Berkshire Hathaway Inc

Berkshire Hathaway, under the leadership of Warren Buffett, has continued to increase its stake in Lennar Corporation, a major U.S. homebuilder and real estate developer, to 11.2%, a portfolio value of about 2.1 billion dollars, or roughly 75 billion baht. Documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission state that Berkshire bought 53.6 million dollars of Lennar Class A shares and 329,000 dollars of Class B shares, which carry extra-special voting rights, between Monday and Wednesday, bringing its total holding to 26.6 million shares, up from 5.4%, or 13.4 million shares worth 1.2 billion dollars, at the end of the second quarter. The pace of buying has begun to slow, averaging less than 18 million dollars a day through Wednesday, and no transactions are expected on Thursday. Meanwhile, Morgan Stanley initiated coverage with an Underweight rating and a price target of 65 dollars per share, nearly 19% below the latest close of 79.81 dollars, amid 30-year fixed mortgage rates that have risen for six straight weeks to 7.30%, the highest since late 2023. On the wealth front, Warren Buffett has reclaimed his place as the world's 10th-richest person in Forbes magazine's rankings after overtaking Amancio Ortega, the founder of Inditex, the owner of the Zara brand. Forbes estimates Buffett's net worth at 143 billion dollars, above Ortega's 140 billion dollars, making Buffett the only person in the top 10 not from the technology sector. The Bloomberg Billionaires Index ranks them differently, estimating Ortega's fortune at 125 billion dollars in 15th place, with Jim Walton, a Walmart heir, in 11th place with 134 billion dollars.

Berkshire Hathaway bought $53.9 million of Lennar shares in the last three days of September, lifting its stake in the U.S. homebuilder to roughly 11%, according to a regulatory filing on Wednesday. From Sept. 28 through Sept. 30, the conglomerate acquired 656,302 class A common shares and 4,108 class B common shares, bringing its total holdings to 26.0 million class A shares and 553,000 class B shares, a position valued at about $2.16 billion. That roughly 11% stake sits just under Vanguard's 11.2% holding, Bloomberg News reported. The buying follows Berkshire's $6.8 billion acquisition of Taylor Morrison Homes in July and adds to its ownership of Clayton Homes, a smaller investment in NVR and a sprawling real estate brokerage business. Berkshire, now run by CEO Greg Abel and overseen by Chairman Howard Buffett, is piling into real estate as climbing mortgage rates pressure the sector; Lennar shares have dropped 22% and the iShares U.S. Home Construction ETF has dipped 12% year to date, lagging the S&P 500's 12% gain.

HomeServices of America announced today that it has acquired 1000WATT, a strategy, research and creative agency focused on residential real estate. The deal brings 1000WATT's original research and content engine, its industry thought leadership platform and its creative services team into HomeServices of America and HSF Affiliates, including the Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices franchise network. 1000WATT co-founders Brian Boero and Marc Davison will serve as Chief Marketing & Strategy Officer and Chief Creative Officer of HomeServices of America respectively, and the entire 1000WATT team will join the company across strategy, research, copywriting, design, creative development, project leadership and marketing. The acquisition follows several substantial developments at HomeServices of America this year, including the launch of the OnePoint brand, which 1000WATT helped lead, the rollout of a unified technology platform across its entire network, and the addition of mortgage servicing to its ecosystem. HomeServices of America is owned by Berkshire Hathaway Energy, a consolidated subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway Inc.

Berkshire Hathaway acquired Taylor Morrison for about $6.8 billion in equity value in July 2026 and combined it with Clayton Properties Group, its existing portfolio of site-built homebuilders. The deal substantially expands Berkshire's presence in conventional homebuilding while complementing Clayton Homes' exposure to manufactured and more affordable housing, part of a broader push to build a scaled, vertically integrated U.S. housing platform rather than a collection of standalone investments. Berkshire also owns businesses spanning housing finance, building products and insurance, and its public-equity portfolio includes homebuilders such as Lennar, where it recently increased its stake. The U.S. housing market remains structurally undersupplied, with land constraints, labor shortages, elevated construction costs and financing challenges limiting new supply, conditions that may favor well-capitalized operators with scale and access to internal funding. Shares of BRK.B have lost 0.1% year to date, and the stock trades at a price-to-book value ratio of 1.44 against an industry average of 1.41.

Aven and Forest River, a Berkshire Hathaway company and North America's largest manufacturer of recreational vehicles, introduced the industry's first co-branded home equity line of credit along with two additional co-branded financial products for Forest River customers. The Forest River Homeline Card combines a HELOC with a credit card, offering qualified homeowners lines of credit of up to $400,000, 3% cash back at Forest River dealerships on up to $50,000 in annual purchases, unlimited 1% cash back on all other purchases, and no annual or prepayment fee. The two other products are the Forest River Journey Rewards Card, which offers 3% cash back at Forest River dealerships on up to $10,000 in annual purchases and unlimited 1% cash back elsewhere with no annual fee, and the Forest River Trailhead Deposit Card, a debit card linked to a high-yield rewards checking account with 2% cash back at Forest River dealerships on up to $5,000 in annual purchases and unlimited 1% cash back on all other purchases with no monthly account fee. Aven provides the technology and financial infrastructure for the products as part of Forest River Financial Services, a new Forest River subsidiary, and says it can provide a pre-qualification offer in as little as three minutes and enable qualified customers to access a HELOC in as little as three days. The three cards are being introduced at Forest River Expo today in Elkhart, Indiana, where Forest River dealers can begin enrollment this week, and are available through participating Forest River RV and marine dealerships in the United States.

Charlie Munger has publicly backed Greg Abel as Berkshire Hathaway's new chief executive, calling him a "tremendous learning machine" and comparing his abilities to those of Warren Buffett. Munger, the conglomerate's vice chair, highlighted Abel's long involvement with Berkshire's non-insurance operations as preparation for leading the group-wide portfolio. Berkshire Hathaway, a US diversified financial group with a roughly $1.1 trillion market cap, brings together insurance, freight rail and utility operations under one corporate umbrella, so the leadership call affects a wide mix of cash flows and capital allocation decisions. Munger's support signals that the board did not treat the handover as a formality, and that a senior insider viewed Abel's judgment and learning ability as comparable to Buffett's. The key marker ahead is Berkshire Hathaway's first full year set of results under Abel as CEO, covering the 2026 financial year, when investors can focus on the mix of retained cash versus buybacks and new investments.

Berkshire Hathaway bought roughly $212.4 million worth of Lennar shares across three trading days in September, pushing its total position in the homebuilder to about $1.4 billion. The purchases took place between Sept. 17 and Sept. 21, with Berkshire picking up 2.74 million shares across both Class A and Class B stock, and LEN shares rose 2.1% on Monday and gained another 1.2% in overnight trading after the news broke. The buying followed Lennar's Sept. 16 third-quarter report, in which net earnings dropped to $284 million from $591 million a year earlier, revenue fell 8.6% to $8.05 billion, and adjusted earnings per share of $1.23 missed the $1.28 consensus, while new home orders declined 9% to 20,879 and gross margin fell to 15.8% from 17.5%. Management cut its full-year 2026 delivery outlook to 80,000 to 81,000 homes from 82,000 to 83,000 previously, prompting Barclays to cut its price target to $70 from $79 and Royal Bank of Canada to move its target to $69. The Lennar stake is part of a broader housing push under new CEO Greg Abel, following Berkshire's May agreement to acquire Taylor Morrison for $72.50 per share in cash, a deal that closed in July at about $6.8 billion in equity value and $8.5 billion in enterprise value, and adding to its existing positions in D.R. Horton and Clayton Homes.

Berkshire Hathaway has increased its stake in homebuilder Lennar, sending the company's shares 4.44% higher to $81.55 in morning trading on Tuesday. An SEC filing showed that Berkshire, already a 10% owner of Lennar, acquired roughly 2.74 million class A and B shares in multiple transactions at prices ranging from $74.49 to $79.79. Following the purchases, Berkshire holds approximately 23.72 million class A shares and 528,217 class B shares, both of indirect ownership. The move comes after Warren Buffett, who led Berkshire Hathaway for 61 years, stepped down as chairman.

Berkshire Hathaway's operating earnings could easily top $48 billion this fiscal year, according to a Motley Fool analysis. The $1.1 trillion conglomerate's wholly owned businesses, including GEICO insurance, Fruit of the Loom, Clayton Homes and railroad BNSF, generated $12.98 billion in operating earnings in the quarter ending in June, bringing the year-to-date total to $24.33 billion. Berkshire simply needs to repeat its first-half 2026 performance in the second half to reach and eclipse the $48 billion mark, a likely outcome given that most of these wholly owned enterprises are reliable cash cows rather than high-growth businesses. The company also owns $360 billion worth of individual stocks, though it is not obligated to hold any of them. The article was originally published by The Motley Fool.

Warren Buffett and newly appointed Berkshire Hathaway CEO Greg Abel have plowed tens of billions of dollars into Alphabet, making it one of Berkshire's biggest investments, after Buffett finally bought the stock in the third quarter of 2025 with shares trading around $200. Buffett had long said he missed the opportunity, noting at the 2017 shareholder meeting that he would not bet against Google, and he has acknowledged missing out on a 9,000% gain by not buying sooner. Google initially offered shares to the public at $85 each in 2004, and after a 2014 split into two share classes and a 20-for-1 split in 2022, the split-adjusted price is just $2.125 per share. Buffett said he likes the stock now because Alphabet plans to spend around $200 billion in capital expenditures this year on new data centers and AI servers, a use of capital he sees earning a high cash return. Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian said the average payback period on its new servers is less than two years, and roughly half that for Google's custom TPUs, while average five-year customer contracts and a two-year lead time on data center construction mean even a worst-case scenario produces a positive return. With the stock trading for less than 17 times forward earnings expectations, Buffett and Abel could keep buying in the third quarter.

Warren Buffett told CNBC that markets are in a gambling mood and that prices for many assets will look very silly, while confirming he initiated Berkshire Hathaway's aggressive buying of Alphabet stock, a position now worth about $38 billion and representing roughly 12.6% of its public equity holdings. Buffett said the decision was made by Greg Abel, and when asked why he was comfortable buying Alphabet over other hyperscalers spending heavily on AI-related capital expenditures, he said he did not want to knock the others because they have no choice, adding that in many cases they are playing a game they do not want to play. Bond markets are pricing in default risk for Oracle, with a mid-market credit default swap spread of 192 basis points implying a 3.2% one-year default probability and 14.8% cumulatively over five years, after S&P Global Ratings downgraded Oracle debt from BBB to BBB-, its lowest investment-grade rating, warning that an industry downturn would hit Oracle worse than other hyperscalers. The takeaway is that any significant market-led weakness tied to weaker hyperscalers could be a buying opportunity in higher-quality names like Alphabet.

Precision Castparts, the aerospace parts maker Berkshire Hathaway bought in 2016 for roughly $37.2 billion and later wrote down by about $11 billion, has quietly become a supplier to the AI power build-out, according to an analysis published by TheStreet. The business generated $2.4 billion of net cash from operating activities in 2025, against $1.7 billion in 2015, the last full year before Berkshire owned it, per Berkshire's annual report. Precision Castparts makes airfoil castings for both jet engines and industrial gas turbines, and castings remain one of the most stubborn chokepoints in engine production. Gas turbine backlog and slot reservations grew from 100 to 116 gigawatts in a single quarter, with at least 125 gigawatts expected under contract by year-end, according to GE Vernova, and data center customers account for about 20% of that contracted volume, according to POWER magazine. GE Aerospace just paid $11.75 billion for Consolidated Precision Products, a smaller castings maker, and using that multiple Precision Castparts could be worth around $100 billion, or nearly three times what Berkshire paid, according to Barron's.

Greg Abel, who succeeded Warren Buffett as Berkshire Hathaway's CEO at the beginning of 2026, has made a major acquisition by buying homebuilder Taylor Morrison and has been buying back many Berkshire Hathaway shares, boosting the value of the remaining shares. Abel has much of the Berkshire Hathaway stock portfolio invested in top holdings Apple, American Express, Coca-Cola, Alphabet, and Bank of America. Buffett, who built Berkshire Hathaway into a company now worth more than $1 trillion and increased its share price by more than 6,000,000% over 60 years, stepped down from the CEO post at the beginning of 2026 and just turned 96. The company operates as a true conglomerate, owning multiple insurance and energy operations along with GEICO, Benjamin Moore, McLane, NetJets, Dairy Queen International, See's Candies, Fruit of the Loom, Pilot Travel Centers, Berkshire Hathaway Home Services, and the entire BNSF railroad.

Berkshire Hathaway agreed to pay $6.8 billion to acquire Taylor Morrison Home, the first major acquisition under new CEO Greg Abel, who took over from Warren Buffett. Abel called it a strategic move, saying he hopes to "unify our site-built homebuilding operations into a combined platform," and Warren Buffett approved his handling of the deal. The purchase comes as the pending home sales index sits near its second-lowest reading ever, down 36% from its 2021 high, but Abel is not trying to time a housing upturn. Berkshire Hathaway held roughly $365 billion in cash at the end of the second quarter of 2026, giving it the patience to let the homebuilding integration play out over years. Taylor Morrison Home is just one piece of a broader effort to strengthen Berkshire's operating businesses.

Greg Abel, who succeeded Warren Buffett as Berkshire Hathaway's chief executive on January 1, 2026, has reversed Buffett's two biggest convictions within six months, turning the company into a net buyer of equities and ramping up buybacks. In the second quarter, Berkshire made nearly $20 billion in net equity purchases, including a $10 billion private placement in Alphabet, and spent $4.5 billion on buybacks, reducing cash reserves by $32 billion to $365.5 billion by June 30, 2026. Buffett told CNBC in a July 2026 interview that he personally drove the decision to build the Alphabet position, saying, "I initiated it. I am not doing anything that he doesn't approve of. He's not doing anything I don't approve of. We talk all the time, but he is the decider." Abel also announced a $6.8 billion acquisition of homebuilder Taylor Morrison at $72.50 per share, a 24% premium, and personally purchased 21 Class A shares at approximately $730,000 each, committing to repeat the purchase annually. Operating earnings rose 16% year over year to $12.98 billion, while net income more than doubled to $25.67 billion, and shares climbed as much as 3.3% following the results. Critics like Michael Burry expressed concern about the pace of spending, but others, including Bill Stone of The Glenview Trust Company, defended Abel's actions as disciplined capital deployment.

Greg Abel, Warren Buffett's successor as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, spent $4.5 billion repurchasing company stock last quarter and has already bought at least $3.3 billion more in July, signaling confidence in the stock's value. The buybacks mark a significant step-up from the first quarter, when repurchases totaled only a few hundred million dollars, and follow a six-quarter pause under Buffett. Berkshire's quarterly report shows shares outstanding fell about 0.32% from the end of June to the end of July, with the company's market capitalization above $1.05 trillion. Abel also ended a 13-quarter streak of net stock sales by buying $23.5 billion in equities last quarter, including a large position in Alphabet, which is now Berkshire's third-largest holding. The repurchases are permitted only when management deems the stock undervalued, and with a price-to-book ratio around 1.45, the stock appears fairly valued despite recent gains.

Berkshire Hathaway's new CEO Greg Abel said in a CNBC interview that energy will be the biggest constraint on AI data centers, citing grid permitting and interconnection delays rather than chip shortages. Abel noted data centers already represent roughly 8% of Berkshire Energy's load in Iowa, with incremental load expected. He also revealed that Berkshire invested $6.5 billion in Alphabet at a 6.5% discount as part of a roughly $23.5 billion equity deployment in Q2, driven by conviction in AI's impact. Berkshire Energy will serve hyperscalers only if existing ratepayers face no rate increase and ideally see a net benefit. Abel's comments highlight the growing importance of utilities and power infrastructure in the AI boom.

Berkshire Hathaway CEO Greg Abel said Wednesday that rising bond yields in Japan are not weighing on the major Japanese trading companies in which the conglomerate holds stakes. During an appearance on CNBC's "Squawk Box" while visiting Tokyo, Abel said not a single trading company raised it as a fundamental challenge, noting that Japan's yields, while at multi-decade highs, remain relatively modest compared to other global yields. Japan's 10-year bond yield hit a 30-year high this week, reaching just above 3%, while the U.S. 10-year Treasury yield crossed 4.8% on Tuesday. Berkshire holds stakes exceeding 10% in five major Japanese trading houses — Itochu, Marubeni, Mitsubishi, Mitsui, and Sumitomo — and Abel said the company intends to hold these positions for decades and continue tapping the yen bond market when needed. He also discussed Berkshire's investment in Alphabet, viewing Google's parent as a significant player in artificial intelligence, and addressed data center power supply, saying Berkshire is open to supplying power to large computing firms only if it does not raise rates for existing customers.

Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase have made significant investments in the housing industry, signaling a potential rebound. Berkshire completed its $6.8 billion acquisition of homebuilder Taylor Morrison on July 24, adding to its Clayton Properties Group, which together delivered 23,000 closings in 2025 across 21 states. This purchase, part of a broader strategy to streamline operations and improve margins, reduced Berkshire's cash pile from nearly $400 billion to $365 billion. Meanwhile, JPMorgan Chase committed $750 billion through 2035 to help build or preserve 1 million affordable housing units and assist 500,000 customers in purchasing homes, a 40% increase from its previous commitment. The bank's home loan revenue rose 3% year over year in the second quarter, and the investment aims to boost originations and lower default rates despite high mortgage rates.

Berkshire Hathaway, a US$1.1b diversified financial group, has completed a US$6.8b acquisition of Taylor Morrison, signaling a housing-focused move under new CEO Greg Abel. The company has also expanded positions in several large US homebuilders alongside the Taylor Morrison deal, pointing to a long-term commitment to the US housing market and domestic economic fundamentals. This renewed focus on housing and construction feeds into a broader set of opportunities in real assets and cyclical sectors. For investors, the acquisition reinforces Berkshire's leaning into real assets tied to long-term US economic activity, supporting its view as a diversified operator. However, it also adds pressure on concerns that earnings may decline by an average of 7.2% a year, making execution on housing investments more critical. The next annual shareholder letter and 10-K will provide clarity on how these housing-related results compare with group earnings trends.

Greg Abel, Berkshire Hathaway's new CEO, increased the company's stake in Delta Air Lines by 44% in the second quarter of 2026, reversing Warren Buffett's 2020 exit from airlines. Berkshire bought 17.5 million Delta shares, raising its total to 57.3 million shares valued at $5.4 billion, up from $2.6 billion after the first quarter. This makes Delta the 13th-largest position in Berkshire's portfolio, representing about 1.8% of the total, and boosts Berkshire's ownership to 8.7% of Delta, up from 6.1%. The move came as Berkshire became a net buyer of stocks for the first time in 14 quarters, purchasing roughly $23.5 billion in stocks while selling just $3.7 billion, reducing its cash pile from a record $397 billion to approximately $365 billion. Delta is now the only airline stock Berkshire owns, and analysts are bullish, with 89% rating it a buy and a median price target of $105 per share, implying a 28% gain.

Berkshire Hathaway's second-quarter 13F filing revealed a net purchase of nearly $19.8 billion in stocks, its first net-buying quarter in 14 quarters, driven largely by an 83% increase in its Alphabet stake to about 106 million shares worth $37.8 billion, making it the conglomerate's third-largest holding behind Apple and American Express. Roughly $10 billion of the increase came from a June private placement Alphabet arranged to fund its AI buildout, and Warren Buffett told CNBC, "I initiated it," while noting CEO Greg Abel "has the last word." The purchase marks a shift in Berkshire's strategy, deploying part of its cash pile that had reached $397.4 billion, though it still holds about $365.5 billion in cash. The move adds concentration in mega-cap tech stocks, and future decisions on the stake now rest with Abel, who has less of a public track record than Buffett.