Berkshire Hathaway reported a sharp jump in second-quarter profit on Saturday and, more notably to investors, ended a 14-quarter streak of net stock selling, a signal that CEO Greg Abel is beginning to put the conglomerate's record cash pile to work.
Operating earnings, Berkshire's preferred measure of underlying business performance, rose to $13.0 billion in the quarter from $11.2 billion a year earlier. Net earnings, which include investment gains and losses, jumped to $25.7 billion from $12.4 billion, driven by $12.7 billion in investment gains compared with $5.0 billion a year earlier, according to Berkshire's earnings release.
The bigger story for investors was capital deployment. Berkshire bought roughly $20 billion more in stocks than it sold during the quarter, its first period as a net buyer of equities in more than three years, and repurchased $4.5 billion of its own shares, up sharply from just $235 million in the first quarter, with more than $3.3 billion in additional buybacks in July alone.
Abel's first big bets
The most notable individual move was a roughly $10 billion addition to Berkshire's stake in Alphabet, Google's parent company, according to 24/7 Wall St. Berkshire also closed its previously announced $6.8 billion acquisition of homebuilder Taylor Morrison during the period. Even after the spending, Berkshire's cash and short-term Treasury holdings, the closely watched hoard built up over years under Warren Buffett, narrowed only modestly, to roughly $365 billion from $397.4 billion three months earlier.
The results cover the second full quarter since Abel formally succeeded Buffett as chief executive on January 1, 2026, with Buffett remaining as chairman. Investors and analysts had watched closely for signs of how Abel would handle the cash pile Buffett had allowed to build for years, arguing that few opportunities met his valuation standards. The Q2 activity, an equity buying spree alongside record buybacks, is the clearest evidence yet that Abel is willing to deploy capital more assertively than his predecessor did in recent years.
Berkshire's Class A and B shares have traded choppily since Abel took over, and the company's next moves, including whether it maintains the pace of buybacks and stock purchases into the third quarter, will be closely watched as a gauge of his approach heading into next year.
