Berkshire stock rises to highest since Buffett’s announcement

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Berkshire Hathaway shares closed at their highest Friday since Warren Buffett told shareholders at the company’s May 2025 annual meeting that he planned to step down as CEO at the end of the year.

The day before that Saturday surprise, both Class A and class B The stock price closed at an all-time high.

Investors are concerned that the “Buffett premium” is disappearing, losing more than 14% of its value in the three months since.

More than a year after its August 2025 post-meeting low, the recovery has not been linear, but the stock closed Friday at $798,000, just 1.4% below its all-time high of $809,350.

B shares closed at $532.02, also 1.4% below its all-time high of $539.80.

Thursday’s loss sent Berkshire’s stock up 5%, snapping a 10-session winning streak, but it rebounded Friday to rise more than 1%.

CNBC Pro thinks investors may be happy that Berkshire, under CEO Greg Abel, is spending some of its huge cash reserves on share buybacks in the second quarter, investments in Alphabet, Taylor Morrison Home, Lennar (though there have been no buys in those stocks since Oct. 2), and now Bending Spoons. (See below for details).

Meyer Shields, an analyst at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, also said he believes rising short-term interest rates are contributing to the rise in stock prices.

Berkshire still has about $360 billion in cash, which is “a good symbol of continued patience under the new CEO,” and higher interest rates mean “more returns can be made” on that money.

Additionally, the company’s insurance business has benefited from a mild hurricane season so far.

Rising oil prices are good for the company’s $19 billion stock. chevronhas risen about 36% since early July and closed at an all-time high on Friday. Berkshire’s energy subsidiaries are also seeing tailwinds.

And recently, Berkshire may be gaining momentum as investors move away from high-flying AI and tech stocks and toward “older” economy stocks.

for example, coca colaThe company, a longtime favorite of Mr. Buffett and currently valued at $37.6 billion, also closed at an all-time high on Friday, perhaps with further support from KFC’s switch from Pepsi to Coke. It’s up 34% since the beginning of the year.

Berkshire’s position has increased by $2.4 billion since last Friday, overtaking Alphabet to become the third-largest stock in its portfolio. (See the full top 10 below.)

Berkshire’s B shares narrowed their deficit as of June 1 by 17.5 percentage points. S&P500 Up to almost two-thirds.

It is currently 6.0 percentage points behind this year’s benchmark.

Berkshire Hathaway’s surprising bet of nearly $1 billion bendable spoon At least in the short term, it’s a big success.

The Italian company, which began trading on the U.S. Nasdaq in July, is buying abandoned internet names like AOL, Evernote and Vimeo, using AI to cut costs and using the free money to make further acquisitions.

In late July, CNBC Pro said that “Wall Street is buzzing” and that “analysts… see big gains ahead.”

This tech stock clearly isn’t Berkshire’s typical value play, trading at a large multiple to earnings.

But before Wall Street opened Wednesday morning, a news release from Vending Spoons revealed that Berkshire was investing an “additional” $330 million in the company by purchasing 10 million newly issued shares in a private placement at $33 per share.

This is already a discount of around 12% from Tuesday’s closing price of $37.86, and the news sent Bending Spoons’ shares higher.

The stock reached an intraday high of $58.56 and rose 41% to close at $53.46 on Wednesday.

Vending Spoons’ stock price has risen 24.3% in the three trading days since the disclosure, after losing some of its earlier gains in Friday’s tech selloff, ending at $47.07.

That’s 42.6% higher than Berkshire’s purchase price of $33, giving it a paper profit of nearly $141 million.

But what is the “further” in Bending Spoon’s statement?

The release also revealed for the first time that Berkshire invested $600 million in Bending Spoon’s IPO more than three months ago.

The release does not specify how many shares Berkshire purchased in July, and Bending Spoons does not corroborate my calculations, but assuming Berkshire paid the IPO price of $29 per share, the initial number of shares purchased would be nearly 20.7 million shares.

With this, Berkshire now owns nearly 30.7 million shares, worth more than $1.4 billion as of Friday’s close, a 55.3% increase on its total investment of $930 million.

“The new investment will bring Berkshire Hathaway’s ownership to 4%,” the Bending Spoon release also said.

The company told me in an email that it “does not specifically disclose” the current number of shares outstanding. “However, our fully diluted weighted average number of shares outstanding in the second quarter was 635 million shares, with 34 million shares issued as part of the IPO and an additional 10 million shares expected to be issued as part of this transaction.”

Using these numbers, Berkshire’s estimated 30.7 million shares equates to a 4.5% stake, and that’s what I’ve entered into the Berkshire Portfolio Tracker so far.

We may learn more about exactly how many shares Berkshire bought in the IPO next month when it releases a snapshot of its portfolio as of September 30th.

Another thing that is not known is who at Berkshire called for a stake in Bending Spoons.

Luca Ferrari, CEO and co-founder of Bending Spoons, shared Wall Street’s enthusiasm for Berkshire’s investment, saying in a news release that the Omaha firm is “one of the best and most respected capital allocators in the world and a long-time inspiration for Bending Spoons.”

Morningstar’s Gregory Warren, who was one of the designated analyst questioners at Berkshire’s shareholder meetings from 2014 to 2019, writes about the acquisition of Bending Spoons and Berkshire’s current $36 billion stake in the company. alphabet“The company is finally getting out of its comfort zone and finding somewhere to put its capital to work. This should be seen as a positive for long-term investors.”

“Many Berkshire shareholders would like to see Berkshire invest more heavily in stocks, given its more than $350 billion in cash, but Bending Spoons’ high valuation was a surprise,” Andrew Barry wrote in Barron’s.

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Warren Buffett has defended Coca-Cola, long owned by Berkshire Hathaway, over health concerns over sugary drinks.

BRK.A stock price: $798,000.00

BRK.B stock price: $532.02

BRK.BP/E (TTM): 13.38

Berkshire Market Capitalization: $1,138,885,966,355

Berkshire Cash as of June 30: $365.5 billion (down 8.0% from March 31)

Excluding railroad cash and outstanding Treasury bills: $359.2 billion (down 3.8% from March 31)

Berkshire repurchased $4.5 billion of its own stock in the second quarter of 2026.

Berkshire’s top U.S. and Japanese listed stocks by market capitalization, based on the latest closing prices.

Holdings are as of June 30, 2026, as reported in Berkshire Hathaway’s August 14, 2026 13F filing. However, the following cases are excluded.

A complete list of holdings and current market value is available on CNBC.com’s Berkshire Hathaway Portfolio Tracker.

If you have any questions or comments about the newsletter, please send them to alex.crippen@cnbc.com. (Sorry, we do not forward questions or comments to Mr. Buffett himself.)

If you haven’t subscribed to this newsletter yet, you can sign up here.

I also highly recommend Buffett’s annual letter to shareholders. It’s collected here on Berkshire’s website.

— Alex Crippen, Warren Buffett Watch Editor