On the evening of August 8, Berkshire Hathaway released its latest financial results, showing that second-quarter net income more than doubled year-over-year, driven primarily by investment gains and strong performance in its industrial and retail businesses.
Specifically, Berkshire’s second-quarter net income reached $25.67 billion, compared to $12.37 billion in the same period last year.
On a Class A share basis, earnings per share reached $17,868, compared to $8,601 in the same period last year.
More importantly, Berkshire has reversed its previous trend of continuously reducing its stock holdings.As of the end of June, Berkshire’s cash reserves had fallen to $365.5 billion from a record $397.4 billion three months earlier. CEO Abel, 64, is beginning to deploy the record cash reserves left by Buffett, allocating funds through stock buybacks and purchases of publicly traded stocks.
Data shows that in the second quarter, Berkshire not only repurchased its own shares but also recorded net purchases of stocks—exceeding net sales—for the first time in more than three years.
Specifically, Berkshire repurchased approximately $4.5 billion of its own shares in the second quarter.By comparison, Berkshire conducted only $235 million in stock buybacks during the first three months of 2026, indicating a significant acceleration in buyback activity during the second quarter, though the volume may still have fallen short of some investors’ expectations prior to the earnings release.
Additionally, in the second quarter, Berkshire returned to being a net buyer of stocks, with net purchases totaling nearly $20 billion.Prior to this, Berkshire had been a net seller of stocks for 14 consecutive quarters.
In the second quarter, Berkshire spent $6.8 billion to acquire homebuilder Taylor Morrison Homes and invested $10 billion in Alphabet stock.
Both of these transactions rank among Berkshire’s largest investment deals in recent years.
For some time now, Buffett has been saying that it is difficult to find truly attractive investment opportunities in the stock market. However, Berkshire shareholders have also been hoping that Abel would actually deploy some of the cash rather than keeping it tied up long-term in low-risk assets such as U.S. Treasury bonds.
So far this year, Berkshire’s stock price has risen by only about 3%, significantly underperforming the S&P 500 Index, which has gained 13% over the same period.
However, in recent months, Berkshire’s stock price has rebounded, rising by about 9% over the past three months.