Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) Price on Solana

Berkshire Hathaway announced a leadership transition effective September 18, 2026: Warren Buffett, 96, will step back to the role of Chairman Emeritus while remaining on the board, with his son Howard G. Buffett elected as the new Chairman. Greg Abel continues as Chief Executive Officer, a role he has held since Buffett began handing over operational control. The company described Abel as having "exceeded" expectations and noted that he "has been making the decisions that matter for some time now."

Buffett stated that "the timing is right to complete the transition," expressing confidence in both Abel and Howard Buffett, who has served as a director for 33 years. The board cited Howard's long tenure as positioning him to "guard its culture and values." The announcement marks the formal conclusion of a succession process that had been publicly telegraphed for years, completing a generational handover at one of the world's largest conglomerates.

Berkshire Hathaway now holds 30.6% of its equity portfolio — over $112 billion — in two companies analysts classify as AI plays: Apple at 20.7% (roughly 228 million shares) and Alphabet at 10.1% (about 78.79 million Class A and 27.18 million Class C shares). Berkshire has held Apple since 2016 but trimmed its position significantly from 914.5 million shares in 2023. The Alphabet stake is more recent, initiated in Q3 2025 and expanded through 2026 with total investment reported above $80 billion, including a $10 billion private placement.

The concentration is notable given Berkshire's historically conservative reputation. Under new CEO Greg Abel, the company's rationale for both positions leans on ecosystem durability and cloud growth rather than AI hype: Buffett previously described Apple as "probably the best business I know in the world," with Siri's on-device processing cited as a privacy-preserving AI approach, while Alphabet's Google Cloud posted $24.8 billion in Q2 revenue, up 81% year-over-year, with Gemini integrated across search, advertising, and Workspace products.

After nearly a year leading Berkshire Hathaway, Greg Abel has made one notably visible portfolio change: a significant buildup in Alphabet (Google), which now ranks as the conglomerate's fifth-largest holding at roughly 10.5% of total stock holdings. Combined with Apple's 20.8% weighting, technology stocks now account for approximately 31% of Berkshire's equity portfolio — a historically high concentration for a company long associated with consumer staples, financials, and insurance. Analysts had broadly anticipated that Abel would tilt the portfolio toward technology, and Alphabet's sales growth, profitability, and durable competitive position align with traditional Berkshire investment criteria.

Beyond the Alphabet position, the transition has been largely one of continuity. Fully owned subsidiaries have seen minimal operational change, no major acquisitions have been announced, and Abel has maintained the slow-and-steady deployment approach that defined the Buffett era. The top five equity holdings remain Apple, American Express, Coca-Cola, Bank of America, and Alphabet, reflecting an investment framework that is evolving at the edges rather than being overhauled.

An analysis from Simply Wall St. using an Excess Returns model estimates BRK.B shares may be approximately 35% undervalued relative to their intrinsic value, with the current price sitting at $514.95. The model incorporates a five-year median return on equity of 11.91%, a book value per share of $547,710.90, and a cost of equity of $41,019.23 per share, arriving at an excess return capacity of roughly $24,225 per share that the market appears not to be fully pricing in.

Central to the thesis is Berkshire's sustained buyback program, which has seen management direct more than $82 billion into repurchases since mid-2018, a pace that has continued under CEO Greg Abel. The buybacks reduce share count and tie remaining shares to a larger portion of the conglomerate's book value and earnings — a dynamic the analysis argues is understated by BRK.B's current P/E of 12.8x and the stock's 87.8% five-year return relative to its capital deployment efficiency.

Berkshire Hathaway's B shares are up roughly 2% year-to-date in 2026, lagging the S&P 500's approximate 11% gain by about 9–10 percentage points. The gap is notable as it coincides with Greg Abel's first year as CEO following Warren Buffett's retirement, though the company's underlying fundamentals remain solid — first-half operating earnings rose 17% year-over-year to $24.3 billion, and Berkshire deployed capital through the acquisitions of OxyChem ($9.4 billion) and Taylor Morrison ($6.8 billion), plus $4.5 billion in share repurchases, trimming its cash and T-bill pile from $373 billion to $365 billion.

History offers some reassurance for investors watching the underperformance. Since 1990, Berkshire has trailed the index by 10 or more points nine times; in seven of those nine instances the stock rebounded the following year. Going back to 1965, across 13 such lagging years, Berkshire outperformed in 10 of them — including a standout 2000 when it returned approximately 27% as the S&P 500 fell about 9% in the wake of the dot-com collapse.

Berkshire Hathaway repurchased approximately $4.5 billion of its own stock during Q2 2026, the second quarter under CEO Greg Abel, who took over from Warren Buffett at the start of the year. The buyback came despite some expectations that the figure could reach as high as $11 billion, and was executed against a backdrop of nearly $400 billion in cash reserves — well above Berkshire's $30 billion minimum threshold.

The repurchase carries weight given Berkshire's stated policy: shares are only bought back when the CEO, after consulting with the Chairman, believes the repurchase price is below intrinsic value "conservatively determined." Abel conducted the buybacks with Buffett's input, signaling both leaders viewed the stock as undervalued at the time. The $4.5 billion figure reflects management's calibrated confidence in BRK.B's valuation rather than an aggressive deployment of the company's substantial cash pile.

Berkshire Hathaway has rapidly built Alphabet (Google's parent) into one of its largest equity positions, accumulating roughly 79 million shares worth approximately $28.2 billion — about 9.4% of the portfolio — after starting from zero in Q3 2025. CEO Greg Abel's team added 24.5 million shares in Q2 2026 alone, a 45% increase in a single quarter, making Alphabet the defining bet of the Abel era. The investment reflects Berkshire's longstanding value discipline: Alphabet trades at roughly 16 times earnings despite being the dominant player in internet search and a major force in cloud computing, and a recent pullback of about 7% in one month offered an attractive entry point.

The move comes with a notable caveat. Alphabet's aggressive AI infrastructure buildout — with capital expenditure guidance of $195–205 billion for 2026 — produced the company's first quarterly negative free cash flow since going public, a concern for investors watching capital discipline. Still, Berkshire's swift accumulation signals confidence that Alphabet's market dominance justifies the heavy spending cycle, and the position's scale has reshaped how analysts interpret Berkshire's current investment thesis under Abel's leadership.

A $10,000 investment in Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) made in August 2016 would have grown to roughly $33,900 by August 2026, a compound annual growth rate of about 13% and nearly a tripling of capital. Over the same period, operating earnings expanded from $17.6 billion to $44.5 billion — approximately 2.5 times growth — while the insurance float nearly doubled to $177.5 billion. Buybacks reduced the share count by around 13%, amplifying per-share gains further and pushing the company's market capitalization to roughly $1.1 trillion.

Despite those results, Berkshire lagged the broader market over the decade. A comparable $10,000 in the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY), with dividends reinvested, would have reached approximately $41,300 — a 15% annual return versus Berkshire's 13%, a gap of about $7,400 on the same starting amount. The stock currently trades at around 21 times operating earnings. The comparison underscores the persistent challenge facing even the most disciplined large-cap value investors: at scale, outperforming a low-cost index requires either unusual capital deployment opportunities or market conditions that favor concentration over diversification.

Alphabet has crossed a symbolic threshold inside Berkshire Hathaway's equity portfolio, with its market value edging past the firm's legendary Coca-Cola stake by roughly $16 million as of August 25. Greg Abel authorized $17 billion in Alphabet purchases during Q2 2026, including a $10 billion private placement, bringing total Alphabet exposure to third place in the portfolio. The investment thesis centers on what analysts describe as a virtual monopoly: Google has held between 89% and 93% of global search traffic for the past decade, and YouTube ranks as the second-most-visited site on the internet, giving Alphabet a durable advertising moat that fits Berkshire's longstanding preference for businesses with pricing power and compounding cash flows.

The positioning also reflects Alphabet's accelerating cloud revenue — its Google Cloud segment posted 82% year-over-year sales growth in Q2 2026, driven by AI integration. Where Warren Buffett's defining equity bet was Apple, analysts now frame Alphabet as the foundational technology holding Abel is building around: a business with structural dominance, high-margin cloud upside, and a cash generation profile that mirrors the durable economics Berkshire has always favored in legacy holdings like Coca-Cola and American Express.

Warren Buffett spent his final years as Berkshire CEO warning that stocks were dangerously overvalued — describing the market as behaving "like a casino" in a May CNBC interview — and acting on that view by selling equities for 13 consecutive quarters. By the time he stepped down at the end of 2025, Berkshire was sitting on $373.3 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and Treasury bills, a figure exceeding one-third of the company's market capitalization.

Greg Abel, who took over as CEO at the start of 2026, appears to see the same market differently. In Q2 2026, Berkshire became a net buyer of stocks for the first time since 2022, deploying capital into a range of positions led by a $17 billion acquisition of Alphabet shares, along with $1.64 billion in Delta Air Lines and smaller stakes in Lennar and Macy's. The shift signals a meaningful departure in investment temperament between the two leaders, with Abel willing to put Berkshire's substantial cash reserves to work in a market his predecessor explicitly avoided.