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Berkshire Buys Back $9.6bn Shares as Profit Falls 28%Business
Berkshire Hathaway bought back $9.6 billion of its own shares in the third quarter, its biggest buyback of 2026, even as operating profit slipped 6 percent and net earnings fell 28 percent.
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Berkshire Hathaway spent $9.6 billion buying back its own shares in the third quarter of 2026, its biggest quarterly buyback of the year, even as profits fell sharply in the first earnings report under chief executive Greg Abel.
The Omaha-based conglomerate said on Saturday that operating earnings fell about 6 percent to $12.71 billion in the three months to the end of September, down from $13.49 billion a year earlier. The figure works out to about $8,954 per Class A share, according to Reuters.
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Net earnings dropped much more steeply, down 28 percent to $22.11 billion from $30.80 billion a year earlier, as investment gains fell to $9.41 billion from $17.31 billion. Berkshire cautions that quarterly investment gains, including unrealised stock-market movements, can distort reported profitability. Revenue, meanwhile, rose 11 percent to $105.65 billion, the second straight quarter of double-digit growth.
The weaker result was driven mainly by the insurance business. Insurance profit fell 26 percent in the quarter, and underwriting profit, the money the insurer earns from premiums after paying claims and costs, dropped 43 percent to $1.35 billion from $2.37 billion a year earlier.
Car insurer GEICO was the main weak spot. Its pretax underwriting profit fell about 45 percent to roughly $982 million, down from $1.77 billion a year earlier, after higher accident losses, more advertising spending and price cuts.
Abel puts the cash pile to work
The buyback pace is the clearest sign yet of how Abel intends to run the company he inherited. Berkshire repurchased $9.6 billion of its own stock in the quarter, about twice the $4.8 billion it bought back across the whole first half of the year, and spent roughly another $2 billion on buybacks in October, taking the nine-month total to about $14.4 billion.
Abel, 64, took over as chief executive in January after Warren Buffett stepped down at the end of 2025, ending a 60-year run at the helm. Buffett, 96, remains chairman emeritus, and his son Howard Buffett was elected chairman in September.
Buffett had found it difficult to find attractive things to buy towards the end of his tenure, and Berkshire’s cash pile kept growing. Abel has shown a greater willingness to put that money to use, and the accelerated buybacks suggest he sees Berkshire’s own shares as good value at current prices.
Following the repurchases, Berkshire ended September with $356.9 billion of cash and equivalents, down from $380.2 billion six months earlier. The results were released on Saturday, after United States markets had closed for the week, so there was no regular-session market reaction as of Sunday.
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