“There remain only a handful of companies in this country capable of truly moving the needle at Berkshire, and they have been endlessly picked over by us and by others,” Buffett, 93, said in his annual shareholder letter, which the company released alongside its results on Saturday. “Outside the US, there are essentially no candidates that are meaningful options for capital deployment at Berkshire. All in all, we have no possibility of eye-popping performance.”
Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. said its cash pile scaled a new record as the billionaire investor decried a lack of meaningful deals that would give the firm a shot at “eye-popping performance.”
Berkshire’s cash hoard jumped to a record at US$167.6 billion ($225.09 billion) in the fourth quarter as the conglomerate struggled to find deals at attractive valuations. The company also reported fourth-quarter operating earnings of US$8.48 billion, versus US$6.63 billion for the same period a year earlier, helped by an increase in insurance underwriting earnings and investment income amid higher interest rates and milder weather.
