Investors are seeking shelter from the AI storm in Berkshire Hathaway after shares of the conglomerate had lagged the broader market since Warren Buffett announced his departure as CEO last year.
Berkshire’s class B stock is up 13.6% so far this year, beating the S&P 500’s 7.8% gain. The outperformance has come as Wall Street rotates out of once high-flying tech stocks that rode the AI boom. Since Oct. 1 alone, Berkshire stock has soared 14% while the S&P has fallen about 4%.
That mirrors other years that saw major market upheaval. Most recently, Berkshire gained 4% in 2022 when the Federal Reserve launched an aggressive rate-hiking campaign that sent the broad market index down 18%.
Still, Berkshire’s own closely followed portfolio hasn’t been immune to recent market swings. According to its third-quarter earnings report filed on Saturday, investment gains plunged 46% from a year earlier to $9.4 billion.
Berkshire’s top stock holdings remained Alphabet, American Express, Apple, Bank of America and Coca-Cola during the quarter.
While a more detailed filing later this month will reveal its precise moves, the quarterly earnings report showed that Berkshire bought $2.4 billion of stocks during the period and sold some $2.8 billion.
The company grew its stake in “commercial, industrial, and other” equities by $2.3 billion on a cost basis, and cut its stake in “banks, insurance and finance” by $400 million.
Meanwhile, CEO Greg Abel, who took over from Buffett at the start of this year, continued to draw down Berkshire’s massive cash pile and accelerated stock repurchases.
It repurchased $9.6 billion of its stock in the third quarter, more than double the pace in the second quarter. And in the first four weeks of the fourth quarter, Berkshire bought back about $2 billion more in stock.
With a broad array of firms under the Berkshire umbrella, the conglomerate remains focused on traditional businesses like railroad BNSF, Brooks running shoes, See’s candies, and Forest River RVs.
Abel added to that strategy in July, when he agreed to buy home builder Taylor Morrison for $6.8 billion. That broke a long drought without any major acquisitions as Buffett bemoaned the lack of good bargains.
Berkshire’s holdings in the traditional economy have paid off. In the third quarter, its railroad, energy and manufacturing businesses delivered strong profits, though insurance underwriting tumbled.
That’s as the AI boom has not only supercharged the tech sector but also industries that benefit from the hundreds of billions of dollars being spent on data center construction as well as electrical grid upgrades.
As a result, U.S. GDP has been running hot, expanding 3.4% in the third quarter, accelerating from 2.2% in the second quarter.
But the Democratic sweep of gubernatorial races in data center hot spots like Texas, Ohio and Georgia is expected to slow down the AI buildout and the overall economy.
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