Berkshire Hathaway's second-quarter report, filed Aug. 8, showed the company buying more stock than it sold for the first time in 14 quarters, ending a net-selling streak that began in the fourth quarter of 2022. A $10 billion private placement in Alphabet accounted for more than 40% of every dollar of stock Berkshire bought in the quarter.
On June 2, Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) set the price on $18 billion of new stock sold to public investors, part of an $84.75 billion effort to raise money for its artificial intelligence buildout. Public buyers in that offering paid $355.1982 per Class A share and $351.8018 per Class C share.
Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK.B) had agreed the day before to buy $10 billion of Alphabet stock in a private placement, with shares sold directly to Berkshire rather than through the public offering. Berkshire paid $351.81 for $5 billion of Class A shares and $348.20 for $5 billion of Class C shares, which carry no voting rights, according to Alphabet's SEC filings. The private sale closed June 4, the same day as the public one.
Berkshire had owned Alphabet since the third quarter of 2025, and Alphabet described the placement as an addition to a stake Berkshire had been building since then. The gap between the public and private prices was $3.39 a share for Class A and $3.60 for Class C. Across the roughly 28.6 million shares in the placement, that comes to about $100 million.
Deal terms and costs
- Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan and Morgan Stanley led a group of 31 banks that took the $18 billion public offering, distributed it and collected a fee.
- Alphabet told investors to expect about $17.8 billion left over from the public sale once the banks' cut and costs were paid, or roughly 1.1%.
- Berkshire bought directly from Alphabet with no syndicate and no fee; the discount it negotiated was 0.95% on Class A shares and 1.02% on Class C, close to what Alphabet would have paid banks to move the same stock.
- Alphabet kept about $351.25 a share from public buyers of Class A stock versus $351.81 from Berkshire, and $347.89 versus $348.20 on Class C shares — making Berkshire's money worth roughly $12 million more to Alphabet across the 28.6 million shares.
- Alphabet also gave Berkshire the right to resell the shares publicly later, an option not automatically available to buyers in private deals.
Berkshire's filing gives six-month totals rather than quarterly figures; the quarterly split works out to roughly $23.5 billion of stock bought against about $3.7 billion sold. Net earnings roughly doubled to $25.67 billion, while operating earnings — the figure Buffett has long told shareholders to watch — rose 16% to $12.98 billion. Share buybacks jumped to $4.53 billion from $235 million in the first quarter. Berkshire's cash pile, which stood at $397.4 billion at March 31, the most it had ever held, fell to $365.5 billion. Profit from writing insurance policies fell 13% and income from investing premiums fell 9%.
Source: Yahoo Finance
