According to Greg Abel's 2025 shareholder letter, BNSF, the railroad owned by Berkshire Hathaway, generated $8.1 billion in operating earnings in 2025, and $4.4 billion of that was paid to Berkshire as a cash dividend, with the company on pace to at least match that again this year. In the first half of 2026, BNSF's operating earnings reached just over $2.9 billion, up nearly 10% year over year. Berkshire paid $34.5 billion for BNSF in 2010, and the effective dividend yield on that initial investment is now 12.7% after 16 years, not counting the appreciation of the railroad's value. Estimates of BNSF's market value range from $75 billion to $200 billion, and Warren Buffett has described it as Berkshire's second-most-valuable asset, mainly because of the cash it produces. The author suggests shareholders might prefer that Abel make more acquisitions of small cash-generating companies rather than use Berkshire's $365.5 billion in uninvested cash to buy stocks.
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