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    Berkshire Continues Retreat From Stocks

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    The conglomerate reported on Saturday that it had cut its holdings in Apple and Bank of America and increased its cash to a record high in the third quarter.Berkshire Hathaway, the conglomerate headed by Warren E. Buffett, extended its retreat from stocks in the third quarter, cutting its holdings in Apple and Bank of America and increasing its cash to a record $325.2 billion.Berkshire also reported on Saturday a 6 percent decline in quarterly operating profit, largely the result of higher liabilities for its insurance companies, including for Hurricane Helene, and currency losses from a strengthening U.S. dollar.These costs offset improved profitability at the Geico car insurer, where accident claims and expenses fell. Profit also rose at the BNSF railroad, which shipped more consumer goods, and Berkshire Hathaway Energy, where operating expenses declined.In its quarterly report, Berkshire said it sold about 100 million of its Apple shares, or 25 percent, over the summer, ending with about 300 million shares.It has now sold more than 600 million Apple shares this year, though Apple remained Berkshire’s largest stock holding, at $69.9 billion.The sales represented a large portion of the $36.1 billion of stock, including several billion dollars of Bank of America shares, that Berkshire sold in the quarter.Mr. Buffett said in May that he expected Apple to remain Berkshire’s largest stock investment, but selling made sense because the 21 percent federal tax rate on the capital gains was likely to increase.Berkshire bought just $1.5 billion of stock in the quarter, the eighth straight quarter when it was a net seller of stocks.It also repurchased none of its own stock, suggesting that Mr. Buffett doesn’t view even his own company’s shares as a bargain.Operating profit from Berkshire’s dozens of businesses fell to $10.09 billion, from $10.76 billion a year earlier.Insurance underwriting profit fell 69 percent, hurt by rising claims, $565 million of losses from Helene and a bankruptcy court settlement related to the defunct talc supplier Whittaker Clark & Daniels. The costs more than offset a near doubling of underwriting profit at Geico. Berkshire also projected $1.3 billion to $1.5 billion in pretax losses in the fourth quarter from Hurricane Milton, which hit Florida in October.Net income for Berkshire totaled $26.25 billion compared with a loss of $12.77 billion a year earlier when falling stock prices reduced the value of Berkshire’s investments.Mr. Buffett has said operating results better reflect Berkshire’s performance. Accounting rules require Berkshire to report unrealized investment gains and losses when it reports net income, adding volatility that Mr. Buffett counsels investors to ignore.Mr. Buffett, 94, has led Berkshire since 1965, and is expected to eventually transfer leadership to Berkshire’s vice chairman, Greg Abel, 62.Berkshire, based in Omaha, owns and operates an array of businesses, including Berkshire Hathaway Energy, many industrial and manufacturing companies, a big real estate brokerage, and retail businesses like Dairy Queen, See’s Candies and Fruit of the Loom. More

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      Airbus, With Eye on U.S. Race, Says It Will Be Ready for Higher Tariffs

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      The giant European airplane maker’s chief executive said it would pass along any higher charges to its customers.Airbus, the world’s largest commercial airplane manufacturer, said on Wednesday that it was preparing for the possibility that the United States would impose new tariffs on all imports, and that the company would deal with the higher charges by passing them along to its airline customers.In a call with reporters, Airbus’s chief executive, Guillaume Faury, said the European company was monitoring the U.S. presidential election next week and would be prepared for the possibility of a new 10 percent tariff. Former President Donald J. Trump, the Republican candidate, has made sweeping tariffs a critical plank of his economic platform if he wins.Mr. Faury said any new tariff would be passed along to Airbus’s airline customers, in much the same way that Airbus dealt with a tariff that Mr. Trump put on European aircraft in 2020 as part of a long-running airplane subsidy dispute.“So that’s something we will be discussing with our customers” if necessary, Mr. Faury said. “But it puts them in a difficult place of adding an additional cost on what they have ordered and what they’re procuring,” he said. “That’s basically mainly a decision of the state that has to be borne by the companies.”He added: “So we are prepared. We know what it feels like. We don’t believe that’s helping aviation and the competitiveness of the airlines and the aviation industry, but it’s something we would be able to manage.”Airbus on Wednesday announced a 22 percent jump in its net profit for the first nine months of the year despite major problems in its supply chain. Mr. Faury said that Airbus’s net profit rose to 983 million euros, or $1.1 billion, through September, and that its third-quarter adjusted earnings before interest and taxes were €1.4 billion.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      CVS Ousts Karen Lynch as C.E.O. and Shares Fall

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      Shares of the health care conglomerate dropped after the sudden departure of Karen Lynch and a downbeat update on the state of the company’s finances.CVS Health abruptly ousted its chief executive, Karen S. Lynch, on Friday as the pharmacy and health care conglomerate struggled with sluggish growth and faced pressure from investors.The company appointed David Joyner, the head of CVS Caremark, its successful unit overseeing prescription drug benefits, as the new chief. The management change was accompanied by a dour financial update, with the company scrapping its previous forecasts because of “elevated medical cost pressures.” Shares of CVS fell sharply in early trading.The company’s earnings have disappointed investors in recent quarters, in part because of rising costs at Aetna, the company’s insurance arm. Activist investors have pushed the company for changes, prompting CVS to explore breaking itself up, potentially by separating its pharmacy business from its insurance unit.CVS employs about 300,000 people. Its sprawling portfolio includes the branded pharmacy chain, with more than 9,000 retail locations; Aetna, which it acquired in 2018, which has nearly 40 million policyholders and other customers; Caremark, the country’s largest pharmacy benefit manager, hired by employers and governments to oversee prescription drug benefits; and Oak Street Health, which runs more than 200 primary care centers for Medicare recipients.Ms. Lynch took over as the group’s chief executive in February 2021, after running Aetna. “I don’t want people to think about CVS Health as just that drugstore,” she told The New York Times in 2022. “I want them to think about it being a health care company.”Roger Farah, the chairman of CVS Health, said in a statement on Friday that “the board believes this is the right time to make a change.” He added that Mr. Joyner’s “deep understanding of our integrated business” would help steer the company through its challenges.During his tenure at Caremark, which he rejoined in 2023 after a few years away from the company, Mr. Joyner faced increased scrutiny of pharmacy benefit managers. He appeared at a Congressional hearing this summer, facing questions from lawmakers about the role of pharmacy benefit managers in rising drug costs for millions of Americans.This month, CVS said it would cut almost 3,000 jobs, mostly corporate employees. Its rival chains are also under pressure to cut costs: This week, Walgreens said it would close about 1,200 stores over the next three years.Shares of CVS, which dropped 7 percent on Friday, have fallen more than 25 percent this year. More

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      Louis Vuitton Owner LVMH Sees Stock Drop on Weak China Sales

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      Weak sales in China at LVMH, the owner of Dior, Tiffany and more, sent a shudder through the luxury sector.Shares in LVMH dropped on Wednesday after the luxury goods giant warned about an “uncertain economic and geopolitical environment” and its latest earnings disappointed analysts.The conglomerate — which owns Dior, Tiffany, Fendi and more — is a bellwether for the industry. Its financial results, released on Tuesday after European markets closed, has sent a shudder through the luxury sector, particularly in response to slowing sales in the hugely important Chinese market.LVMH, which is run by the French billionaire Bernard Arnault, said that sales for last quarter fell 3 percent from the same period the previous year. The company also reported a decline in sales in its fashion and leather goods unit, which makes up about half of the conglomerate’s revenue, for the first time since early in the coronavirus pandemic.Shares of other fashion and lifestyle brands also declined, including Hermès and Kering, the owner of Gucci.Investors are jittery about the Chinese economy. Beijing introduced a package of measures last month that spurred a major rally in Chinese stocks, but details remain vague about the extent of the measures to bolster weak consumer spending, stabilize the real estate market and strengthen banks.China recently announced retaliatory penalties on European brandy — LVMH owns Moët Hennessy — in response to higher tariffs imposed by the European Union on Chinese-made electric vehicles.“Consumer confidence in mainland China today is back in line with the all-time low reached during Covid,” Jean-Jacques Guiony, LVMH’s chief financial officer, told analysts on Tuesday.Some industry observers are betting that LVMH will cope. “We are not sure this quarter particularly changes the LVMH story,” analysts at Bernstein wrote in a note. Even without a lot of detail, the stimulus signals in China are encouraging and demand will return, the analysts said.China’s housing minister is set to hold a news conference on Thursday and is expected to outline more measures to bolster growth.Danielle Kaye More

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      Walgreens Says It Will Close 1,200 Stores

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      The pharmacy giant said it would close the stores over the next three years and plans to “redeploy” the majority of the workers at the closed stores.Walgreens plans to close about 1,200 stores over the next three years, its parent company said on Tuesday, in an effort by the struggling pharmacy giant to cut costs and change focus.The chain, which is owned by Walgreens Boots Alliance, announced the closures in its latest quarterly earnings report, released on Tuesday.The closures will allow Walgreens to “respond more dynamically to shifts in consumer behavior and buying preferences,” Tim Wentworth, the chief executive of Walgreens Boots Alliance, told investors during an earnings call on Tuesday.There are more than 8,000 Walgreens stores in the United States, Mr. Wentworth said, and about 6,000 of those stores were profitable.“While the decision to close the store is never an easy one, we feel confident in our ability to continue to serve our customers,” Mr. Wentworth said, “and we intend to follow our historic practice to redeploy the majority of the work force in those stores that we closed.”About 500 of the closures will take place in the current fiscal year, which runs through September 2025, but the company did not say where they would occur.The company reported an operating loss of nearly $1 billion in the three months through August, roughly twice as much as the loss in the same period last year. Its stock price jumped more than 10 percent in early trading on Tuesday, as the results were slightly better than analysts had expected.Walgreens said in June that it would most likely close a significant amount of stores as part of a plan to turn around its business in the United States. At the time, Walgreens said spending by lower-income consumers in particular was lagging, driven by high inflation and depleted savings. The closures announced on Tuesday include 300 stores that had previously been approved to shut under that plan.Mr. Wentworth said that the company was also making changes to how it stocks its stores, by being “more selective” with the brands it carries, as well as expanding its own brands. This, he said, would enable the company to be “a destination for categories for which we believe we are uniquely positioned to lead, like health and wellness and, specifically, women’s health.” More

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      Profits Leap at Goldman Sachs as Banks See Steady Economy

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      The investment bank earned more than expected in the latest quarter, a theme for other big banks, too.Goldman Sachs on Tuesday reported a monster jump in its third quarter earnings, reaping $3 billion in profits — far higher than what Wall Street analysts had expected.How did the investment bank do it? The steadying economic environment helped — but so did a financial maneuver employed by Goldman’s chief executive, David M. Solomon, a few weeks ago.In early September, Mr. Solomon publicly sounded the alarm, saying many aspects of the bank’s business were stumbling in the third quarter. He warned that the bank’s upcoming earnings might disappoint.They didn’t — not at Goldman nor the two other major banks that reported results on Tuesday.Up first, a billion-dollar beatGoldman pulled in nearly $13 billion in revenue during the third quarter, over $1 billion more than projections. The bank’s $3 billion in quarterly profit was roughly equal to what it pulled in during the previous quarter, despite Mr. Solomon’s warning last month that profits might not hold up as well as they had in the first half of the year.A bank executive, briefing reporters on the condition of anonymity, said that trading activity — a core part of any investment bank — came in stronger than expected in September, the same period that the Federal Reserve announced a large cut in interest rates.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Nvidia Shares Tumble After Reports of a Chip Delay

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      Nvidia shares tumbled more than 10 percent in early trading on Monday after reports that the company would delay shipments of its newest artificial intelligence chip, but the stock later rebounded as investors’ concerns about the costs of the delay faded.The Information, a tech news outlet, reported on Friday that Nvidia would be shipping its latest graphics processing unit, or GPU, which make it possible to create A.I. systems, three months later than planned. Nvidia said in a statement that production for the chip, which is called Blackwell, was on track for later this year and added that customer orders and interest were high.Stacy Rasgon, an analyst with Bernstein who follows Nvidia, said there was no need to panic because cloud computing companies such as Microsoft and Amazon were continuing to increase their spending on A.I. data centers. That expansion means that Nvidia chips will be in demand, he said.“Nvidia’s competitive window is so large right now that we don’t think a three-month delay will cause significant share shifts,” Mr. Rasgon said.Nvidia has been one of the hottest stocks in technology, fueled by the frenzy over A.I. The company’s market value has increased to $2.43 trillion from $1 trillion a year ago, making it more valuable than Alphabet and Amazon. But its rise has been marked by volatility, as investors waffle between enthusiasm and skepticism about the potential for A.I. to generate new business. More

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      Berkshire’s Cash Stockpile Soars as It Cuts Its Stake in Apple

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      The conglomerate reported nearly $277 billion in cash in the second quarter. And while it sold about 390 million shares in Apple, it still owned about 400 million.Cash at Berkshire Hathaway, the conglomerate run by Warren E. Buffett, soared to nearly $277 billion in the second quarter as it sold a large chunk of its stake in Apple.Berkshire reported on Saturday that it had sold about 390 million Apple shares in the quarter, after selling 115 million shares from January to March, as Apple’s stock price rose 23 percent. It still owned about 400 million shares worth $84.2 billion as of June 30.The cash stake grew to $276.9 billion from $189 billion three months earlier largely because Berkshire sold $75.5 billion in stocks, including shares in Bank of America. The conglomerate said its stake in the bank was worth $41.1 billion as of June 30. It was the seventh straight quarter Berkshire sold more stocks than it bought.Second-quarter profit from Berkshire’s dozens of businesses rose 15 percent to $11.6 billion from $10.04 billion a year earlier. Nearly half of that profit came from Berkshire’s insurance businesses, which include Geico. The higher insurance earnings, it said, reflected increased revenue from premiums, rising investment income as well as the fact there were no significant catastrophic events.Berkshire’s net income fell 15 percent to $30.34 billion from $35.91 billion a year earlier, when it benefited from rising stock prices that boosted the value of its investments.Mr. Buffett has long urged shareholders to ignore Berkshire’s quarterly investment gains and losses, which often lead to outsize net profits or net losses.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Auto Sales Grew Slightly in Second Quarter

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      High interest rates, economic uncertainty and a cyberattack appear to have dampened sales in the three months between April and June.Most automakers on Tuesday, with the exception of Tesla, reported modest sales growth in the three months between April and June as high interest rates, persistently high vehicles prices, and uncertainty about the economy and the coming presidential election weighed on consumers.Sales in late June were also slowed by disruptions at car dealers stemming from a cyberattack on a company that supplies software and data services to dealerships.Cox Automotive, a market research firm, estimated that 4.1 million new cars and trucks were sold in the second quarter, up a little more from the same period in 2023. In the first six months of 2024, 7.9 million new vehicles were sold, an increase of 3 percent from the first half of last year, Cox said.Slow growth is likely to continue through the rest of the year, with consumers delaying big-ticket purchases until after the election, said Jonathan Smoke, Cox’s chief economist. “The market is roiled by uncertainty,” he said. “We probably can’t quite keep the pace of sales of the first half, but we aren’t expecting a collapse in sales, either.”Cox has forecast 15.9 million new cars and trucks will be sold this year. That would be an increase from the 15.5 million that were sold last year, but still well below the 17 million vehicles sold annually before the pandemic.General Motors said on Tuesday that it sold nearly 700,000 cars and light trucks in the United States in the second quarter, an increase of less than 1 percent from the same period last year. The company said it was its highest quarterly total since the fourth quarter of 2020.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More