Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A) (BRK.B) repurchased no stock at all in 2025. In the first quarter of 2026, it spent $235 million. In the second quarter, it spent about $4.5 billion, roughly 19 times as much in three months.
At most companies, a repurchase is a routine capital return. At Berkshire Hathaway, it is a published opinion about price. The standing program, as described in the Q2 10-Q, permits repurchases “any time that Berkshire’s Chief Executive Officer, after consultation with the Chairman of the Board, believes that the repurchase price is below Berkshire’s intrinsic value, conservatively determined.” Note the construction. Warren Buffett stepped down as chief executive on Jan. 1 and remains chairman; the filing now vests the decision in the CEO and gives the chairman a consultation. This is Greg Abel’s call, and it is the first loud one he has made.
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The filing shows what he was willing to pay. Berkshire bought no shares in April, then Class B stock at an average of $476.01 in May and $487.98 in June, alongside 478 Class A shares. BRK.B traded between roughly $464 and $500 over the quarter and closed Aug. 7 at $521.80. Abel, in other words, has told shareholders that Berkshire in the high $480s was below a conservative estimate of what it is worth.
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The number everybody else led with is real too. Berkshire bought roughly $23.5 billion of equities in the quarter against about $3.7 billion of sales, close to $20 billion of net buying, ending 14 consecutive quarters as a net seller. The streak checks out on the filings: it began in the fourth quarter of 2022, after a net-buying third quarter, and ran unbroken through the first quarter of 2026. It is a real break with the era in which Berkshire was shedding longtime Buffett positions.
The cash pile finally shrank to $365.5 billion on June 30 from a record $397.4 billion three months earlier. Coverage has been split on that March figure, with some outlets reporting $380 billion instead. Both are right, and they measure different things: $397.4 billion is the gross balance, and $380.2 billion is what is left after backing out $17.2 billion of unsettled Treasury bill purchases that sat in assets and liabilities simultaneously at quarter-end. The filing discloses the adjustment in a footnote.
