Berkshire reported “earnings” on Saturday, and I gotta say: The report seemed underwhelming.

That evaluation assumes it’s possible to draw any sort of conclusions from Berkshire’s “results,” which are better described as periodic updates about one man’s business goings-on.

Technically, that man’s stepping away from his duties as CEO, but there’s an (almost) real sense in which Warren Buffett will run Berkshire even after he dies. And that’s if he ever dies. It’s at least possible his internal organs will prove as impervious to natural processes as the artificial preservatives he ingests as a matter of patriotic principle. For decades, Buffett’s championed a diet consisting in no small part of edible Americana. He eats and drinks like a nine-year-old in the 1990s: McDonald’s, Dairy Queen, Coca-Cola and ultra-processed lunchmeat.

Even if eating baloney and M&M sandwiches never hurts Buffett the man, investing in them continues to hurt Buffett the conglomerate. Saturday’s 10-Q found Berkshire taking a $3.8 billion charge on its misbegotten stake in Kraft Heinz.

I don’t care a single thing about this — and you shouldn’t either — so I’ll keep it brief. Buffett owns 27% (a little more actually) of the float, and the stock, like most of the company’s products, is junk. Specifically, it’s down more than half since the merger in 2015, and it’s gone nowhere in half a decade.

After providing a brief summary of recent corporate history at Kraft Heinz, Berkshire said they’ve “concluded that the unrealized loss” on the stake’s likely to prove “other-than-temporary.” So, not “transitory.” Hence the write-down.

Elsewhere in the filing, Buffett’s cash pile actually fell quarter-on-quarter. It was the first decline since Q2 of 2022.

The figure above gives you some context. The last time Buffett’s cash hoard fell meaningfully was in Q1 of 2022, when he upped Berkshire’s stake in Chevron by $26 billion.

As of end-Q2 2025, Berkshire’s cash was $344.091 billion, down a whole $3.6 billion from the prior quarter’s record high near $350 billion.

Saturday’s filing contained five mentions of the word “tariff.” “We are currently unable to reliably predict the nature, timing or magnitude of the potential economic consequences” associated with “changes in macroeconomic conditions and geopolitical events, including international trade policies and tariffs,” the release said.

Berkshire continued to be a net seller of stocks other than its own during the quarter.

The figure shows you the cash pile along with the quarterly magnitude of the net buying or, for nearly three years running now, selling, of equities.

Notably, Buffett didn’t buy back any shares of Berkshire last quarter, even as the stock fell nearly 9% during the period.

Elaborating further on the operating environment, Berkshire said it’s “reasonably possible” that trade tensions could have “adverse consequences on most, if not all, of our operating businesses, as well as on our investments in equity securities.”