Berkshire Closes at Its Highest Level Since Buffett Announced He Would Step Down

Berkshire Closes at Its Highest Level Since Buffett Announced He Would Step Down

The stock bucked a broad sell-off and set a 17-month closing high

Berkshire Hathaway's Class A shares closed Friday at $798,000 and its Class B shares at $532.02, the highest closing levels since Warren Buffett told shareholders at the May 2025 annual meeting that he planned to step down as CEO at the end of that year, CNBC reported. The move came on a day when the rest of the market fell.

Both share classes sit 1.4% below their all-time closing highs

Per CNBC, Class A finished 1.4% under its record close of $809,350 and Class B 1.4% under its record close of $539.80. Those records were set on May 2, 2025 — the trading day before Buffett made his announcement. TokenPost recorded the session's gains: Class A rose $8,514, or 1.08%; Class B added $6.34, or 1.21%.

The rally stood out because everything else was falling

The S&P 500 lost 1.1% to 7,659.44, the Nasdaq Composite dropped 2.1% to 26,140.03 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 0.3% to 52,002.41, according to the Associated Press. Selling was concentrated in semiconductors and AI infrastructure: chipmakers fell for an eighth straight session, their longest losing streak since 2008, and Nvidia-backed CoreWeave dropped another 11% Friday.

A 10-session winning streak had just ended on Thursday

CNBC noted that Berkshire had risen for 10 consecutive sessions, adding about 5%, before Thursday's loss. Friday's gain of more than 1% put the shares at their best close since Buffett's announcement.

Buffett has now given up both the CEO and chairman roles

At the May 3, 2025 annual meeting's Q&A session, Buffett said he would recommend Greg Abel as CEO. The board approved the appointment the next day, effective Jan. 1, 2026. On Sept. 18, 2026, the company said Buffett, 96, was stepping down as chairman and becoming chairman emeritus, with his son Howard G. Buffett elected chairman. Buffett's line — "Father Time always wins" — was carried by CNBC, Reuters and others.

The transition came in stages, and the valuation discount is still there

Buffett handed over the CEO job first and the chairmanship second, while remaining a director. Reuters, citing LSEG data, reported that Berkshire's price-to-book value has slipped from about 1.62 to 1.53 since Buffett announced he would step down as CEO — evidence that the market's long-standing "Buffett premium" is only partly restored.

Roughly $365 billion in cash earns more when rates are high

Meyer Shields of Keefe, Bruyette & Woods told CNBC that higher short-term interest rates are helping lift the shares. Berkshire still holds roughly $360 billion in cash, which Shields called "a good symbol of continued patience under the new CEO" — and higher rates mean the company "will be making more money" on it. Berkshire's Form 10-Q put cash and short-term Treasuries at $365.5 billion as of June 30, or $359.2 billion excluding railroad cash and after deducting payables tied to Treasury bills. The peak was $397.4 billion at the end of March.

Buybacks and a 13F turned Berkshire into a net buyer again

Capital deployment under Abel has accelerated. Berkshire repurchased about $4.5 billion of its own stock in the second quarter, up from just $235 million in the first, and added roughly $3.3 billion more in buybacks during July, CNBC reported. Its 13F filing showed about $23.5 billion of equities purchased in the second quarter against $3.7 billion sold — the first net buying quarter in 14.

New money went into Alphabet and into homebuilding

Berkshire's Alphabet position has reached $37.4 billion, a little over 10% of its $358 billion stock portfolio and its third-largest holding, according to The Motley Fool. In housing, the company closed its $72.50-a-share acquisition of Taylor Morrison on July 24 — about $6.8 billion in equity and $8.5 billion including debt — and has roughly doubled its Lennar stake to about 11%.

Bending Spoons is the most visible recent bet

On Oct. 14, Berkshire disclosed a further $330 million investment in Italy's Bending Spoons, buying 10 million ordinary shares at $33 apiece in a private placement and lifting its stake to 4%, making it the company's sixth-largest investor, according to LSEG. That follows $600 million committed at the July IPO, taking total exposure to about $930 million. Bending Spoons shares jumped roughly 34% to 40% on the news, closed Friday at $47.07 and are up 24.3% over three sessions. CNBC estimates Berkshire's roughly 30.7 million shares were worth more than $1.4 billion at Friday's close, a 55.3% gain.

Insurance got a lift from a quiet hurricane season

CNBC noted that Berkshire's insurance operations have benefited from a relatively quiet hurricane season so far, and Shields pointed to the absence of hurricane landfalls during the quarter. Forecasters had put the 2026 Atlantic season at a 75% chance of below-normal activity.

November's earnings report is the next real test

CNBC noted on Sept. 18 that Berkshire was up only about 1% for the year while the S&P 500 had rallied more than 11%, and that the shares had at one point fallen more than 14% in the three months after Buffett's announcement. The company's market value now sits near $1.139 trillion, with Class B trading around 13.4 times trailing earnings. Berkshire is scheduled to report third-quarter results on Nov. 2, with consensus estimates of about $5.60 in earnings per share and $100.93 billion in revenue. Whether Abel turns that cash pile into returns better than cash itself will decide how far this rebound runs.