Berkshire Hathaway Swings To Big Profit

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published

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Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.B, BRK.A) announced it made $3.6 billion in the first quarter compared to a loss of $1.5 billion in the year ago period. All of the improvement was in the company’s operating earnings which went from $1.7 billion last year to $2.2 billion in the most recent quarter.

The company also had a profit in its investment portfolio and in the part of the financial statement that reflects derivative losses and gains.

The investment and derivative portion of earning was $1.4 billion compared to $3.3 billion last year, during the credit crisis and March 2009 market sell-off

Berkshire Hathaway Inc.
Preliminary First Quarter After-Tax Earnings
(in millions)
2010
2009
Insurance – underwriting $ 226 $ 202
Insurance – investment income 938 1,004
Total insurance 1,164 1,206
Regulated businesses 555 268
Manufacturing, service & retailing 477 258
Finance 69 68
Other (43 ) (95 )
Operating earnings 2,222 1,705
Investment and derivative gains/losses 1,411 (3,239 )
Net earnings $ 3,633 $ (1,534 )

Douglas A. McIntyre

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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