The rise in company's profit is due to improved results in its insurance operations, higher gains from investments and derivatives.
Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc on Saturday said its fourth-quarter (Q4) profit rose 32%, helped by improved results in its insurance operations and higher gains from investments and derivatives.
Net income rose to $5.48 billion, or $3,333 per Class A share, from $4.16 billion, or $2,529 per share, a year earlier.
Quarterly operating profit rose 18% to $4.67 billion, or $2,843 per share, from $3.96 billion, or $2,412 per share.
Analysts on average had forecast operating profit of $2,814 per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. The company's revenue rose 7% to $51.82 billion.
Its book value per share, which measures assets minus liabilities and which Buffett considers a good yardstick for Berkshire's intrinsic worth, rose 6.4% from a year earlier to $155,501.
For all of 2015, the company's profit rose 21% to $24.08 billion, or $14,656 per share. It would have edged lower but for a gain from the merger that created Kraft Heinz Co, Berkshire said. Its operating profit rose 5% to $17.36 billion, or $10,564 per share.
Buffett, 85, has run Berkshire for nearly 51 years. He has transformed it from a failing textile company into a conglomerate with roughly 90 businesses in such areas as insurance, railroads, energy, food, apparel and real estate.
The Omaha, a Nebraska-based company also has well over $100 billion of equity investments, including American Express Co, Coca-Cola Co, IBM Corporation, Kraft Heinz and Wells Fargo & Co.
Berkshire ended the year with $71.73 billion in cash. It spent some of it last month when it acquired industrial parts maker Precision Castparts Corporation, Buffett's largest acquisition.
In Friday trading, Berkshire's Class A shares closed at $198,190.50, and its Class B shares closed at $131.92. Both are nearly unchanged this year.
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 "Chairman & CEO, Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett")
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