No. of Recommendations: 5
That's a sizeable increase, bigger than I was expecting (due to the jump in the Railroad, Utilities and Energy segment).
I agree. I was only forecasting $230.45 for Q1 BV based on normal ops earnings and the expected increase in the equity holdings.
RationalWalk did a nice review of the quarter on Twitter that sheds some light on the differences. There was a step up in the original Pilot purchase to the price paid at end of Jan. that seems to have contributed about $1 increase to BV. They also sold about $6B of CVX. The insurance ops seemed to have had a larger than usual underwriting profit as well.
The BNSF performance, consumer manufacturing and awful numbers at BHE all seem to point to a struggling retail consumer business here in the US. Not surprising and rhymes with what I'm seeing in my day job as well.
Jeff
