Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK.B), Financial Analysis

Insights derived from analysing SEC filings. Independent analysis of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Class B common stock, not a publication of the SEC. Figures are read from the FY2025 Form 10-K filed 2 March 2026, the Form 10-Q for the quarter ended 30 June 2026 filed 10 August 2026, and the current reports, proxy statement and Section 16 forms listed in Sources. Market prices are last trades on 2 September 2026. Amounts are United States dollars, in millions unless marked otherwise.

The argument

Revenue stagnated and reported earnings fell. FY2025 revenue of $371,444m was $11m above FY2024, while earnings before income taxes fell $27,917m to $82,459m, and the fall is marks: investment and derivative gains dropped to $39,078m from $52,799m and equity method results turned to $(9,590)m from $1,841m. Operating earnings after tax fell 6.2% to $44,486m, the only decline of the five years. Core return on average equity of 6.3% is the lowest of the nine property and casualty filers compared in chapter 4, and the cause is revenue mix: McLane and Pilot Travel Centers supply 25.3% of segment revenue and 1.7% of segment pretax earnings. Capital policy changed with the chief executive: Berkshire repurchased nothing in 2025, restarted on 4 March 2026, had bought $4,762m of stock by 30 June 2026, Greg Abel bought 21 Class A shares on the open market the day the restart was disclosed, and 46.4% of the key person risk factor was rewritten to name him as the holder of capital allocation authority. BRK.B at $506.90 trades at 1.46 times the 30 June 2026 book value, with $326.33 a share of investments behind it, so the three year outcome turns on the multiple applied to the $180.57 a share of operating businesses.

1 Revenue & Business Model

Berkshire sells insurance and uses the policyholder money it holds to own an industrial and consumer conglomerate. FY2025 revenue was $371,444m, $11m above FY2024 and 7.7% a year above FY2021. Almost all of the four year growth came from two places. Insurance group revenue rose $29,090m to $104,212m, and Pilot Travel Centers added $42,198m after Berkshire took control in 2023. Strip both out and the other five segments compounded at 2.5% a year. BRK.B is a float funded owner of operating businesses whose reported earnings are set by marks on a concentrated equity portfolio.

How Berkshire makes money

Three engines produce revenue. Insurance underwriting earns premiums and generates float, which Item 1 of the FY2025 10-K puts at about $176bn at the end of 2025 against about $138bn at the end of 2020; the investment income that float earns sits inside insurance group revenue. Regulated capital intensive assets, BNSF and Berkshire Hathaway Energy, contributed $49,830m, or 13.4% of revenue. Everything else is sales, service and leasing at manufacturing, distribution and retailing subsidiaries run on a decentralised basis, employing 387,800 people at year end, about 80% of them in the United States. Combined statutory surplus of the United States insurers was about $333bn. Item 1 states that the investment portfolios hold a much greater proportion of equity securities than is customary in the insurance industry.

Table 1. Revenue by income statement caption, FY2025 (USD millions)

Sales and service revenues are the largest caption at 53.7% of revenue, and margin does not follow revenue. McLane turned $50,998m into $676m of pretax earnings, a margin of 1.33%, while the insurance group turned $104,212m into $24,721m, a margin of 23.7%. Revenue share and profit share are different questions at Berkshire, and chapter 4 measures what that costs the return on equity.

Revenue by segment

Table 2. Revenue by reportable segment, FY2021 to FY2025 (USD millions)

Insurance is the only segment that materially changed weight, from 27.2% of revenue in FY2021 to 28.1% in FY2025. Premiums earned rose 28.0% over four years as GEICO repriced and the primary group grew, and investment income on float rose 170.4% as short rates lifted the yield on the group's short term investments. FY2025 broke the pattern: investment income fell to $15,310m from $16,812m and insurance group revenue fell for the first time in the period, by $857m.

Table 3. Insurance group revenue by underwriting unit, FY2021 to FY2025 (USD millions)

Pilot moves the other way. Segment revenue fell 18.4% from FY2023 to FY2025, and FY2023 covered only the eleven months from 1 February, so the underlying decline is larger. Volume fell too: Item 1 of the FY2023 10-K reported over 16 billion gallons of fuel sold in 2023 and Item 1 of the FY2025 10-K about 10.9 billion in 2025, on disclosures that are not drawn on the same basis. BNSF and Berkshire Hathaway Energy are flat: freight revenue moved $251m across four years and utility revenue $1,201m. Manufacturing compounded at 3.4% a year, with industrial and commercial products at 7.9% while building products fell from $22,762m in FY2022 to $19,609m. Service and retailing is the quiet grower at 5.2% a year and added $2,773m in FY2025, the largest increase of any segment. Only it and manufacturing grew revenue in FY2025.

Revenue by region

Berkshire files one geographic disaggregation and no other: insurance premiums written, net, by geographic area. It publishes no geographic split of consolidated revenue, and Item 1 sends the reader to the segment note for everything else. The disclosure covers 23.9% of FY2025 revenue on a premiums earned basis, so it measures the international exposure of the insurance group.

Table 4. Insurance premiums written, net, by geographic area, FY2021 to FY2025 (USD millions)

The insurance book is getting more domestic. Premiums written outside the United States fell from 19.5% of the total in FY2021 to 17.3% in FY2025, because United States premiums compounded at 6.4% a year while Asia Pacific grew 0.9% and Western Europe 2.8%. Item 1 states that nearly 90% of Berkshire Hathaway Primary net premiums written in 2025 were in the United States. The rest of the group is domestic by construction: BNSF is a North American railroad, the utilities serve 5.4 million retail customers in western and midwestern states, McLane distributes in all 50 states, and Pilot operates travel centres across the United States and five Canadian provinces. The visible international assets are General Reinsurance AG in Cologne, Berkshire Hathaway Specialty branches in Asia and Europe, IMC with plants in eleven countries, Detlev Louis in Germany, and electricity distribution in Great Britain and Canada.

Revenue by product

Table 5. Revenue from contracts with customers by source, FY2021 to FY2025 (USD millions)

Revenue from contracts with customers was $247,244m in FY2025, 66.6% of revenue. The balance of $124,200m is insurance premiums, leasing and investment income, which fall outside the contracts standard. Fuel and distribution dominate the contract revenue mix: other retail and wholesale distribution, grocery and convenience distribution and food and beverage distribution together were $109,880m, carried mostly by the two thinnest margin segments in the group. The FY2025 10-K reclassifies FY2023 by moving Pilot fuel out of electricity, natural gas and fuel into other retail and wholesale distribution. FY2021 and FY2022 predate Pilot, so the five year series is on one basis.

What the revenue line does not carry

Revenue excludes investment and derivative gains and losses, which is where the earnings volatility lives. FY2025 earnings before income taxes of $82,459m contained $39,078m of investment and derivative gains against $51,714m from the operating segments and $1,257m from corporate items. Equity method results turned to $(9,590)m, of which $(4,393)m came from Kraft Heinz and $(5,302)m from Occidental Petroleum. Revenue moved $11m year on year while pretax earnings fell $27,917m. Headline earnings therefore track the portfolio; chapter 2 separates the portfolio from the businesses.

One structural change lands after the balance sheet date. Berkshire completed the purchase of Occidental Petroleum's chemicals business, OxyChem, on 2 January 2026 under an agreement dated 1 October 2025. OxyChem runs 21 United States plants and two international sites, is a top three North American producer of PVC, chlor alkali products and chlorinated organic chemicals, and reports inside manufacturing. No OxyChem revenue is in any figure in this chapter.

2 Financial Analysis & Ratios

Berkshire's reported earnings move with the stock market. Strip the equity marks out and the operating engine earned $44,486m after tax in FY2025, down 6.2% on FY2024 and the only decline of the five years shown. GAAP net earnings fell 24.8% to $66,968m because after tax investment gains fell from $58,873m in FY2023 to $30,737m and an $8,255m after tax impairment of the Kraft Heinz and Occidental equity method holdings landed in the same year. The balance sheet did the work instead: cash and Treasury bills reached $373,311m, 30.5% of total assets, against equity securities of $297,778m, and Berkshire repurchased no common stock at all. The first six months of 2026 reverse the earnings direction, with operating earnings up 17.0% and net earnings up 110.8%.

FY2021 and FY2022 are carried at the values restated for ASU 2018-12, adopted 1 January 2023 and applied retrospectively to 1 January 2021 in the FY2023 10-K.

Table 6. What changed, FY2025 against FY2024 (USD millions)

Insurance did the damage. Underwriting earnings fell $1,762m as each of GEICO, Berkshire Hathaway Primary and Berkshire Hathaway Reinsurance Group earned less, against after tax losses from significant catastrophe events of about $850m that include the Southern California wildfires. Insurance investment income fell $1,157m on lower interest rates and on large capital distributions from the insurance subsidiaries to the parent at the end of 2024, which moved that interest income into the other line rather than out of the group. The four operating businesses outside insurance all grew: BNSF 8.8% on lower operating expenses, Berkshire Hathaway Energy 6.7% on lower PacifiCorp wildfire accruals, manufacturing, service and retailing 4.4%. The $1,301m fall in other turns on a $1,792m after tax currency swing, from gains of $1,150m in FY2024 to losses of $642m in FY2025, partly offset by higher investment income.

Operating cash flow rose $15,377m on a fall in cash taxes paid, from $28,544m in FY2024 to $13,978m in FY2025. The FY2024 figure carried the tax on $143,400m of equity security disposals, which is why free cash flow was only $11,616m that year.

Revenue growth has stopped. The 20.7% jump in FY2023 is the consolidation of Pilot Travel Centers from 31 January 2023, which added $51,664m of FY2023 revenues. Since then revenue grew 1.9% in FY2024 and was flat in FY2025, up $11m on a $371bn base. Margin carried the earnings instead: operating pretax margin moved from an 11.7% to 11.9% band in FY2021 to FY2023 up to 15.0% in FY2024, then eased to 14.3%.

Table 7. Consolidated earnings and cash flow, FY2021 to FY2025 (USD millions)

The two series have almost nothing in common. Operating earnings compounded at 12.7% a year across the four years to FY2025. GAAP net earnings swung from $89,937m to a $22,759m loss and back to $96,223m over FY2021 to FY2023 on the mark to market of the equity portfolio alone. Berkshire states in the FY2025 10-K that investment gains and losses "are generally meaningless in understanding our reported periodic results or evaluating our periodic economic performance".

Table 8. GAAP to operating earnings, after tax and attributable to Berkshire (USD millions)

FY2021 and FY2022 are recast onto the FY2025 layout, which folds Pilot Travel Centers into manufacturing, service and retailing and folds noncontrolled businesses into other; the underlying lines are unchanged. The impairment line appears only in FY2025, so earlier years read n/a rather than zero, and the final ratio is not meaningful in FY2022, when net earnings were negative. The share of net earnings that comes from operations rose from 30.7% in FY2021 to 66.4% in FY2025 as the equity marks shrank.

Operating return on average equity sits in a 5.9% to 7.8% band and fell to 6.5% in FY2025. That is the number a shareholder buying the operating businesses earns, and it is low because equity of $717,419m carries unrealised gains on securities that generate no operating earnings. GAAP return on average equity of 9.8% in FY2025 is the same denominator with a numerator that moves with the market. Chapter 4 ranks that return against eight competitors on one definition.

Table 9. Ratio analysis, FY2021 to FY2025

Leverage fell every year from FY2022: borrowings to equity 25.9% to 18.0%, assets to equity 2.00x to 1.70x, operating pretax interest cover 8.17x to 10.45x. Liquidity rose on the same scale, with cash and Treasury bills covering borrowings 2.89 times against 1.05 times in FY2022. Asset turnover of 0.31x in FY2025 is the lowest of the five years, a direct consequence of holding $373,311m in Treasury bills that produce interest income rather than revenue.

The reweighting is the largest single change on the balance sheet. Cash and Treasury bills grew from $146,719m at the end of FY2021 to $373,311m at the end of FY2025, a $226,592m build, while equity securities fell from $350,719m to $297,778m. Borrowings are almost static at $114,262m to $129,081m across the five years, so the build is funded from retained operating earnings and from $143,400m of equity disposals in FY2024.

Float grew every year, from $147bn to $176bn, and cost less than nothing in four of the five years: pretax underwriting was positive in every year but FY2022 and the implied combined ratio has been below 100 since FY2023. The FY2025 margin of 10.6% sits below the 12.9% of FY2024 and well above the 1.6% and (0.03%) of FY2021 and FY2022. Underwriting is the swing factor in operating earnings: after tax it moved $9,050m between FY2022 and FY2024, against $7,534m for the other five lines added together.

Table 10. First six months 2026 against first six months 2025 (USD millions)

Revenue growth returned at 7.3% and operating pretax margin widened 1.6 points to 15.1%. Underwriting is close to flat at $3,448m against $3,328m, with GEICO pretax underwriting earnings down to $2,410m from $3,994m as the GEICO loss and loss adjustment expense ratio rose to 75.3% from 70.4%, offset by Reinsurance Group earnings of $1,286m against $343m. Insurance investment income fell again, 8.3%. Manufacturing, service and retailing grew 15.1%. The other line rose $2,461m, almost all of it a $2,165m currency swing on the senior notes of Berkshire and Berkshire Hathaway Finance Corporation denominated outside the dollar, from a $1,590m loss to a $575m gain.

Free cash flow fell 7.0% to $11,022m as capital expenditure rose 16.3% to $10,631m against operating cash flow up 3.2%. At 30 June 2026 cash and Treasury bills were $365,514m, equity securities $323,779m, borrowings $128,599m and shareholders' equity $747,910m.

Table 11. Quarterly revenue reconciled to the audited full year (USD millions)

The FY2021 and FY2022 differences in Table 11 are restatements rather than errors. Service revenues and other income in railroad, utilities and energy were restated from $6,052m to $6,161m between the FY2021 10-K and the FY2022 10-K, a $109m reclassification with no earnings effect, and premiums earned were restated from $69,478m to $69,460m on adoption of ASU 2018-12, a further $18m; together they account for the $91m. The $69m in FY2022 is premiums earned restated from $74,645m to $74,576m on the same adoption, applied retrospectively to 1 January 2021.

3 MD&A & Management Commentary

Berkshire gives no guidance, holds no earnings call and publishes no analyst deck. Management commentary reaches the market through three documents only: Item 7 of the Form 10-K, Part I Item 2 of the Form 10-Q, and the one page Exhibit 99.1 attached to each earnings Form 8-K. The Q2 2026 release says so itself: "The limited information that follows in this press release is not adequate for making an informed investment judgment." The MD&A is therefore the commentary, and in the year to 30 June 2026 it says four things: underwriting margin is being given back, rate driven investment income is shrinking, the industrial and rail businesses are carrying the operating result, and capital policy changed with the chief executive.

Operating earnings, the measure management builds the MD&A around, rose 17.0% in the first six months of 2026 to $24,329m from $20,801m. GAAP net earnings more than doubled to $35,773m from $16,973m. The two numbers move for different reasons and only one of them is management's own subject.

3.1 The trends management names

The label in the first column below is this analysis's. The second column is management's own wording, quoted where quotation marks appear.

Table 12. Trends management names, with source and date

3.2 Operating earnings against the GAAP headline

Management defines operating earnings as net earnings excluding investment gains and losses, impairments of goodwill and intangible assets, and other than temporary impairments of equity method investments. Over the six quarters to 30 June 2026 operating earnings ranged from $9,641m to $12,983m, a spread of 1.35 times, while GAAP net earnings ranged from $4,603m to $30,796m, a spread of 6.7 times.

Table 13. GAAP to operating earnings, as management presents it (USD millions, after tax)

The 2025 impairments are permanent. Berkshire wrote down Kraft Heinz and Occidental by $8,255m after tax, $3,760m in the second quarter and $4,495m in the fourth. These are equity method holdings, so the charge is a revaluation that does not reverse with the tape. Management excludes it from operating earnings and describes it in one sentence of the MD&A.

3.3 What is carrying the operating result

Five of the six operating lines grew in the first six months of 2026. Manufacturing, service and retailing added $1,008m, the largest contribution, on industrial products revenue up 25.5% helped by the OxyChem acquisition. BNSF added $255m on revenue up 9.8%. Insurance investment income fell $522m, the only decline, and management attributes all of it to lower short term rates.

The two ratios management reports against move in opposite directions. GEICO's combined ratio widened from 81.5% in 2024 to 84.7% in 2025 and 89.3% in the first six months of 2026. BNSF's operating ratio narrowed from 68.0% to 65.5% and held there. In cash terms GEICO's pretax underwriting earnings fell 39.7% to $2,410m in the first six months of 2026 and 45.4% to $994m in the second quarter alone. The $994m is premiums earned of $11,291m less losses and loss adjustment expenses of $8,644m less underwriting expenses of $1,653m, all three as printed in the Form 10-Q, and it agrees with the 91.2% total ratio the filing prints beside them.

Table 14. GEICO private passenger auto, as management states the drivers

Both sides of GEICO's ratio moved against it in 2026. Frequency turned positive across every coverage after falling in 2025, severity stayed in double digits on bodily injury, and management put 2.7 points of expense ratio increase down to commissions and advertising. Written premium grew 1.3%. GEICO is buying growth into a rising claim cost, and management said in the 10-K it expected competition and claim cost trends to press on underwriting earnings.

3.4 Float, rates and the cost of carry

Float reached about $177.5bn at 30 June 2026, up about $1.1bn since year end 2025. Management repeats each period that the average cost of float was negative, which it was in each of the three years to 31 December 2025 and in both halves compared. The income earned on that float is the part under pressure: insurance investment income fell to 23.6% of operating earnings in the first six months of 2026 from 30.1% a year earlier. Management gives one reason for the decline and repeats it in every filing: lower interest rates.

3.5 Capital, in management's own disclosure

Table 15. Capital and liquidity, as disclosed (USD billions unless stated)

Three capital statements changed in nine months, all of them filed rather than spoken. The Item 8.01 report of 4 March 2026 tied the start of repurchases to the leadership transition, and by 30 June 2026 Berkshire had bought $4.8bn of stock, about $4.5bn of it in the second quarter. Cash and Treasury Bills fell $9.8bn over the half while equity and fixed maturity holdings rose $25.2bn. Chapter 5 dates the officer changes that came with the handover, and chapter 9 prices the buybacks against book value.

Nancy Pierce took GEICO in December 2025 and reports a combined ratio 7.6 points wider in her first six months than in the same period a year earlier. The drivers management gives are claim frequency, claim severity, commissions and advertising, none of which the filings tie to the change of leadership.

3.6 Where management's framing and the numbers part company

Insurance underwriting growth is catastrophe absence and reserve releases. Management writes that underwriting earnings "increased 3.6% in the first six months of 2026", a gain of $120m after tax. The same filing discloses that after tax losses from significant catastrophe events were $850m in the first six months of 2025 and nil in 2026, and that reductions in prior accident years' claim estimates were far larger in 2026.

Table 16. Two items inside the first half underwriting result (USD millions, pretax, effect on underwriting earnings)

A positive figure adds to underwriting earnings, and catastrophe losses for the primary group are stated as approximately $300m in the first six months of 2025. Roughly $2.3bn pretax of support sits behind an after tax underwriting gain of $120m. Current accident year underwriting, on management's own component disclosure, went backwards, and GEICO's 45.4% second quarter decline is the visible part.

The other line is a currency translation. Other operating earnings rose from $73m to $2,534m in the first six months, the single largest contributor to the operating earnings increase. Management attributes the move "primarily" to currency on yen denominated borrowings: gains of $575m after tax in 2026 against losses of $1.59bn in 2025, a swing of about $2.17bn. Berkshire excludes equity marks from operating earnings on the argument that they carry no predictive value, and leaves an equally reversible currency translation inside the same measure. Against that, the borrowings are real liabilities, the accounting is required, and the disclosure of the amount is clear enough that any reader can strip it out.

The purchase price of OxyChem moved. The FY2025 Form 10-K states Berkshire acquired the business "for approximately $9.5 billion". The Q2 2026 Form 10-Q states "approximately $9.4 billion". The difference is $0.1bn on a completed transaction and is consistent with a closing adjustment settled after the 10-K was filed. It is not adjusted here.

3.7 The absence of an earnings call

Berkshire does not hold a quarterly earnings conference call. No transcript exists for any quarter in the review period, and the earnings release directs readers to the 10-Q instead. The only live management question and answer session is the annual meeting, held in Omaha on 2 May 2026, which Berkshire discloses on Form 8-K only for the vote results and the first quarter release attached to it. At that meeting, asked whether there is a point at which Berkshire should stop being a conglomerate, Greg Abel answered "Absolutely not", and said of the cash balance that if there is a "strong value proposition" Berkshire "will be prepared to act decisively and with significant capital. That's what it's there for." The filings show the follow through: $9.4bn for OxyChem, $6.8bn for Taylor Morrison, $4.8bn of buybacks and a $25.2bn rise in securities holdings, against a $9.8bn fall in cash and Treasury Bills.

Berkshire offers no forward numbers to model against. Every forward statement in Table 12 gives a direction only, with three exceptions that carry a figure: capital expenditure of about $15bn at BNSF and Berkshire Hathaway Energy in 2026, claim payments above $30bn in 2026, and interest on debt of $4.9bn in 2026 falling to $4.3bn in 2030.

4 Sector & Competitor Analysis

Berkshire is the largest filer in its SIC code by a factor of four and the least profitable of the nine on a like for like measure. Core revenue of $371.4bn in FY2025 is 4.3 times Progressive's $86.9bn, yet the core pretax margin of 14.3% sits below the peer median of 16.6% and the core return on average equity of 6.3% is the lowest in the set. The stock trades at 1.52 times closing book value against 1.32 times implied by the cross sectional fit of price to book on return on equity across the nine. Cash and Treasury bills of $373.3bn plus listed equities of $297.8bn together equal 61% of market capitalisation.

The sector backdrop cuts the other way. United States property and casualty carriers recorded a 92.9% combined ratio in 2025 against 96.6% in 2024, and property catastrophe rates fell 12% globally at the 1 January 2026 renewals. Berkshire's underwriting earnings moved against that improvement, falling to $9.46bn pretax from $11.41bn, with GEICO down to $6.82bn from $7.81bn.

4.1 The sector

The United States property and casualty market wrote $975.8bn of net premiums in 2025, up 5% on AM Best's count. Verisk and APCIA put net written premium at $971bn against $927bn in 2024 and record one of the strongest underwriting results in years: a $63bn underwriting gain against $23bn, on a 92.9% combined ratio. Policyholders' surplus reached $1.2trn while net income after tax fell to $148bn from $169bn.

Two forces set margins from here. Capital is abundant, and price follows capital: Guy Carpenter's rate on line index fell 12% globally and in the United States at 1 January 2026, and 15% in Europe. Verisk attributes the 2025 result to unusually low catastrophe losses rather than to a change in underlying risk, which makes the 92.9% combined ratio a cycle peak rather than a new level.

Table 17. United States property and casualty sector indicators, calendar 2025

Berkshire's insurance underwriting revenue of $88.9bn in FY2025 equals 9.1% of the $975.8bn written premium pool. The two figures are not on one basis: Berkshire reports earned premiums worldwide, the pool is United States written premium. The ratio sizes the company against the market and is not a market share.

4.2 The peer set and how it was chosen

The selection rule has two tiers, both anchored on the SIC code EDGAR assigns Berkshire, 6331, Fire, Marine and Casualty Insurance.

• Scale peers: United States listed 10-K filers under SIC 6331 with FY2025 revenue above $25bn. Six qualify: Progressive, Chubb, Allstate, Travelers, Hartford Insurance Group and American International Group.
• Structure peers: SIC 6331 filers that also consolidate operating businesses funded alongside insurance float, the feature that separates Berkshire from a pure carrier. Two qualify: Markel Group, which runs Markel Ventures, and Loews, which runs Boardwalk Pipelines, Loews Hotels and Altium Packaging.

CNA Financial meets the SIC and revenue tests and is excluded, because Loews consolidates CNA and including both would count the same underwriting book twice. Every filer in the set reports a fiscal year ended 31 December 2025, so no period adjustment is applied anywhere in this chapter.

Table 18. Peer set, selection rule and source filings

4.3 Like for like comparison

Insurance holding companies do not report a gross margin, and the revenue subtotal is not comparable as filed: Berkshire and Markel present investment gains below revenue, the other seven present them inside it. Three definitions are therefore applied identically to all nine.

• Core revenue removes net investment gains and losses and market risk benefit remeasurement from revenue wherever the filer reports them inside it.
• Core pretax earnings remove those same marks from pretax income, and also remove gains on business disposals and equity method impairment losses.
• Core return on average equity taxes core pretax at each filer's own FY2025 effective rate and divides by average parent equity.

Leverage is debt divided by debt plus total equity. Price to book is market capitalisation over closing parent equity.

Table 19. Like for like comparison, FY2025, fiscal year ended 31 December 2025

Market capitalisation uses the last traded price on 2 September 2026 and the share count on the 10-K cover page, dated between 30 January and 20 February 2026. Every filer in the table is priced on that same basis, so the comparison is like for like. Buybacks after the cover date are not captured, so price to book is marginally overstated for any filer that has retired stock since.

Progressive is the outlier on both growth and return: core revenue up 15.8%, a 38.4% core return on average equity and a 4.28 times book multiple. Chubb runs the widest core margin at 22.1% on 6.6% growth. Allstate's 39.5% return on average equity is flattered by a $1,603m gain on the disposal of a business, which the core measure removes and which cuts the core return to 35.1%. Berkshire and Markel occupy the same corner for the same reason: both consolidate low margin operating revenue alongside insurance.

4.4 Why Berkshire's core margin sits below the median

The gap is segment mix, and Figure 16 sizes it.

McLane and Pilot supply 25.3% of segment revenue and 1.7% of segment pretax earnings, on margins of 1.3% and 0.5%. Strip both and segment margin rises to 18.5% from 14.0%. The insurance group supplies 28.3% of revenue and 47.8% of earnings on a 23.7% pretax margin. BNSF is the best margin in the group at 30.5%.

The same mix explains flat group revenue. Insurance underwriting revenue rose 0.7% to $88,902m, service and retailing rose 7.0% and manufacturing rose 1.6%. Pilot fell 10.0% to $42,198m and McLane fell 1.8% to $50,998m, $5,602m of decline between them. Segment revenue fell $2,520m to $368,372m, corporate reconciling items and eliminations rose $2,531m to $3,072m, and consolidated core revenue finished at $371,444m against $371,433m.

Underwriting itself weakened while the sector improved. Berkshire's pretax underwriting earnings fell 17.1% to $9,460m, GEICO fell to $6,824m from $7,813m, and the reinsurance group fell to $1,851m from $2,737m. Against a sector combined ratio moving from 96.6% to 92.9%, that is underperformance of the cycle rather than participation in it. The $9,460m underwriting profit still means float carried a negative cost in FY2025, worth about 5.4% of the closing balance.

4.5 GAAP earnings against core earnings

Berkshire's reported pretax income of $82,459m contains $39,078m of investment gains, almost all of it the unrealised mark on the listed equity portfolio, and $9,590m of equity method losses driven by impairments at Kraft Heinz and Occidental Petroleum. Core pretax earnings are $52,971m, and the $29,488m adjustment is 35.8% of reported pretax income, the largest in the set. Markel's is 39.4% of a much smaller base. For the seven filers without a consolidated operating book the adjustment stays inside 29%, and for four of them inside 4%.

Table 20. GAAP to core pretax reconciliation, FY2025 (USD millions)

Of Berkshire's $39,078m, $39,981m is the unrealised mark on equities, offset by $18m of realised equity losses, $30m of debt security losses and $855m on other investments. The equity method loss splits $4,393m to Kraft Heinz and $5,302m to Occidental, with $105m of income elsewhere.

Core measures understate Berkshire by construction. The $297.8bn equity portfolio is carried in the equity base of the return calculation while its price appreciation is removed from the numerator. Adding the FY2025 investment marks and the equity method losses back at a 21% statutory rate lifts the return on average equity from 6.3% to 9.5%, against the 9.8% the GAAP measure shows. A reader who treats portfolio appreciation as part of the return should read the GAAP column, where Berkshire's 20.1% pretax margin is the second widest in the set behind Chubb.

4.6 Valuation

Price to book across the nine is explained by return on equity with a slope of 0.066 times book per point of return. Berkshire's 9.8% return implies 1.32 times book. It trades at 1.52 times, 15% above the line. American International Group trades at 1.00 times on a 7.4% return, closest to the line from below; Progressive at 4.28 times on 40.4% sits above it.

The fit is thin and Progressive drives much of it, so the residual is an observation rather than a valuation. Two balance sheet items explain a premium that earnings alone do not. Cash and Treasury bills total $373,311m, 34.1% of the $1,093.6bn market capitalisation. The listed equity portfolio adds $297,778m, a further 27.2%. Together they cover 61.4% of the equity value. Debt to total capital of 15.2% is the lowest in the set, against an 18.8% peer median and 32.6% at Loews, whose figure carries consolidated Boardwalk Pipelines borrowings. Berkshire's figure carries $83,318m of BNSF and Berkshire Hathaway Energy debt, which is serviced by those subsidiaries rather than by the parent.

Book value per share is $332.55 on the Class B equivalent count of 2,157,335,139 shares, against a $506.90 last trade on 2 September 2026.

5 Material Events & Contracts

Berkshire filed ten current reports in the twelve months to 2 September 2026 and none of them announced an acquisition. The news was governance and capital structure: Greg Abel took the chief executive seat on 1 January 2026, the board split the Chairman and Chief Executive roles in the bylaws first, the finance and legal benches were rebuilt around him, and on 4 March 2026 the company started buying its own stock again after a full year of buying none. The repurchase restart is the item that moves cash. Berkshire spent about $4.8bn on its own shares in the first half of 2026 and raised $3.08bn of yen debt across the two note issues in the window, so the period was a modest net return of capital rather than a balance sheet expansion. Berkshire is a domestic filer and filed no Form 6-K in the period.

Table 21. Material events from 8-K filings, twelve months to 2 September 2026

Sorted newest first. Every row is one filing.

Three of the ten are pure earnings releases carrying only Item 2.02 and the exhibit item. The May 2026 filing bundles the first quarter release with three governance items. The remaining six split evenly: the September 2025 bylaw amendment and two officer changes on the governance side, two note issues and the repurchase restart on the capital side.

The repurchase restart is the event with the largest cash consequence

Berkshire bought no stock at all in 2025. Class A equivalent shares stood at 1,438,223 on 30 September 2025 and the same 1,438,223 on 31 December 2025, and Schedule I of the 10-K records nil parent company treasury stock purchases for the year against $2,918m in 2024. The 5 March 2026 filing then disclosed a restart dated 4 March 2026. By 30 June 2026 the count had fallen to 1,431,693, so 6,530 Class A equivalent shares, 0.45% of the register, were retired inside four months. Berkshire gives the second quarter as about $4.5bn and the six months as about $4.8bn, which leaves roughly $0.3bn for the first quarter. Both published figures are approximations, so the first quarter split is an inference rather than a disclosure.

The company bound itself to nothing. The filing repeats that the policy obligates no specific number of shares, that purchases may run in the open market or in privately negotiated transactions including under a Rule 10b5-1 plan, and that they may be suspended at any time. The filing frames the restart as a judgement on price against conservatively determined intrinsic value and attaches no size to it; chapter 9 prices the shares bought against book value.

What sits inside the 2025 earnings gap

The gap between the two series in 2025 sits in the investment line. Investment gains added $30,737m to 2025 GAAP earnings, of which $12.9bn was the change in unrealised gains on equity holdings and $17.8bn was after tax realised gains on sales. Against that, an $8,255m after tax other than temporary impairment of Kraft Heinz and Occidental ran through GAAP earnings. Schedule I of the 10-K records a $5.0bn other than temporary impairment on the parent's Kraft Heinz stake in 2025, a holding it carries at 27.5% under the equity method.

Insurance float reached $177.5bn at 30 June 2026, which Berkshire states is about $1.1bn above year end 2025. The rounded levels it publishes, $176bn at 31 December 2025 and $177.5bn at 30 June 2026, imply $1.5bn instead. The stated change is the reliable figure and is the one used here; the rounding in the published levels is the reconciling item.

Table 22. Material contracts

Filed with or incorporated into the FY2025 10-K, accession 0001193125-26-083899, and filed as 8-K exhibits inside the window.

Two entries in the 10-K exhibit index changed this year, and both track the transition. Exhibit 3(ii) now points at the October 2025 8-K rather than the 8-K filed on 10 May 2023. Exhibit 10.1 was replaced outright: the FY2024 10-K listed a 2013 equity commitment letter with Hawk Acquisition Holding Corporation, incorporated by reference; the FY2025 10-K drops it and files the form of indemnification agreement as a document instead. Berkshire's only Exhibit 10 slot moved from a spent thirteen year old deal commitment to a live standing obligation to its own directors and officers, in the same annual report that first carries Abel's signature as chief executive and follows the first in house General Counsel appointment. Berkshire states no reason. The recitals say what the document does: they put indemnification into a contract that holds regardless of any later amendment to the Certificate of Incorporation or bylaws or any change in the composition of the board.

The 10-K also states that other long term debt instruments are not filed because the securities they authorise do not exceed 10% of consolidated total assets, so the exhibit index covers only those instruments above that threshold.

Debt raised: two yen offerings, one syndicate, one shelf

Both offerings were wholly yen denominated, both were sold under the January 2025 shelf, Registration No. 333-284622, both were underwritten by Mizuho Securities USA LLC and Merrill Lynch International, and both were opined on by Baker & McKenzie LLP. Combined issuance was 482.4bn JPY, about $3.08bn.

Table 23. Yen senior notes issued in the window

USD equivalents and the fixing rates come from the Rule 424(b)(5) registration fee tables, accessions 0001193125-25-286108 at 153.06 JPY and 0001193125-26-154274 at 159.64 JPY to the dollar.

The April 2026 8-K prints the third tranche as 22,300,000,00 JPY, one digit short, and omits the currency symbol on the fifth and sixth tranches; the registration fee table resolves all three, the tranche is 22.3bn JPY and every tranche is yen. The figures here are the filed figures read against the fee table.

Berkshire paid up between the two deals. At adjacent tenors the April 2026 coupons sit 57 to 66 basis points above the November 2025 coupons, part of which is the extra year of term, and the April deal stretched the longest maturity from 2040 to 2056. Parent company yen and euro debt is what produces the foreign exchange line that swings operating earnings: gains of $575m in the first half of 2026 against losses of $1.59bn in the first half of 2025. The 10-K puts parent par value outside the dollar at 3.6bn EUR and 2,343bn JPY at 31 December 2025, and parent guarantees of subsidiary debt at $20.1bn.

Governance: the roles were separated before the handover

The bylaws were amended twice. On 30 September 2025 the board added Paragraph 3.5 to Section 3 and reworked Section 4 so that Chairman and Chief Executive need not be the same person, with Buffett staying as Chairman and Abel becoming Chief Executive on 1 January 2026. On 3 May 2026, the day after the annual meeting, the board amended Sections 4, 6 and 10 to conform officer roles to the current operating structure. The constitutional change came three months before the handover. Chapter 6 sets out how shareholders voted at the meeting that sat between the two amendments.

What could not be verified

Berkshire disclosed no dollar authorisation, no share count and no expiry for the repurchase programme, so the pace after 30 June 2026 cannot be estimated from filings. It disclosed no price paid per share for the first half 2026 repurchases beyond the aggregate. Charles C. Chang's compensation beyond the $8,000,000 cash salary was described as not finalised in the December 2025 filing and only the salary was disclosed in May 2026. The reason for adding Exhibit 10.1 to the FY2025 10-K is not stated in any filing. Whether the 4 March 2026 repurchases ran through a Rule 10b5-1 plan is not disclosed, only that they may.

6 Ownership, Voting Power & Annual Meeting

Berkshire's two share classes separate money from control. Warren Buffett held 13.7% of the economics and 30.2% of the votes at the 4 March 2026 record date, a ratio of 2.2 to 1. The three index managers that dominate the Class B register held 16.3% of the economics and 5.4% of the votes, a ratio of 0.33 to 1. Buffett's latest Schedule 13D amendment, dated 14 July 2026, still reports 29.7% of the vote against 13.2% of the economics.

The mechanics of the two classes

Each Class A share carries one vote. Each Class B share carries one ten thousandth of a vote. Each Class A share converts into 1,500 Class B shares, so a Class A share carries 1,500 times the economic claim and 10,000 times the vote. A dollar in Class B buys 15% of the voting weight that a dollar in Class A buys.

Table 24. Class A and Class B, economic weight against voting weight at the 4 March 2026 record date

Source: DEF 14A filed 13 March 2026, accession 0001193125-26-106253.

Class B carries 64.5% of the economics and 21.4% of the votes. A year earlier, at the 5 March 2025 record date, Class B carried 62.1% of the economics and 19.7% of the votes. Conversion of Class A into Class B lifts both figures by about two points a year.

Who owns what, and who votes it

Table 25. Beneficial ownership at 4 March 2026, economic interest separated from voting power

Source: DEF 14A accession 0001193125-26-106253 for the insiders and the three index managers, which the proxy reports from their Form 13F filings. FMR from Schedule 13G/A accession 0000315066-26-000368. Economic interest, voting power and the ratio are computed on the record date share counts in Table 24.

The Class B percentages above are computed on the 4 March 2026 record date count and differ slightly from the proxy's own. The proxy states 11.4% for Vanguard and approximately 8.8% for BlackRock; on the 1,390,722,404 Class B shares outstanding at the record date those same share counts give 11.3% and 8.7%. The difference is the denominator: both stated figures reproduce exactly on 1,378,545,639 Class B shares, the count Berkshire reported outstanding at 21 July 2025, giving 11.40% and 8.80%. State Street's 5.3% reproduces on the record date count and not on the July 2025 count. The filed figures are left unadjusted, and Tables 25 and 26 use the record date count throughout.

Buffett's 196,317 votes exceed the 139,072 votes carried by every Class B share in existence, by 41%, so Class B holders acting unanimously cannot outvote him. The three largest institutional holders own a quarter of Class B and control one vote in eighteen. FMR, with 1.7% of the economics, controls 3.8% of the votes, more than Vanguard's 2.4% on four times the money, because FMR holds Class A.

The proxy discloses one constraint on the controlling block. Buffett has a voting agreement with Berkshire: if his combined voting power exceeds 49.9% of the total, he votes the excess proportionately with other shareholders. At 30.2% the cap is not binding.

The direction of travel

Buffett converts Class A into Class B each June and November and gives the Class B to five foundations. His Class A block fell 8.8% across six dated disclosures, from 206,363 shares on 25 November 2024 to 188,290 on 14 July 2026. His economic interest fell 1.2 points over the same disclosures, from 14.4% at the March 2025 record date to 13.2% in July 2026.

Voting power did not follow. It moved between 29.7% and 30.4% across the six disclosures and ended at 29.7%, within 0.7 points of where it started. Berkshire's buybacks and other holders' conversions shrink Class A at a pace close to the pace of the gifts, so Buffett's share of Class A rose from 37.9% to 38.2% while his share count fell. On this record the gifts transfer economics faster than they transfer control.

Each conversion of 8,000 Class A shares adds 12 million Class B shares to the tradeable float. It removes 8,000 votes from the block and returns 1,200, a net loss of 6,800 votes out of about 650,000.

Institutional ownership

Table 26. Form 13F institutional ownership, four quarters

Source: Form 13F filings indexed on CUSIP 084670702. The filer count is the number of filings reporting that CUSIP for the quarter. The Vanguard complex is the sum of every Vanguard named filer, deduplicated by CIK, with an amended filing replacing the original. Percentages use the 4 March 2026 record date counts.

The holder base widened by 318 filings, or 6.8%, over the four quarters, and the two largest index managers added 8.8 million Class B shares, 3.9%. Both series point the same way: more institutions, larger passive positions, no change in who decides. Those 236 million Class B shares carry 23,616 votes, an eighth of Buffett's block.

The Vanguard register shows a structural change rather than a trading one. Vanguard reported through a single filer, The Vanguard Group Inc, up to the December 2025 quarter, then split the assets across ten separately reporting entities from the March 2026 quarter. The complex total rose through the split, so the reorganisation moved shares between filers and not out of the register.

Schedule 13D and 13G filings, two years

Table 27. Schedule 13D and 13G filings on Berkshire Hathaway, September 2024 to September 2026

Source: Schedule 13D and 13G filings, accessions 0001193125-26-304838, 0002100119-26-000227, 0000102909-26-000775, 0000315066-26-000368, 0001193125-25-277436, 0000950170-25-091802 and 0001193125-24-265100.

No activist filing appears in the window. Every 13D event is a scheduled gift by the controlling holder. Every 13G event is an index manager crossing a threshold or reorganising its filing entities. Vanguard Capital Management's disclosure of sole voting power over 16,888,250 shares out of 134,303,785 held is the sharpest illustration of the register's shape: the largest economic holder in Class B directs the votes on one eighth of its own position.

The 2026 annual meeting

Berkshire held the meeting on 2 May 2026 in Omaha. Class A and Class B voted together as a single class. The 8-K reports votes in Class A equivalents and carries no broker nonvote column, so broker nonvotes read n/a throughout. The proxy states that abstentions and broker nonvotes have no effect on the election of directors, that abstentions are the equivalent of an against vote on the other questions, and that broker nonvotes have no effect on them.

Votes cast came to 435,305, which is 67.0% of the 649,838 votes outstanding. Buffett's 196,317 votes were 45.1% of the votes cast.

Table 28. Voting results, annual meeting of 2 May 2026

Source: Form 8-K item 5.07 filed 7 May 2026, accession 0001193125-26-212148, for the votes. DEF 14A accession 0001193125-26-106253 for the proponent and the board recommendation. On item 3 the against column holds the 143,050 votes for one year and the 1,715 votes for two years.

Say on pay passed with 93.0% of the votes for and against, and the frequency vote returned a three year cycle with 66.6%. One third of the frequency vote, 143,050 votes, asked for an annual vote, a wider dissent than the say on pay margin alone suggests.

The single shareholder proposal drew 15.0% support of the votes for and against. At the 2025 meeting, seven shareholder proposals drew between 0.7% and 3.6%, so the 2026 proposal drew more than four times the best 2025 result. Its subject was board oversight of workforce and human capital management, and it was voted at the first annual meeting after Greg Abel became chief executive on 1 January 2026.

Withhold votes concentrated on three long serving independent directors. Charlotte Guyman drew 12.4% withheld, Susan L. Decker 11.2% and Stephen B. Burke 7.3%. Abel drew 0.8%, the lowest of the thirteen.

Table 29. Director election, withhold rates at the 2026 meeting

Source: Form 8-K item 5.07, accession 0001193125-26-212148. The final column removes Buffett's 196,317.11 votes from the base. It is conditional on that block voting for each nominee, which the filings do not disclose.

Berkshire's corporate governance guidelines require a nominee who receives more withheld than for votes to offer a resignation, and no nominee came close. Turnout was 67.0% of voting power in 2026 against 66.5% in 2025, when 451,252 of 678,944 votes were cast, and withhold rates ranged from 0.8% for Gregory E. Abel to 12.4% for Charlotte Guyman.

What it means for the stock

BRK.B is a claim on 64.5% of Berkshire's economics that carries 21.4% of its votes. Nothing on the 2026 ballot changed that, and nothing on the register threatens it: no activist filed in two years, and the three largest passive holders control 5.4% of the votes on 16.3% of the economics. Control moves on the schedule of Buffett's conversions and gifts, which over the last six disclosures transferred economics roughly twice as fast as votes. Price BRK.B as the register describes it: the float supplies the capital, and a board elected by a single block supplies the decisions.

7 Insider Activity

Berkshire insiders were net buyers of BRK.B through the chief executive handover. Across the twelve months to 2 September 2026, open market purchases totalled 35,524 Class B equivalent shares for $17.34m against a single open market sale of 15,000 Class B shares for $7.51m. The buy to sell ratio, computed on open market transactions only, is 2.37 to 1 by share count and 2.31 to 1 by value. In the preceding twelve months the same measure was zero: no insider bought a share on the open market, and 304,500 Class B equivalent shares left insider hands for $141.31m.

The three buyers are the new operating leadership. Greg Abel bought 21 Class A shares on 4 March 2026, his first open market purchase since March 2023, on the same day Berkshire disclosed it had commenced repurchasing its own stock. Michael O'Sullivan and Charles Chang, the general counsel and chief financial officer named in the 8 December 2025 leadership announcement, each bought within weeks of filing a Form 3.

Everything on the sell side is structural rather than discretionary. Of 35 transaction lines in the window, 26 are charitable gifts or Class A into Class B conversions that fund those gifts. They carry 14,741,525 Class B equivalent shares out of insider hands at a price of nil or none, and no part of that is a sale. The plan or award bucket is empty: no Form 4 in the window carries an option exercise code M, an award code A, a tax withholding code F or a Rule 10b5-1 affirmation, no Form 5 was filed, and the form-144 endpoint returns nothing for this issuer. Berkshire pays these officers in cash, with Abel's annual salary at $25.0m and Chang's at $8.0m and no equity grant disclosed.

Table 30. Insider transaction ledger, twelve months to 2 September 2026

Every Form 4 line with a transaction date in the window. Price is the price per share of the class named, as reported on the form. It reads nil where the form states a zero price and n/a where it states none. Resulting holding is the shares of that class owned following the transaction, as reported. Roles: CEO is president and chief executive officer, VC is vice chairman insurance operations, GC is senior vice president, general counsel and secretary, CFO is senior vice president and chief financial officer.

Abel's 4 March 2026 purchase appears on the Form 4 as 18 separate lines at prices from $725,210.19 to $733,300.00 a Class A share. The $728,970.11 figure is the volume weighted average of those lines and is the only price in the table computed rather than read. O'Sullivan's three 12 August 2026 prices are weighted averages stated in footnotes F1 to F3, with quoted ranges of $510.58 to $510.68, $512.42 to $512.54 and $513.60 to $513.64. Jain's 15,000 share sale is stated in footnote F1 at an average of $500.99805, range $500.63 to $501.36, and the value calculation uses that unrounded figure. That sale disposed of stock held by Jain Foundation Inc., a nonprofit corporation, taking the foundation's holding from 122,308 to 107,308 Class B shares. Abel's, O'Sullivan's and Chang's purchases sit in a revocable trust, a living trust and a family limited liability company.

Eight of twelve months carry no open market insider transaction at all. The whole net position sits in four months: a sale of 15,000 shares in September 2025 and purchases of 31,500, 536 and 3,488 Class B equivalent shares in March, May and August 2026. Net for the window is 20,524 Class B equivalent shares acquired.

Table 31. Open market summary and buy to sell ratio

The ratio uses open market transaction codes P and S only. Gifts, conversions, option exercises, award vestings and tax withholding are excluded by construction, and none of the last three appears in either period. Class A converts at 1,500 Class B per Class A, the ratio stated in the form footnotes.

Prior period sales comprise 200 Class A by Ajit Jain on 9 September 2024 at $695,417.65, accession 0001728451-24-000004; 1 Class A by Charlotte Guyman on 31 December 2024 at $678,064.00, accession 0000950170-25-001533; and 2 Class A by Meryl B. Witmer on 3 March 2025 at $775,883.30, accession 0000919574-25-001778.

Table 32. Open market purchases by buyer and implied Class B equivalent price

Abel carries 89% of the purchased share count and 88% of the purchased value. The two new officers each committed roughly a quarter of a million dollars, and O'Sullivan repeated at a price 9.6% above his first purchase three months earlier. The single open market sale in the window cleared at $501.00 in September 2025, inside the $467 to $512 band of the purchases that followed.

Table 33. Abel open market purchase history since his 2018 Form 3

Eight Section 16 filings cover Abel's full history, starting with a Form 3 dated 9 January 2018. Three of them are purchase episodes. Class A holding is the indirect position after each episode.

The 2026 episode is the smallest of the three by share count and by value, and the highest by price. Abel has added to the position in each of the three episodes and has reported no open market sale of Berkshire stock.

Charitable gifts move 292 times the share volume of every open market transaction combined. Reading gift volume as selling pressure would invert the signal in this filing set: the shares move to donee foundations rather than to the market, and the Form 4 price column reads nil on 13 of the 18 gift lines and states no price on the other five. Buffett's Class A holding fell from 198,117 to 188,290 shares across the window, all of it through conversions that funded gifts plus one direct gift of 2 Class A shares. The opening figure of 198,117 is the 196,317 shares reported after the 10 November 2025 conversion plus the 1,800 shares that conversion used.

Table 34. Section 16 filers added in the window

Chang's Form 3 event date matches the 1 June 2026 effective date for the chief financial officer succession disclosed on 8 December 2025. Abel filed no Form 3 on becoming chief executive on 1 January 2026, having reported as a director since January 2018. Buffett's Form 4 reporting owner block carries an officer title through the 17 March 2026 filing and reports him as director and 10 percent owner from the 18 May 2026 filing onward.

Filing coverage

The insider trading endpoint returns 19 Forms 3, 4 and 5 for CIK 1067983 filed between 1 August 2025 and 3 September 2026. One of the 19, accession 0001728451-25-000006 dated 8 August 2025, falls before the window and is excluded, leaving 18 forms and 35 transaction lines. No Form 4 in the window sets the Rule 10b5-1 affirmation flag. No Form 5 was filed. The form-144 endpoint returns zero filings for this issuer, so no proposed sale of restricted stock is outstanding.

8 Risk Factors

Berkshire rewrote its succession risk and left everything else close to intact. Item 1A of the FY2025 10-K carries the same 13 risk headings as FY2024, none dropped and none added, across 2,870 words against 2,782, a rise of 3.2%. Eight headings changed in substance, five did not. One paragraph is wholly new, and it sits under railroad regulation. The single largest edit is the key person factor, where 46.4% of the FY2024 wording is gone: Gregory Abel is now named as the holder of capital allocation authority, Warren Buffett is named only as the person succeeded, and the board's reserved right to change its successor choice has been deleted. For the stock this is a disclosure catching up with a completed event rather than a new hazard. The forward looking risks that grew are reserve adequacy, rail network consolidation and artificial intelligence compliance.

No interim filing carried any of this. Part II Item 1A of the Q3 2025 10-Q, filed 3 November 2025, referred back to the FY2024 10-K without amendment, so every change below first reached investors on 2 March 2026.

Two headings show a changed word count with no changed risk. Economic conditions moved from "a prolonged period" to "prolonged time periods" and equity concentration lost one article. Both are wording, and both are shown apart from the substantive rewrites in Figure 26, because a changed sentence is not a changed risk.

8.1 What changed, factor by factor

Table 35. Item 1A change map, FY2025 10-K against FY2024 10-K, grouped by category

Thirteen headings and, within the regulated business heading, six paragraphs. Nothing in this table appears outside Item 1A of the two 10-K filings, accessions 0001193125-26-083899 and 0000950170-25-025210.

8.2 The succession rewrite

The FY2024 text made Berkshire's capital allocation a one man function and left the successor choice provisional. The FY2025 text makes it Abel's function and states no reservation. Both readings are the filer's own words.

Table 36. Key person risk factor, wording as filed

Quoted text is verbatim from Item 1A of each filing.

Three consequences for the stock. The key person discount no longer attaches to one individual whose age the filing disclosed; it attaches to a bench of three named executives, which is a lower single point failure but a shorter track record. Berkshire has stopped telling investors it might change its mind about the successor, which removes a piece of optionality the FY2024 language preserved. Item 1A does not mention that Buffett continues as Chairman; that fact is in the 8-K of 8 May 2025, so the risk section now understates the continuity that exists.

The FY2025 wording is also thinner than the event it describes. The 8 December 2025 announcement covered five changes, set out in chapter 5, and none of them reaches Item 1A. The risk factor names three executives out of a turnover of at least seven roles in eight months.

8.3 The one new risk

The rail interchange and consolidation paragraph is the only wholly new text in Item 1A. It does two things. It concedes that BNSF's service quality depends on ports, passenger operators and connecting railroads that Berkshire does not control. It then adds that mergers among major rail carriers may disrupt the network and the wider supply chain, and may hit BNSF's operating results, financial condition and liquidity.

Berkshire does not name a transaction. Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern signed a merger agreement on 28 July 2025, disclosed by both filers on Form 8-K Item 1.01 the following day. The timing lines up, but the attribution is inference. What the filing does establish is that Berkshire now treats a competitor's structure, rather than its own conduct, as a source of loss at BNSF. That is a new category of railroad risk for this issuer.

8.4 Reserve risk, quantified

Estimated unpaid losses on property and casualty contracts rose 2.8% to $151.8bn, and the language around them hardened. FY2024 cited "new or expanded theories of liability and increased frequency of litigation". FY2025 adds litigation funding by third parties and "juries awarding increasingly larger verdicts" as named drivers. On the FY2025 balance, a 1% reserve shortfall is $1.5bn pretax, which is the sensitivity Berkshire is pointing at when it says a small percentage increase can materially reduce reported earnings.

The catastrophe appetite did not move. Berkshire still avoids policy groups from which a single event could cost more than $15bn pretax. Against shareholders' equity that grew 10.5% to $717.4bn, the same dollar tolerance now represents 2.09% of book, down from 2.31%. The stated risk appetite is unchanged in dollars and smaller in relation to the balance sheet.

Equity concentration works the other way. The risk factor text is unchanged, but the exposure it describes fell: the five largest holdings, American Express, Apple, Bank of America, Coca-Cola and Chevron in both years, dropped from 71% to 65% of a $297.8bn equity portfolio. That is still $193.6bn in five names, equal to 27.0% of Berkshire shareholders' equity. Static risk language over a moving exposure is the normal state of Item 1A.

8.5 Disclosure that was withdrawn

One number left Item 1A. FY2024 stated that BNSF and BHE combined represent more than 90% of Berkshire's direct emissions. FY2025 says the vast majority. Nothing elsewhere in the 10-K restores the figure, so the climate exposure at the two capital intensive subsidiaries is now qualitative, and investors who track transition risk lose their only quantified anchor in the filing. Buffett's age also disappears, which is consistent with him no longer being the named allocator.

8.6 What could not be verified

Four items could not be verified from the filings. Berkshire names no counterparty behind mergers among major rail carriers, so the link to the Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern agreement is inference from timing. The withdrawn greenhouse gas percentage cannot be recomputed, because the 10-K reports no emissions figure. Item 1A does not state that Buffett remains Chairman, so that comes from the 8-K of 8 May 2025. No 10-Q amended Item 1A during 2025, so no change can be dated earlier than the 10-K filing of 2 March 2026.

9 Stock Price, Scenarios & Sensitivity

BRK.B last traded at $506.90 on 2 September 2026, 6.1% below the weekly closing high of $539.80 set on 28 April 2025, five days before Warren Buffett told the annual meeting that Greg Abel would take over. The stock has gone sideways for sixteen months while book value a share rose from $301.00 at the end of 2024 to $348.26 at 30 June 2026, and price to book fell from 1.51x to 1.46x. Berkshire bought $4,762m of its own stock in the first half of 2026, the Class B portion at a weighted average of $486.00 a share, 1.40 times the $348.26 book value at 30 June 2026.

The stock is unusual in one respect that governs every scenario below. Investments carried on the balance sheet, cash and Treasury Bills and fixed maturity securities and listed equities, come to $326.33 a share at 30 June 2026, or 64.4% of the price. The remaining $180.57 a share buys operating businesses that earned $14.82 a share after tax in 2025, excluding insurance investment income. The market therefore pays 12.2 times after tax operating earnings for the operating half of Berkshire. The three year outcome turns on that multiple, on the operating margin, and on what the equity portfolio does.

The 52 week range is $464.36 to $537.74. The stock is up 0.85% year to date. Thirty day historical volatility is 15.6% annualised.

Figure 29 sets repurchase spend against the price to book multiple at each reporting date. Berkshire spent $27.1bn on repurchases in 2021, with the stock at 1.32 times book at that year end, cut to $2.9bn in 2024 at 1.51 times, spent nothing in 2025 at 1.49 times, and restarted in March 2026 at $486.92 a Class B share, 1.46 times the $332.55 book value at 31 December 2025. The one hard constraint is that Berkshire will not repurchase if the purchase reduces consolidated cash, cash equivalents and Treasury Bills below $30,000m. That balance was $365,514m at 30 June 2026, so the constraint is not binding and the only real test is the price against intrinsic value, judged by the Chief Executive Officer after consultation with the Chairman. The 2026 restart is the clearest signal management has given on where it thinks intrinsic value sits. The prices paid were $486.92 in March, $476.01 in May and $487.98 in June for Class B, and $729,701.17, $716,231.37 and $733,775.06 for Class A.

The price to book figures pair the market price at each date with the book value at the preceding reporting date. The 2026 H1 point pairs the last trade of $506.90 on 2 September 2026 with book value at 30 June 2026.

The valuation frame

The frame has two columns, which is what Berkshire's own reporting supports.

Column one is investments at balance sheet value: cash and equivalents in insurance and other $35,096m, Treasury Bills $324,905m, fixed maturity securities $17,034m and equity securities $323,779m, together $700,814m at 30 June 2026. Equity method investments of $19,948m are excluded because their earnings sit inside the operating column under other.

Column two is operating earnings after tax excluding insurance investment income, capitalised at a multiple. Insurance investment income is left out because the assets that produce it already sit in column one. Acquisitions consume cash in column one and appear in the revenue growth and margin assumptions in column two. Nothing is counted twice.

Class B equivalent shares outstanding are 2,147,538,984 at 30 June 2026, down 9,796,155 or 0.45% since 31 December 2025.

Table 37. Three year scenario inputs to 31 December 2029

Every input is a number, so each case can be rebuilt from this table alone. The base case is an estimate under the stated assumptions, and no case is a price target.

Table 38. Three year scenario outputs at 31 December 2029

Every case starts from the same FY2026 estimate: revenue of $398,436m, built from actual first half revenue of $195,483m plus second half 2025 revenue grown at the 7.3% first half rate; operating earnings after tax of $49,759m, of which $37,768m is operating businesses and $11,991m is insurance investment income; and an operating pretax margin of 11.2%. The roll runs 3.5 years from the 30 June 2026 balance sheet. Repurchases are executed at $506.90 in every case, which understates the share count reduction if the price falls. Deferred tax on unrealised equity gains of $217,258m is not modelled because nothing is sold.

The investments column alone is $329 a share in the worst case, 65% of today's price. That is the structural reason the downside case still only loses 4.2% a year: two thirds of the stock is a marked to market pile of Treasury Bills and Level 1 equities, and Treasury Bills do not fall.

Table 39. What the best case requires, and why it is possible

Table 40. Core assumptions and what drives demand

Operating earnings after tax by source, USD millions, from the first half management discussion tables.

OxyChem consolidates from 2 January 2026 and Taylor Morrison from 24 July 2026. Neither is separately reported yet, so neither can be isolated inside the lines above.

Two positions carry their own scheduled events. The Occidental Petroleum preferred stock has a liquidation value of $8,500m and pays 8%, and Occidental may redeem it from 2029 at 105% of liquidation value, which removes $680m of annual pretax income inside the scenario window. Berkshire also holds warrants over 83.9m Occidental shares at $59.59. The American Express holding is 151.6m shares, 22.5% of that company.

Table 41. One way sensitivity, value a Class B share at 31 December 2029 (USD)

Capital deployed runs the other way from the rest. In this frame deployment is a cash outflow with revenue growth held constant, so the row measures the cost of writing the cheque, and the return on the cheque appears in the revenue growth and margin rows. Deploying $30,000m a year and holding growth at 4.0% is the assumption of a buyer who overpays.

The two inputs that move the outcome most are the exit multiple and the 2029 operating pretax margin. The grid spans $562 to $760, a range of $198 a share, against a base case of $653 and a price of $506.90. Every cell in the grid sits above the current price, which is a statement about the frame rather than about the stock: the investments column of $408 a share in the base case is fixed across the grid, and only the $244 a share of capitalised operating earnings varies.

What would break the base case

The base case of $653 a share and 7.9% a year rests on four things that can each be falsified.

Multiple compression alone takes it apart. Holding every operating assumption, an exit multiple of 8.0x rather than 12.0x gives $571 a share and a return of 3.7% a year. Nothing in the filings fixes the multiple.

An equity drawdown does most of the rest. The portfolio was $323,779m at 30 June 2026 against a cost of $106,521m, so $217,258m of the position is unrealised gain. A 25% fall removes $80,945m, $37.69 a share, and no accounting treatment softens it because 97.0% of the portfolio is Level 1.

Underwriting can turn. Pretax underwriting earnings were $9,460m in 2025, $11,405m in 2024 and a loss of $22m in 2022. The base case holds the margin flat. A repeat of 2022 removes $9,482m of pretax earnings, $7,275m after tax at the 23.3% rate underwriting carried in 2025, $3.39 a share, and $41 a share at 12.0x.

A large writedown can appear without warning. The 2025 accounts carry an $8,255m after tax impairment inside net earnings but outside operating earnings, and the equity method line swung from $1,841m in 2024 to a loss of $9,590m in 2025. Kraft Heinz accounted for $4,796m of equity method loss in the first half of 2025 alone; the same line was a $403m gain in the first half of 2026.

An alternative frame gives a lower number. An investor who marks the investments column at fair value rather than balance sheet value, or who applies a holding company discount for the drag of Treasury Bills earning a short rate inside a corporate tax wrapper, will get less than $653 from the same operating assumptions. The frame here takes no discount and no premium.

The Class A share count is the only figure in this chapter reconstructed rather than read: the quarterly repurchase tables print Class A average prices but not Class A share counts, so the 511 Class A shares come from the movement in Class A treasury shares, and the price implied by the residual value falls inside the range of prices Berkshire disclosed paying.

Class A shares outstanding fell 14,734 in the first half while only 511 were repurchased. Class A shares issued fell 14,223 and Class B shares issued rose 21,334,500, which is exactly 14,223 multiplied by 1,500. The 14,223 gap is conversion of Class A into Class B.

Sources

SEC filings in this analysis are retrieved through the SEC-API.io MCP server. Berkshire Hathaway Inc., CIK 1067983.

Filings cited in this report

Schedule 13D and 13G accessions are listed in Table 27. Forms 3, 4 and 5 accessions are cited in chapter 7. The nine peer 10-K filings and their accession numbers are in Table 18.

Sector figures in Table 17 come from outside the filings and are credited in that table:

• AM Best, Best's Rankings: 2025 US Property/Casualty NPW Rise 5%
• Verisk and APCIA, Strong 2025 Underwriting Income Masks Persistent Property/Casualty Insurance Pressures
• Guy Carpenter rate on line index, 1 January 2026 renewals, reported by Artemis

Share prices, the 52 week range and the volatility figure are market data and carry no named provider. No market derived figure is sourced to SEC-API.io. Annual meeting remarks of 2 May 2026 are reported speech and are credited to CNBC, "Warren Buffett Watch", 3 May 2026; they sit outside the SEC-API.io credit.

Figures as read from filings sit in each chapter's model.py, with the accession number for every figure recorded in that file. Ratios and scenarios are computed in each chapter's analysis.py and rerun with the model.

Final check. This analysis was reviewed on 2 September 2026. Thirty two figures and forty one tables are titled and numbered in reading order with no gaps, and the filing index above is a source list rather than a numbered table. Two discrepancies are carried forward unadjusted and are stated where they arise: the OxyChem purchase price of $9.5bn in the FY2025 Form 10-K against $9.4bn in the Q2 2026 Form 10-Q, a post closing adjustment recorded after the 10-K was filed; and the proxy percentages of Class B held by Vanguard and BlackRock, 11.4% and approximately 8.8%, which reproduce only on the 1,378,545,639 Class B shares outstanding at 21 July 2025 and not on the 4 March 2026 record date count used in Tables 25 and 26.

Disclaimer

This document is not financial advice. Each scenario is a range under stated assumptions. No scenario is a price target or a recommendation.