Berkshire Hathaway Q4 Earnings, Revenues Miss Estimates, Fall Y/Y

Berkshire Hathaway's BRK.B fourth-quarter 2025 operating earnings of $4.73 per share decreased 27.7% year over year and missed the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 8.9%.

Operating earnings were $19.2 billion, which increased 2.5% year over year. 

Operating revenues decreased 0.7% year over year to $94.2 billion. The top line missed the consensus estimate by 8.4%.

Full-Year Highlights

Revenues slightly improved year over year to $371.4 billion, banking on higher revenues at Insurance and Other as well as Railroad, Utilities and Energy.

Costs and expenses increased 0.9% year over year to $79.1 billion, largely due to a higher insurance losses and loss adjustment expenses, life, annuity and health insurance benefits and higher underwriting expense, and higher selling, general and administrative expenses and higher leasing cost and interest expense.

Segment Performance

Berkshire Hathaway’s Insurance and Other segment’s operating earnings declined 12.9% year over year to $19.8 billion, owing to lower earnings across groups.

Railroad, Utilities, and Energy’s pre-tax earnings increased 7.9% to $9.4 billion due to higher earnings at BHE as well as BNSF. BHE benefited from lower wildfire loss accruals at PacificCorp., lower earnings attributable to non-controlling interests and the impact of real estate brokerage business litigation accruals in 2024, partially offset by lower earnings from the natural gas pipelines and other energy businesses. BNSF benefited from lower operating expenses, attributable to improved operating efficiencies and lower litigation accruals.

Earnings from Manufacturing, Service and Retailing businesses rose 4.4% year over year to $13.6 billion, owing to higher earnings increases at manufacturing and services businesses, partially offset by lower earnings from the retailing businesses.

Financial Position

As of Dec. 31, 2025, consolidated shareholders’ equity was $719.7 billion, up 10.4% from the level as of Dec. 31, 2024. At 2025-end, cash and cash equivalents were $51.9 billion, up 8.7% from the level at 2024-end.

BRK.B exited 2025 with a float of about $176 billion, up from $171 billion as of Dec. 31, 2024

Cash flow from operating activities totaled $46 billion in the first nine months of 2025, up 50.3% from the year-ago period. BRK.B did not repurchase shares in 2025.

Zacks Rank

BRK.B currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Performance of Other Insurers

AXIS Capital Holdings Limited AXS reported fourth-quarter 2025 operating income of $3.25 per share, which outpaced the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 9.4% and rose 9.4% year over year.

Total operating revenues of $1.7 billion beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 5.2%. The top line rose nearly 9% year over year on higher premiums earned. Net premiums written rose 13% to $1.4 billion, with an increase of 14% in the Insurance segment and growth of 5% in the Reinsurance segment.

Chubb Limited CB reported fourth-quarter 2025 core operating income of $7.52 per share, which beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 13.9%. The bottom line improved 24.9% year over year.

Total operating revenues improved 7.4% year over year to $15.3 billion. The top line beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 1.7%. Chubb’s strong performance was driven by solid underwriting profit, robust premium growth and record investment income.

RLI Corp. RLI reported fourth-quarter 2025 operating earnings of 94 cents per share, which beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 23.6%. The bottom line increased 80.8% from the prior-year quarter. Operating revenues for the reported quarter were $449 million, up 3% year over year. The top line missed the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 0.4%.

Gross premiums written decreased 2.1% year over year to $463.2 million. This can be attributed to the poor performance of the Property Segment. Our estimate was $505.2 million. Net investment income increased 9.2% year over year to $42.3 million. The Zacks Consensus Estimate was $42.9 million, while our estimate for the metric was pegged at $44.5 million. The investment portfolio’s total return was 1.5% in the quarter.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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