Warren Buffett eyes Canadian investment as cash pile hits fresh record

financialpost.com:

Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s cash pile hit yet another record as billionaire investor Warren Buffett confronted a dearth of big-ticket deals.

The company’s hoard increased to US$189 billion at the end of the first quarter, topping the record it set at year-end. The company also reported first-quarter operating earnings of US$11.2 billion, buoyed by its collection of insurance businesses, versus US$8.07 billion for the same period a year earlier.

Buffett, 93, has long decried a lack of meaningful deals that he said would give the company a shot at “eye-popping” results. Even as the company ramped up acquisitions in recent years, including an US$11.6-billion deal to buy Alleghany Corp. and its purchase of shares in Occidental Petroleum Corp., Berkshire has struggled to find sizable deals. That’s left Buffett with more cash — what he called an unrivalled mountain of capital — than he and his investing deputies could quickly deploy.

As Berkshire’s annual meeting kicked off in Omaha on Saturday, Buffett said that “it’s a fair assumption” that its cash pile will hit US$200 billion at the end of this quarter, with few opportunities for needle-moving acquisitions on the horizon.

“We’d love to spend it, but we won’t spend it unless we think we’re doing something that has very little risk and can make us a lot of money,” he told the crowd of thousands. The company hopes for an “occasional big opportunity,” he added, later noting that it’s looking at an investment in Canada.

“We do not feel uncomfortable in any shape or form putting our money into Canada,” he said. “In fact, we’re actually looking at one thing now.”

Still, having such a vast sum of cash in an increasingly “complicated and intertwined” world where more can go wrong can