David A. Grogan | CNBC
The "Oracle of Omaha" believes that the "extraordinary period" of excessive spending on the back of pandemic stimulus is over, and now many of his businesses are faced with an inventory build-up that they'll need to get rid of by having sales, he told about 40,000 shareholders who gathered in Omaha at"It is a different climate than it was six months ago. And a number of our managers were surprised," Buffett said Saturday.
"It was just a question of getting goods to deliver. People bought, and they didn't wait for sales. If you couldn't sell them one thing, they would put another thing in their backlog," Buffett said. "In the general economy, the feedback we get is that, I would say, perhaps the majority of our businesses will actually report lower earnings this year than last year," he said.