Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK) Brief Analysis and Updates

Business Description

TBD. Read The Complete Financial History of Berkshire Hathaway, Second Edition: A Chronological Analysis of Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger's Conglomerate Masterpiece for now.

References

2025/11/04 Whitney Tilson's Daily: My updated estimate of Berkshire Hathaway's intrinsic value; Glenn Tongue on whether Warren Buffett will resume share repurchases; A 'new normal' at Berkshire; Answering marathon questions from readers

Updates

2026/02/08 Brief valuation

The valuation can start with the one from Whitney Tilson's Daily: My updated estimate of Berkshire Hathaway's intrinsic value; Glenn Tongue on whether Warren Buffett will resume share repurchases; A 'new normal' at Berkshire; Answering marathon questions from readers (2025/11/04)

For the quarter that ended on September 30, cash and investments came in at about $492,500 per A-share. Since then, the stock portfolio has gained roughly $6,800 per share. So the total today is around $499,300.

Meanwhile, Berkshire's trailing-12-month pretax operating earnings were about $27,500 per A-share.

I account for volatile insurance and investment income by subtracting it and then adding back half of the average over the past two years. That works out to $12.8 billion of pretax earnings.

This is conservative given that Berkshire's total insurance and investment income has averaged $11.8 billion annually over the past 10 years.

I've said previously that a conservative, below-market multiple for the stock is 11 times earnings. Using Berkshire's pretax operating earnings of about $27,500 per share, I get a value of roughly $302,500 per A-share.

Putting it all together...

I estimate Berkshire's cash and investments are worth around $499,300. And I estimate that the operating businesses are worth roughly $302,500. This comes to a total of about $802,000 per A-share (or $535 per B-share).

Then to add my two cents on it, I believe we cannot take the cash and investment as book value because the corporate debt and  insurance liabilities caused some cautious use of the cash. I would only count ⅔ of it. On the operating earnings side, Berkshire operations tend to have slow growth and only some of them truly have moats nowadays, so I would only use a 10 times pre-tax operating earnings.

Price (class B share)	508.9
Diluted shares outstanding	2157.4 million
cash and investments per A share by 2025 Q3	$499,300
Pre-tax operating earnings TTM (adjusted by Tilson's adjustment in insurance and investment income)	$12.8 billion, which is $27,500 per A share.
Buy below price	$499,300 * 2 / 3 + $27,500 * 10 = $607, 866 per A share. That is 607866/1500 = $405 per B share.

2022/05/29 Brief assessment

Berkshire Hathaway in the current form was found by my idols, Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger. I will try to buy more if it's not very expensive.

It's trading at about 1.3 to 1.4 P/B, which is acceptable.