Berkshire's Operating Earnings Rose $1.8 Billion Last Quarter. A Currency Swing Was $1.2 Billion of It.

Berkshire's second-quarter operating earnings rose 16% year over year to $13.0 billion.

Currency effects on the company's non-U.S.-dollar debt swung from an $877 million loss a year ago to a $326 million gain.

Berkshire Hathaway 's (NYSE: BRKA) (NYSE: BRKB) second-quarter operating earnings, reported Saturday, rose 16% year over year -- to $12.98 billion from $11.16 billion, an increase of about $1.8 billion. And about $1.2 billion of that increase came from one unusual place: the changing dollar value of Berkshire's own debt.

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Berkshire and its finance arm owe billions in euro-, pound-, and yen-denominated senior notes (about 4.85 billion euros, 1.75 billion pounds, and 2,481 billion yen at par).

Accounting rules require the company to restate what those borrowings are worth in dollars every quarter, with the change flowing through earnings. The swings can be large simply because the borrowings are.

In the second quarter of 2025, that revaluation produced an $877 million after-tax loss. This year, the same item produced a $326 million gain. The difference between those two figures, about $1.2 billion, sits inside operating earnings, in an "other" category that jumped to $1.27 billion from $32 million a year ago.

The rest of the quarter was more ordinary. Manufacturing, service and retailing earnings rose 24% year over year to $4.5 billion, the strongest part of the report. Berkshire Hathaway Energy earned $891 million, up 27%, and BNSF railroad earnings grew 6% to $1.6 billion. Insurance went the other way: Underwriting profit fell 13% to $1.7 billion, and insurance investment income slipped 9% to $3.1 billion.