📊 PRO: This Week in Visuals
BRK TCEHY CSCO AMAT SE NU JD ADYEY ONON HIMS GLBE MNDY STNE DLO
Welcome to the Saturday PRO edition of How They Make Money.
Over 300,000 subscribers turn to us for business and investment insights.
In case you missed it:
Premium members get:
📊 Monthly reports: 200+ companies visualized.
📩 Tuesday articles: Exclusive deep dives and insights.
📚 Access to our archive: Hundreds of business breakdowns.
PRO members get everything PLUS:
📩 Saturday PRO reports: Timely insights on the latest earnings.
Today at a glance:
🦎 Berkshire: Cash Starts Moving
📱 Tencent: AI Bill Arrives
🌐 Cisco: Networking Supercycle
⚙️ Applied Materials: Tool Bottleneck
🌊 Sea Limited: Shopee Monetizes
🏦 Nubank: Credit Fears Ease
🚚 JD.com: Profit Inflects
💳 Adyen: Platform Broadens
👟 On: Premium Focus
💊 Hims & Hers: GLP-1 Trade-off
🛍️ Global-e: Managed Markets Scales
📆 Monday.com: AI Mix Jumps
🇧🇷 StoneCo: Credit Risk Rises
🌎 DLocal: Volume Eats Take Rate
1. 🦎 Berkshire: Cash Starts Moving
Berkshire Hathaway Q2 revenue rose 10% Y/Y to $101.8 billion, while operating profit before tax reached $14.4 billion.
Manufacturing was the standout, with revenue up 13% and profit rising 24%.
Insurance was softer, with underwriting profit down 13% and GEICO underwriting earnings falling 45%.
The bigger story is the capital allocation under new CEO Greg Abel. Berkshire bought $23 billion of stocks while selling just $3 billion, its first quarter as a net buyer of stocks in more than three years. That included roughly $10 billion of Alphabet. Berkshire also repurchased $4.5 billion of its own stock in Q2, followed by an estimated $3.4 billion more in July.
As a result, the cash pile fell to $365.5 billion from roughly $397 billion in Q1. That is still enormous, but the direction has changed. Berkshire is also deploying capital through acquisitions, including the $6.8 billion purchase of homebuilder Taylor Morrison.
Bottom Line: The Abel era is starting to look different. Berkshire remains extraordinarily liquid, but buybacks, equity purchases, and acquisitions are finally putting meaningful chunks of its cash pile to work. The question is no longer when Berkshire will deploy capital. It is whether Abel can earn Buffett-like returns on it.