Cash holdings fall as Berkshire adds stocks and repurchases shares
Berkshire Hathaway’s second-quarter report shows the company deploying a significant portion of its cash under Abel, who became CEO in January. Warren Buffett retired after six decades leading Berkshire Hathaway but remains chairman.
The company invested $10 billion in Google’s parent company during the quarter. Berkshire Hathaway also bought back about $4.5 billion of its own shares.
Berkshire Hathaway’s cash holdings declined to $365.5 billion, compared with nearly $400 billion at the end of March. The report did not identify all of the company’s stock purchases.
The earnings report suggested that Berkshire Hathaway added more than $24 billion in commercial, industrial and other stocks to its portfolio. The company’s filing did not name those stocks.
Berkshire Hathaway is expected to disclose the specific purchases in a separate filing later this month. Until that filing, the report provides the value of the additions but not the individual companies involved.
Abel announced in March that Berkshire Hathaway had resumed repurchasing its own shares for the first time in more than two years. The company’s first-quarter buybacks totaled about $234 million.
Investors were underwhelmed by that first-quarter figure. The second-quarter repurchases were substantially larger, alongside the investment in Google’s parent company and the additional stock purchases.
Buffett remains chairman as Abel directs Berkshire Hathaway’s operations and investment decisions as CEO. The second-quarter report offers an early measure of how the company is using its large cash position after the leadership change.