Warren Buffett Berkshire Hathaway Earnings

Buffett: still rolling (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

Berkshire Hathaway dips after lackluster Q2 results, $3.8 billion hit on Kraft Heinz stake

Both operating earnings and revenues fell year on year, and Berkshire didn’t buy back any stock for the fourth consecutive quarter.

Matt Phillips, Luke Kawa

8/2/25 1:55PM

Berkshire Hathaway, the company built up by investing icon Warren Buffett over the past six decades, reported mediocre to underwhelming Q2 results Saturday, punctuated by a big write-down of a company that it’s far and away the single largest shareholder in.

Shares are down nearly 1% in premarket trading.

The insurance, investment, and commercial conglomerate reported:

Operating earnings of $11.2 billion, down 3.8% from $11.6 billion reported in Q2 2024, driven by softness in its insurance business. However, that was still above the $10.74 billion average estimate from the two analysts polled by Bloomberg.
Total revenues of $92.515 billion, down 1.2% from $93.653 billion reported during the prior year period and well below the analysts’ average estimate for $95.135 billion.

The big headline from this release: Berkshire is (finally) marking the carrying value of its massive stake in ketchup maker Kraft Heinz to be in line with its market value, prompting a $3.8 billion hit to earnings. Berkshire owned 27.4% of Kraft Heinz as of June 30.

Edward Jones analyst Kyle Sanders suggested this write-down could be a prelude to the conglomerate reducing or completely exiting its position in the company going forward.

While seemingly every other US company is attempting to offer some insight on how changes to trade policy affect its outlook, Berkshire isn’t even bothering.

“Changes in macroeconomic conditions and geopolitical events, including changes in international trade policies and tariffs, may negatively affect our operating results and the values of our investments in equity securities and of our operating businesses,” per the earnings report. “We are currently unable to reliably predict the nature, timing or magnitude of the potential economic consequences of any such changes or the impacts on our Consolidated Financial Statements.”

Berkshire shares have badly lagged the market since the man known as the Oracle of Omaha announced in early May that he would cede the CEO job at Berkshire to top lieutenant Greg Abel on January 1. (Buffett will stay on as chairman.)

Berkshire is down roughly 12% since then, while the S&P 500 is up about 10%.

The Buffett-led company also refrained from any share repurchases for the fourth consecutive quarter, despite this bout of underperformance.

Tasha Matsumoto

Stocks eke out gains on hopes for a path forward for reopening the Strait of Hormuz

Stocks rebounded on news that Iran is drafting a protocol with Oman to “monitor transit” through the crucial Strait of Hormuz.

Matt Phillips4h

AI server cluster maker Penguin Solutions takes flight

Small-cap AI server cluster maker Penguin Solutions surged Thursday after posting better-than-expected Q2 revenue and profit numbers Wednesday after the close, along with an increase in full-year sales and profit guidance.

The company, which was known as Smart Global Holdings until July 2024, has positioned itself as a provider of “end-to-end AI infrastructure solutions.”

Its Advanced Computing division designs and sells computers, cabling, and cooling systems, the server racks and clusters of racks AI data centers need. Its other main division sells flash and DRAM memory products.

It’s a pretty small company, with a fully diluted market cap of just over $1 billion and roughly 2,900 employees, according to FactSet.

The stock is volatile. Penguin dove during last year’s tariff tantrum that followed “Liberation Day” in April. Then it turned tail and doubled through early October amid a surge of call options activity, which tends to reflect retail interest. From the October peak, it then plunged by about 50%, before Thursday’s renaissance.

For what it’s worth, call options activity in Penguin is pretty busy today, too — relatively speaking — with roughly 2,625 traded as of 1:15 p.m. ET. That’s the most since early January, when the company last reported quarterly numbers. The average volume over the previous 25 trading sessions is about 325 calls a day, FactSet data shows.

Penguin Solutions Stock Takes Off On AI Bolstered Outlook

The company, which was known as Smart Global Holdings until July 2024, has positioned itself as a provider of “end-to-end AI infrastructure solutions.”

It’s a pretty small company, with a fully diluted market cap of just over $1 billion and roughly 2,900 employees, according to FactSet.

Luke Kawa7h

Momentum returns to optics stocks as the release valve for AI optimism

Potentially imminent end to the war? Buy optics stocks.

Maybe not? Buy optics stocks anyway.

Effectively all the juice left in the AI trade is coming from optics (and memory) stocks. And the latter group is taking a bit of a breather today while the former continues to surge.

Shares of Ciena Corp., Lumentum, and Coherent are building on recent big gains and among the biggest gainers in the S&P 500 near midday, while Applied Optoelectronics is also surging on Thursday.

These companies all provide solutions that help information move around in data centers, and thus are key beneficiaries of the aggressive capex plans of hyperscalers. Nvidia has invested $2 billion apiece in Coherent and Lumentum in deals that also include purchase commitments.

Matt Phillips7h

Space stocks rip during a topsy-turvy day for the equity market

Satellite-services-from-space stocks surged Thursday after reports that Amazon is in talks to buy Globalstar, which provides voice and connectivity services from its satellite network. It also can’t hurt that the general mood around space is ebullient, following the successful launch of Artemis II on Thursday.

Planet Labs and ViaSat also soared on the news.

The gains for EchoStar — seen as a backdoor play at pre-IPO SpaceX exposure — and Rocket Lab were more muted, perhaps because a deep-pocketed competitor like Jeff Bezos getting serious about space services could complicate the plans of the two largest commercial space launch companies.

Rocket Lab and SpaceX see launch services as key to their aspirations of being major providers of voice and data services from low-Earth orbit satellites.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s SpaceX is the dominant provider of such services, and the early rumors on the company’s planned IPO — expected to be the largest ever — suggest the market is very excited about the prospects for the industry.

Elsewhere in the space stock world, Intuitive Machines — a maker of space infrastructure that provides services to NASA for lunar missions — also rose.

Globalstar surges after FT reports that Amazon is in talks to buy the satellite group

Rocket Lab and SpaceX see launch services as key to their aspirations of being major providers of voice and data services from low-Earth orbit satellites.

Elsewhere in the space stock world, Intuitive Machines — a maker of space infrastructure that provides services to NASA for lunar missions — also rose.

Hyunsoo Rim, David Crowther

Can Sandisk do the double?

The S&P 500 just had its worst quarter in years. Here are the biggest winners and losers.

Sandisk and energy stocks soared while software names sank amid a broad sell-off in tech stocks.

Balancing balls of different sizes on pink seesaws creating equilibrium