Warren Buffett is no longer running Berkshire Hathaway, but you almost wouldn’t know it.
The famed investor’s conglomerate reported third-quarter earnings on Saturday, showing minimal stock buying and selling.
That was typical during the final years of Buffett’s six decades in charge, as the bargain hunter struggled to find deals on stocks and businesses during a historic stock-market boom.
He stepped down as Berkshire’s CEO at the end of 2025, and as chairman this September.
Under new CEO Greg Abel, Berkshire was a net seller of stocks last quarter, buying $2.4 billion and selling $2.8 billion. That’s a striking slowdown from the second quarter, when it bought a net $20 billion of stocks.
Berkshire’s cash pile shrank by around $8 billion, to $357 billion, after subtracting $20.5 billion in Treasury payables. It has still more than doubled in size since the end of 2023, reflecting Buffett’s prolonged struggle to find value.
One of Abel’s key changes, in consultation with Buffett, has been to accelerate buybacks. He repurchased $9.6 billion of Berkshire stock last quarter, marking the busiest period for buybacks in years.
That looks to have been a good call, as Berkshire stock has jumped from below $500 at the end of September to a record high above $570 this week.
The surge in buybacks was a “pleasant surprise,” David Kass, a finance professor at the University of Maryland and longtime Berkshire analyst, told Business Insider by email.
He said that Abel’s decision to ramp up buybacks, while being a net seller of stocks last quarter, “indicates caution with respect to current market valuations other than Berkshire’s.”
Berkshire reported $12.7 billion of operating income, a 6% drop from the same quarter last year. That was fueled by what Kass described as a “disappointing” drop in insurance underwriting income, along with lower insurance investment income.
Those declines offset higher profits from BNSF Railway, Berkshire Hathaway Energy, and the manufacturing, service, and retailing businesses.
Berkshire owns scores of businesses, including Geico, See’s Candies, and Duracell, and also holds multibillion-dollar stakes in public companies such as Apple, Coca-Cola, and American Express.
Shareholders will have to wait until next week, when it files its third-quarter portfolio disclosure, to learn what stocks it bought and sold last quarter.
Abel has hewed closely to Buffett’s approach during his first year as CEO, appearing to follow some classic advice for successors: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
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