Berkshire Hathaway quietly removed Kraft Heinz from the list of operating companies on its website earlier this year — weeks before cutting the value of its stake and exiting the board.
Archived pages from the Wayback Machine show Kraft was taken off Berkshire’s subsidiaries page in April. In May, Berkshire’s two board representatives stepped down, and in the second quarter the company recorded a $5 billion writedown on its roughly 27% ownership stake, reducing its carrying value to about $8.4 billion.
Berkshire said the impairment reflected several factors, including the length and size of Kraft’s decline in market value, its operating performance, the board departures, and Kraft’s review of potential strategic options. Together, those signals led Berkshire to conclude the loss was not temporary.
Kraft’s inclusion on the subsidiaries list had long been unusual, as most companies featured there are fully owned by Berkshire, such as Geico and See’s Candies. The removal may point to a broader distancing from an investment that has become one of Warren Buffett’s most widely cited missteps.
Berkshire originally partnered with 3G Capital to buy Heinz in 2013 and later merged it with Kraft in a $40 billion deal. Since then, Kraft Heinz has faced repeated writedowns, restructuring, and declining revenues as consumer preferences shifted.