Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK.A) holding company bought back a record amount of its own stock during the second quarter.
The company said it repurchased $5.1 billion U.S. worth of stock in May and June. Berkshire Hathaway repurchased more than $4.6 billion of its Class B stock and about $486.6 million in the more expensive Class A shares.
The share repurchase is the most ever in a single period for Buffett and nearly double the $2.2 billion worth of shares the conglomerate bought back in the final quarter of 2019. Despite the company’s record stock buyback last quarter, Berkshire’s cash pile grew to more than $140 billion.
Those buybacks come during a tough period for Berkshire Hathaway. The company’s Class A and Class B shares plunged more than 19% in the first quarter and lagged the S&P 500 during the second quarter with declines of more than 1%.
Operating profits for Berkshire during the second quarter fell 10%, dropping to $5.51 billion from $6.14 billion in the year-earlier period. The company also took a charge of approximately $10 billion from Precision Castparts, Berkshire’s largest business within its manufacturing segment.
Berkshire’s investments in public markets gained $34.5 billion in the quarter. That gain caused overall second-quarter net earnings to surge to $26.3 billion, up from $14.1 billion a year ago.
The company is heavily invested in several companies that have rallied since the broader stock market bottomed in late March. Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) — Berkshire’s biggest common stock holding — has nearly doubled since March 23. JPMorgan Chase(NYSE:JPM) is up more than 27% over that time period and Amazon has grown more than 66%.
The company also said that insurance giant GEICO — which is wholly owned by Berkshire — will likely see its underwriting results “negatively affected” by the pandemic for the rest of 2020 and into the first quarter of next year.
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