out). The other $7.5B of its capital spending is growth it chose, not upkeep it owed; charged only with the maintenance it must do, the business earns well more than the year's free cash flow shows.
Much of fiscal 2025's profit didn't arrive as operating cash; it sits in “working capital & other” above. That can be a real inventory or timing swing, or profit that doesn't run through operating cash at all: a heavy tax year, equity-method earnings, or investment income booked through investing. For a year like this, owner earnings understates the cash earned; the full cash-flow statement carries the rest.
Maintenance capex is estimated as depreciation where a growing business invests above it; free cash flow is the figure the scorecard's free-cash margin reads.
Quality & stewardship
Returns, the balance sheet, capital allocation, and pay.
Owner’s Scorecard
Will it survive?
- AdequateOperating income $20.1B ÷ interest expense $5.1B
What this means
Comfortable in a normal year, but below the margin of safety Graham looked for. Worth checking how stable the coverage has been across a full cycle.
- Debt under-captured — leverage unknown, not low
What this means
This company pays far more interest than its tagged debt implies (the rest sits under segment dimensions the data source strips), so its net cash or net debt cannot be read honestly: the gap is unknown, not zero, and 'net cash' here would be exactly the fiction the figure is meant to prevent. Judge it on the record and owner earnings instead.
- Not enough data
What this means
The filing data didn't include the inputs for this check.
Is it a good business?
- Debt under-capturedIndustry peers: median 15%
What this means
This company's interest bill implies far more debt than its filings tag at the consolidated level (the rest sits under segment dimensions the data source strips), so invested capital, and the return on it, cannot be read honestly. Judge this one on Owner Earnings and the record instead.
- Solid through the cycle10-yr median margin, range 5%–15%; latest $32.5B = operating cash $46.0B − maintenance capex $13.5BIndustry peers: median 1%
What this means
What an owner could take out without starving the business: operating cash less the maintenance capital it must spend to hold its position — Buffett's owner earnings. That's 9% of revenue this year, a 10% median across 10 years. It chose to put $7.5B more into growth, so free cash flow this year was $25.0B — the gap is investment, not weakness.
- Mostly cash-backedCash from ops $46.0B ÷ net income $67.0B
What this means
How much of reported profit showed up as operating cash. Above 1× is reassuring; well below suggests earnings lean on accruals. One year is noisy, growth and working-capital swings distort it, and this is operating cash, not free cash. Watch the multi-year trend.
How is the cash used?
- Reinvests most of itDividends + buybacks $2.9B ÷ Owner Earnings $32.5B
What this means
Of $32.5B Owner Earnings, $2.9B (9%) went back to shareholders, $0 dividends, $2.9B buybacks. Returning most of it is the mark of a mature business with little left to reinvest at a high return; reinvesting most could mean a long runway, or empire-building. The split doesn't say which; the return earned on it (see ROIC) does.
- Investing or harvesting? 1.55×ExpandingCapex $20.9B ÷ depreciation $13.5B
What this means
Descriptive, not a grade. Above ~1× means investing faster than assets wear out (growth, or, sustained for years, today's earnings carrying less depreciation than tomorrow's will). Below means spending less than it's wearing out (efficiency, or a melting asset base). The ratio won't tell you which; the filings will.
Graham’s defensive tests · 2 of 4 met
Graham’s numerical criteria for the defensive investor (The Intelligent Investor, ch. 14), run on the filings. A floor of safety, not a buy signal; many fine modern businesses fail his strictest liquidity rules by design.
- Adequate size PassRevenue ≥ $2B · $371.4B
What this means
Big enough to weather a storm. Graham's 1972 floor was ~$100M of sales (≈ $700M today); we use a $2B revenue line as a conservative modern stand-in.
- Strong liquidity —Current ratio ≥ 2× · —
What this means
Current assets / liabilities not in the data yet.
- Earnings stability NearA profit every year (10-yr record) · 1 loss year
What this means
Graham wanted earnings in each of the past ten years, the stability a defensive owner leans on.
- Dividend record MissUninterrupted dividends · none paid
What this means
An unbroken dividend was Graham's mark of durability. He wanted twenty years; the filings show about ten, and a single suspension breaks the streak. Non-payers, many fine modern compounders, fall outside his defensive net by design.
- Earnings growth PassEarnings +33% over the record · +245%
What this means
At least a third more earnings than a decade ago, averaging three years at each end. Net income (not per-share), so stock splits don't distort it, buybacks and dilution show up in the share-count line instead.
- Moderate price —P/E ≤ 15 and P/E × P/B ≤ 22.5 · decided by the price
What this means
Graham's valuation gate, the wall he kept between a sound business and a sound investment. Three-year average earnings are $38.97/share (latest year $31.05), the averaged base the calculator's gate runs on, and book value is $332.62/share. Enter a price in “What the price implies” just below for the P/E, P/B, and whether it clears. But this is the rule Buffett outgrew: there's no hard P/E law, and a wonderful business can deserve a far richer multiple if the thesis holds, treat it as the bargain-hunter's floor, not a verdict on the price.
Durability & moat, 2016–2025
Whether the record’s returns held, and what the capital reinvested earned.
- Profitable years 9 of 10
What this means
Lost money in 1 year(s), look at what happened there before trusting the average.
- Operating margin 10% → 14% (3-yr avg ends)
What this means
Through the cycle the operating margin widened — about 10% early to 14% lately, median 12% — pricing power intact or improving.
- Owner earnings growth −2%/yr
What this means
Owner earnings shrank about 2% a year over the record.
- Worst year 2020 · 5.8% op. margin
What this means
Stayed profitable even in its hardest year, the resilience that survives recessions.
Does AI threaten the moat?
Low contestabilityThe moat is physical, regulated or balance-sheet-funded, the kind AI cuts costs within but does not contest.
The filing raises AI among its risks, but in other terms (security, regulation, energy or the like), not as a competitor to its product.
AI is unlikely to contest a moat that is physical, regulated or balance-sheet-funded; here it reads more as a cost tool than a threat.
Read from the filing's own risk factors, paired with the industry's structure under its SIC code; the durability is read above, the price below.
All figures as filed; the source filing is linked above.
Lease obligations
the lease note, SEC EDGAR →Debt by another name. What the business owes on the property, aircraft, stores and equipment it rents rather than owns is a fixed claim due on a schedule; added back to the debt, it is the true leverage. That ladder, and what it adds to the debt on the page above.
Lease payments by year, scaled to the largest; “later” is everything beyond year five, shown apart. These are the contractual cash payments, before the interest the filing imputes back out to the balance-sheet liability.
True leverage: debt plus leases
Counting the leases the way Buffett does, the fixed claims on this business come to $6.3B, of which the leases are 100%, more than the debt itself. The lease wall above and the debt schedule together are the calendar of what must be paid, and when.
Lease ladder read from the ASC 842 tags in the company’s Dec 31, 2025 annual report and reconciled: the yearly buckets sum to the undiscounted total, which less the imputed interest equals the balance-sheet liability; a ladder that doesn’t tie out is withheld.
How the cash was used, 2016–2025
Over the record, the business generated $396.8B of operating cash; how management split it reads as a balanced allocator, splitting cash between the business, owners, and the balance sheet.
- Reinvested$156.2B · 39%
- Buybacks$77.9B · 20%
- Retained (debt / cash)$162.6B · 41%
- Returned to owners$77.9B
28% of the owner earnings the business produced over the span, $0 as dividends and $77.9B as buybacks.
- Average price paid for buybacks—
Buybacks ran $77.9B over the span, but the filings don't tag the share count needed to deduce the average price paid.
- Net change in share count—
No continuous share count across the span.
- Dividend record—
No dividend line was reported in the filing data over the span; the record here neither confirms nor rules out a payout.
- Return on what it retained−0%
Of the earnings it kept rather than paid out ($438.4B over the span), annual owner earnings (first three years vs last three) fell $322M, so each retained $1 gave back about 0.00 of yearly owner earnings. Buffett's test, run on owner earnings instead of market value.
Buybacks are gross of stock issued to staff; the share-count line above is the net of that, the figure that decides whether owners gained. The average price paid blends a year of purchases (and any accelerated repurchase), so it is close, not exact. The record of where the cash went and on what terms.
Management, ownership & pay
read the proxy →From the proxy: how much of the business the people running it own, and how they are paid, beside what the business earned for its owners in the same years.
| Fiscal year | Chief executive | Pay, as filed | “Actually paid” | Owner earnings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | Warren E. Buffett | $373k | $373k | $26.2B |
| 2022 | Warren E. Buffett | $402k | $402k | $26.5B |
| 2023 | Warren E. Buffett | $414k | $414k | $36.7B |
| 2024 | Warren E. Buffett | $405k | $405k | $17.7B |
| 2025 | Warren E. Buffett | $389k | $389k | $32.5B |
Both pay figures are the company’s own, from the pay-versus-performance table its proxy statement files. “As filed” is the Summary Compensation Table total: salary, bonus, and equity awards at their value on the day of grant. “Actually paid” is the SEC’s prescribed recalculation, which re-marks those equity awards to what they became as they vested; it can swing far above or below the filed figure in either direction, and negative years occur. Owner earnings are the whole business's, from the record above, for the same fiscal years.
- Insider ownership<1%
The stake all directors and executive officers hold together, per the 2026 proxy: skin in the game, the first thing Munger reads.
Inverting the record
Invert: instead of why Berkshire Hathaway Inc. is a good business, the question is what would make owning it a mistake, and whether those marks are in the record. Disconfirming tests across 2016–2025.
2 of the 4 tests turned up something to look into; the other 2 came back clean.
- Look hereIs it less profitable than it was?7.9% vs 12.5%
The owner-earnings margin averaged 12.5% early in the record and 7.9% across the last three years, and the latest year has not recovered. Ask the filing whether that is a structural drift or a cyclical trough — price, mix, cost, or a competitor — and whether it is permanent.
- Look hereDid reported profit become cash?0.77×
Across the record the business reported $516.3B of net income but generated $396.8B of operating cash, a 0.77-to-one conversion. Profit that does not turn into cash over many years is the classic mark of earnings that are softer than they look. Ask where the gap sits, receivables, inventory, or costs being capitalized rather than expensed.
- Did receivables and inventory outpace sales?
- Are "one-time" charges a yearly habit?
Each test is read from the filings and is noisy alone; a flag can mark a cyclical trough or a year of heavy investment as easily as a problem. The filing says which.
Peers, nearest by economic model
No close industry peers in the catalog yet, so these are the nearest by economic model (general), compared on owner economics. Each figure is a through-cycle median, so a peak or trough year can’t distort it; the group median at the foot is the line to read each against.
| Company | Revenue | Gross margin | Op. margin | ROIC | Owner earn. margin |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MCKMcKesson Corporation | $403.4B | 5% | 1.2% | — | 2% |
| BRK-BBerkshire Hathaway Inc. | $371.4B | — | 11.6% | — | 10% |
| CORCencora Inc. | $321.3B | 3% | 0.8% | 38% | 1% |
| CAHCardinal Health Inc. | $222.6B | 4% | 0.5% | 14% | 1% |
| SYYSysco Corporation | $81.4B | 19% | 3.8% | 16% | 3% |
| ACNAccenture PLC | $69.7B | 32% | 14.6% | 54% | 14% |
| PFGCPerformance Food | $63.3B | 12% | 1.3% | 6% | 1% |
| INGMIngram Micro Holding Corporation | $52.6B | 7% | 1.8% | 10% | 0% |
| Group median | — | — | 1.6% | — | 2% |
The price
What a price has to assume.
What the price implies
reverse-DCFType today's close and see the owner-earnings growth you'd have to believe to justify it, beside what Berkshire Hathaway Inc. has delivered.
Through the cycle, Berkshire Hathaway Inc. earns about $38.9B on its 10.5% median owner-earnings margin. This year’s 8.7% margin runs below that; the reported figure may understate a lean year. Normalize, below, values the price on that through-cycle figure rather than the latest year.
—
9.0% = the 4.55% 10-year Treasury (Jul 15, 2026) + 4.45 points of equity premium. The rate you require is yours to set.
Enter a price above to run it.
A dated snapshot of the price you typed, the assumptions you set, and what the page showed for them. A snapshot is never edited after it is saved. Your notebook is yours alone — the commitment states what is stored and what we will never do.
Graham capped the multiple at 15×; Buffett and Munger let that rule go: a wonderful business can deserve 50× if the thesis holds. The gate marks the bargain-hunter's floor.
Prefilled with the 10-year Treasury (4.55%, as of Jul 15, 2026). Edit it for today’s exact figure, or a AAA corporate yield.
Graham measured a stock against the bond you could own instead, the heart of his margin of safety. Enter a price above to weigh the owner-earnings yield against this bond.
Free cash flow $23.9B on 2157M shares outstanding (a weighted cover-text B-equivalent, the only count this filer tags); net cash $58.8B. The base is the latest year by default; Normalize values it on the through-cycle median owner-earnings margin (to avoid paying on a peak year). Net of stock comp treats option pay as the expense it is. Capex ($21.6B) runs well above depreciation ($13.7B), so this is a build-out; Steady-state swaps total capex for maintenance (≈ depreciation), lifting the base to about $32.0B, the cash it would throw off if it stopped expanding. The dials set the multiple a growth belief justifies; the price, and every dollar on this page, is yours.
Manual order: ← BRK-A its page in the Manual BRKR →
Industry order: ← BRK-A the Insurance — Property & Casualty chapter CB →