Berkshire Hathaway 2024 Annual Shareholder Letter by Warren Buffett

In October 1997, Berkshire acquired Dairy Queen, based in Edina, Minnesota, for $585 million. It uses flight simulators and is the largest provider of professional aviation training services. The company is known for its advertising characters including a gecko and the GEICO Cavemen.

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At the time of purchase, Berkshire’s voting interest was limited to 10% of the company’s shares, but this restriction ended when the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935 was repealed in 2005. In 1976, Berkshire first invested in GEICO, at a time when it was facing financial difficulty and had a very low stock price. In March 1967, Berkshire acquired National Indemnity Company, based in Omaha, Nebraska, for $8.6 million in the first acquisition by the company under Buffett’s control and the company’s entrance into the insurance business. Instead of selling at the slightly lower price, Buffett bought more of the stock at an even higher price to take control of the company and fire Stanton; Stanton and his son resigned in 1965. At Berkshire we will stick with businesses whose profit picture for decades to come seems reasonably predictable .

The most common culprits, for Buffett, are the kinds of executives who determine that they’re going to buy a certain amount of stock over a certain period of time. He argues that asset-heavy companies “can be good investments,” with the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway and Berkshire Hathaway Energy as prime examples. The reason that many CEOs use derivatives, Buffett says, is to hedge risks inherent to their business — like Burlington Northern using fuel derivatives to protect its business model against an increase in the price of fuel. In his 2019 shareholder letter, Buffett reported that Berkshire Hathaway’s top 10 stock investments had generated almost $3.8B in dividends over the previous year.

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Berkshire Hathaway reduced its Apple stake by nearly 50%, selling $75.5 billion worth of stock in the second quarter of 2024, increasing its cash reserves to a record $276.9 billion. By December 31, 2017, Berkshire owned 166 million shares (3.3% of Apple). By the end of June 2016, this stake had increased to 15.2 million shares (0.3% of Apple). By 2017, this position had yielded a profit of about $12 billion excluding the annual interest earned from the preferred stock. The shares yielded 6%, earning Berkshire $300 million in annual interest. On August 26, 2011, Berkshire Hathaway bought $5 billion of preferred shares in Bank of America.

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• This is a chart of trend of regional gross value added of Berkshire at current basic prices published by the Office for National Statistics with figures in millions of British pounds sterling.
• In 1963, Franklin Otis Booth Jr. invested $1 million in the company (equivalent to $10,300,000 in 2024), and in 1968 David Gottesman also invested in the company.
• And in his 2020 letter, Buffett goes on to explain that “conglomerates earned their terrible reputation” and why owning stocks in these businesses may not be the best investment strategy.

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In 2017, Berkshire acquired 38.6% of truck stop chain Pilot Flying J for $2.8 billion, followed by the acquisition of an additional 41.4% of the company for $8.2 billion in 2023, and the remaining 20% in 2024 for $3 billion. In February 2016, Berkshire Hathaway acquired Duracell from Procter & Gamble for $4.7 billion in stock in P&G previously owned by Berkshire Hathaway. In February 2010, the remaining portion that it did not already own was acquired for $26 billion. In July 2005, Berkshire Hathaway acquired Forest River, the world’s largest seller of recreational vehicles, from Pete Liegl for $800 million.

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• In 2013, the company bought the Tulsa World, the Greensboro, North Carolina-based News & Record, Virginia’s Roanoke Times, and Press of Atlantic City.
• Berkshire paid for the acquisition with Class A shares valued at $58,400 each; Buffett later said he overpaid, despite strong performance by General Re.
• Going to my first shareholder meeting this May, so reading this was a great way to get the most out of the trip.

In February 2002, Berkshire acquired Albecca, headquartered in Norcross, Georgia, operating under the Larson-Juhl name. On April 23, 2010, Mitek acquired the assets of Dur-O-Wal from Dayton Superior. In May 2008, Mitek acquired Hohmann & Barnard, a fabricator of anchors and reinforcement systems for masonry.

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An approach of this kind will force the investor to think about long — term business prospects rather than short — term stock market prospects , a perspective likely to improve results . That is , they usually confer the highest price — earnings ratios on exotic — sounding businesses that hold out the promise of feverish change . Berkshire owns some international companies based in Europe and Japan, but it has always been and remains predominantly US-based businesses. Berkshire wants to own great businesses, but only when paying the right price. Their controlled businesses just continue to churn out cash, which obviously adds to the cash pile if there are no new investments.

Customers find this book to be a must-read, with one noting it’s a valuable resource for long-term investors. Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read book recommendations and more. These are his actual letters — word for word — a “lesson plan” of his views on business and investing.

Full text of Warren Buffett’s annual letter to shareholders – Economic Times

In October 2008, Berkshire invested $6.5 billion in Wrigley Company as part of a financing package to enable Mars Inc. to acquire the company. Buffett defended Lloyd Blankfein’s decisions as CEO of Goldman Sachs and his efforts to improve the reputation of the company during the 2008 financial crisis. Profit on the preferred stock was estimated at $1.8 billion and exercising the warrants yielded a profit of more than $2 billion.

In February 2001, Berkshire acquired Johns Manville, established in 1858 and a manufacturer of fiberglass wool insulation products for homes and commercial buildings, as well as pipe, duct, and equipment insulation products. In January 2001, Berkshire acquired 87% of Dalton, Georgia-based Shaw Industries. In December 2000, Berkshire acquired Benjamin Moore & Co., headquartered in Montvale, New Jersey. Helzberg Diamonds, a chain of jewelry stores based in Kansas City that began in 1915, was acquired by berkshire hathaway letters to shareholders Berkshire in 1995 after a chance run in between Buffett and Barnett Helzberg on a street in New York City. In May 2000, Berkshire acquired Ben Bridge Jeweler, a chain of jewelry stores established in 1912 with locations primarily in the western United States.

But the future then also included competitive dynamics that would decimate almost all of the companies entering those industries . Though capitalism’s “ creative destruction ” is highly beneficial for society , it precludes investment certainty . Our criterion of “ enduring ” causes us to rule out companies in industries prone to rapid and continuous change . Business history is filled with “ Roman Candles , ” companies whose moats proved illusory and were soon crossed . The dynamics of capitalism guarantee that competitors will repeatedly assault any business “ castle ” that is earning high returns .

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Berkshire is one of the ten largest components of the S&P 500 and is on the list of largest employers in the United States. Berkshire Hathaway is ranked 5th on the Fortune 500 rankings of the largest United States corporations by total revenue and 9th on the Fortune Global 500. Originally a textile manufacturer, the company transitioned into a conglomerate starting in 1965 under the management of chairman and CEO Warren Buffett and vice chairman Charlie Munger (from 1978 to 2023). Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (/ˈbɜːrkʃər/) is an American multinational conglomerate holding company headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska.

In investing , just as in baseball , to put runs on the scoreboard one must watch the playing field , not the scoreboard . But prices will be determined by future earnings . The goal of each investor should be to create a portfolio ( in effect , a “ company ” ) that will deliver him or her the highest possible look — through earnings a decade or so from now . To calculate these , they should determine the underlying earnings attributable to the shares they hold in their portfolio and total these . Observing correctly that the market was frequently efficient , they went on to conclude incorrectly that it was always efficient . Their interest in such matters is understandable , since techniques shrouded in mystery clearly have value to the purveyor of investment advice .

Since 2019, it has merged with a Swiss company called Biosynth AG to form a key global organisation within the fine chemical industry and operates under name Biosynth Carbosynth®. In Compton, a small village, roughly 10 miles from Newbury, a chemical manufacturing company called Carbosynth was founded, in 2006. Before moving to their £129 million headquarters in the outskirts of the town in 2002, Vodafone used 64 buildings spread across the town centre. Newbury is home to the world headquarters of the mobile network operator Vodafone, which is the town’s largest employer with over 6,000 people. Firms spread into the surrounding Thames Valley or M4 corridor, attracting IT firms such as Cable & Wireless, DEC (subsequently Hewlett-Packard), Microsoft, Sharp Telecommunications, Oracle Corporation, Sun Microsystems and Cognos. The European head offices of major IT companies BlackBerry, CA Technologies, are in the town.

In October 2025, Berkshire acquired OxyChem, a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum, in a $9.7 billion cash deal. This move was touted as an example of Warren Buffett’s “disdain” for investment bankers. It appointed two Berkshire Hathaway Energy executives as CEO and CFO of the company, retaining Jimmy Haslam as chairman. In 2020, Buffett said he overpaid for the company and wrote down its value by approximately $10 billion. In January 2016, Berkshire Hathaway acquired Precision Castparts Corp. for $32.1 billion.