Operating earnings

Stocks A to Z
1

A few days ago someone created a nice historical table of quarterly operating earnings. Can someone help me find that post. Thanks.

2

“A few days ago someone created a nice historical table of quarterly operating earnings. Can someone help me find that post. Thanks.”

Possibly Jim’s post #276487?

3

Possibly Jim’s post #276487?

A fun PS for that table:

Imagine that Berkshire’s rolling operating results would have been almost perfectly smoothly rising just before, during, and since the pandemic, were it not for some one-time operating losses in early 2020.

Q: What would those one-time losses have to have been, to maximize the smoothness?
A: $693 per share in 2020-Q1 and $1262 per share in 2020-Q2, total about $1955/share.

As in the table in that post, that’s after inflation, per share, in today’s money.

The numbers, actual and patching those amounts in, would then go like this:
The changed numbers are bold.

                       Notional
           Original  no-pandemic
2017  Q4    10446        10446
2018  Q1    11074        11074
2018  Q2    11825        11825
2018  Q3    12445        12445
2018  Q4    13075        13075
2019  Q1    13204        13204
2019  Q2    13113        13113
2019  Q3    13178        13178
2019  Q4    13367        13367
2020  Q1    13154        **13847**
2020  Q2    12362        **14317**
2020  Q3    12468        **14423**
2020  Q4    12979        **14934**
2021  Q1    13691        **14953**
2021  Q2    15207        15207
2021  Q3    15692        15692
2021  Q4    16281        16281
2022  Q1    16557        16557
2022  Q2    16638        16638

FWIW, the one-time loss thus estimated equates to 0.48% of the current share price.

Recall that this is a discussion of operating earnings only.
The one-time permanent hit to investments is a separate discussion.

Jim

7 Likes