Berkshire hits highest level since Buffett announcement

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

The day before this Saturday surprise, both Class A And Class B stocks had closed at all-time highs.

Over the next three months, they lost more than 14% of their value as investors feared the dissolution of a “Buffett premium.”

It’s been more than a year since their post-meeting low in August 2025, and the recovery hasn’t been a straight line, but BRK.A ended Friday at $798,000, just 1.4% below its all-time closing high of $809,350.

B shares finished at $532.02, also up 1.4% below their all-time closing high of $539.80.

A loss on Thursday ended a 10-day winning streak that added 5% to Berkshire’s stock prices, but they rebounded with gains of more than 1% on Friday.

CNBC Pro thinks investors might be happy that Berkshire is spending some of its big cash under CEO Greg Abel, with $4.5 billion in buybacks in the second quarter, investments in Alphabet, Taylor Morrison Home, Lennar (although there have been no purchases of those stocks since Oct. 2) and now, Bending Spoons. (More on this below).

He also notes that Keefe, Bruyette & Woods analyst Meyer Shields believes rising short-term interest rates are helping to push stocks higher.

Berkshire still has about $360 billion in cash, “a good symbol of continued patience under the new CEO,” and these higher rates mean “they will make more money” with that money.

Additionally, its insurance operations have benefited from a quiet hurricane season so far.

Rising oil prices benefit its $19 billion stake in Chevronwhich closed Friday at an all-time high after gaining nearly 36% since the beginning of July. Berkshire’s energy-related subsidiaries are also benefiting from a tailwind.

And recently, Berkshire could benefit from a boost as investors move away from high-flying AI and technology stocks and toward “old” economic stocks.

For example, Coca-Colaa longtime Buffett favorite and now a $37.6 billion holding, also closed Friday at a record high, perhaps with added help from KFC’s switch from Pepsi to Coca-Cola. This is up 34% since the start of the year.

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

Berkshire B shares reduced their June 1 deficit by 17.5 percentage points from the S&P500 by almost two thirds.

They now lag the benchmark by 6.0 percentage points for the year.

Berkshire Hathaway’s surprising nearly $1 billion bet on Bending spoons it pays off big, at least in the short term.

The Italian company, which began trading on Nasdaq in the United States in July, is buying abandoned Internet names like AOL, Evernote and Vimeo, using AI to cut costs and deploying the savings to make more acquisitions.

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

The tech stock is decidedly not a typical Berkshire value play, trading at a significant multiple of its earnings.

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

That already represented a nearly 12% discount from Tuesday’s closing price of $37.86, and the news sent Bending Spoons shares higher still.

They reached an intraday high of $58.56 before closing up 41% at $53.46 on Wednesday.

Bending Spoons shares have risen 24.3% in the three trading days since the disclosure, after giving up some of their earlier gains during Friday’s tech selloff to finish at $47.07.

That’s 42.6% more than Berkshire’s purchase price of $33, for a profit, on paper, of nearly $141 million.

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

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

The release doesn’t say how many shares Berkshire purchased in July, and Bending Spoons hasn’t confirmed my calculations, but assuming Berkshire paid the IPO price of $29 per share, that initial purchase would have amounted to nearly 20.7 million shares.

That now brings Berkshire’s stake to nearly 30.7 million shares, which would be worth more than $1.4 billion as of Friday’s close, a 55.3% gain for its overall investment of $930 million.

Bending Spoon’s release also states that “the new investment increases Berkshire Hathaway’s stake to 4%.”

The company told me in an email that it hasn’t “specifically disclosed” how many shares outstanding it currently has, “but we had 635 million fully diluted weighted average shares outstanding in the second quarter, we issued 34 million shares in the IPO, and we will issue an additional 10 million in this transaction.”

Based on these numbers, Berkshire’s alleged 30.7 million shares represent a 4.5% stake, and that’s what I’ve put in the Berkshire Portfolio Tracker for now.

We may learn more next month about exactly how many shares Berkshire purchased in the IPO, when its September 30 portfolio overview is due to be disclosed.

Another unknown: who at Berkshire called to take a stake in Bending Spoons.

Bending Spoons CEO and co-founder Luca Ferrari shares Wall Street’s enthusiasm for Berkshire’s investments, saying in the press release that the Omaha company “is among the most talented and respected capital allocators in the world and a long-time source of inspiration for Bending Spoons.”

morning star Greggory Warren (who was one of the analysts assigned to ask questions at Berkshire shareholder meetings from 2014 to 2019) writes about the Bending Spoons purchase, as well as Berkshire’s now $36 billion stake in Alphabetshow that “the company is finally stepping out of its comfort zone to find places to put its capital to good use, which should be seen as a positive for long-term investors.”

HAS Barron’sAndrew Bary says, “Many Berkshire holders would like to see the company invest more in the stock given the company’s $350 billion in cash, but Bending Spoons was a surprise” given its high valuation.

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Warren Buffett defends Coca-Cola, a long-time major holding company of Berkshire Hathaway, against health concerns linked to sugary drinks.

BRK.A stock price: $798,000.00

BRK.B stock price: $532.02

BRK.BP/E (TTM): 1:38 p.m.

Market capitalization of Berkshire: $1,138,885,966,355

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

Excluding rail cash and subtracting Treasury bills payable: $359.2 billion (down 3.8% from March 31)

Berkshire repurchased $4.5 billion worth of its shares in the second quarter of 2026.

Top holdings of Berkshire publicly traded stocks in the United States and Japan, by market value, based on latest closing prices.

Holdings are as of June 30, 2026, as shown in Berkshire Hathaway’s 13F filing dated August 14, 2026, except:

The complete list of holdings and current market values ​​is available on CNBC.com’s Berkshire Hathaway Portfolio Tracker.

Please send me any questions or comments about the newsletter at alex.crippen@cnbc.com. (Sorry, but we don’t forward questions or comments to Buffett himself.)

If you are not already subscribed to this newsletter, you can sign up here.

Additionally, Buffett’s annual letters to shareholders are highly recommended reading. They are collected here on the Berkshire website.

— Alex Crippen, editor-in-chief, Warren Buffett Watch