① According to the latest documents, Berkshire Hathaway further accelerated the pace of repurchasing its shares in the first quarter of this year; ② This shows that Buffett still believes that Berkshire's stock is undervalued, and is also a “good place” to consume its current growing cash volume.
Financial Services Association, March 19 (Editor: Xiaoxiang) According to the latest documents,$Berkshire Hathaway-A (BRK.A.US)$/$Berkshire Hathaway-B (BRK.B.US)$The pace of buying back its own shares was further accelerated in the first quarter of this year. This shows that “stock god” Buffett, who has been the chairman of the company for a long time, still believes that the value of Berkshire's stock is undervalued and is a “good place” to consume its current growing cash volume.
Berkshire said in regulatory documents submitted last Friday that as of March 6, the company had repurchased the equivalent of 3808 Berkshire Class A shares this year, which is estimated to have cost about 2.2 billion to 2.4 billion US dollars depending on the date of the repurchase.
Of these, nearly three-quarters of the repurchases occurred after February 12.
Buffett, 93, has managed the Omaha-based Berkshire Company since 1965 and is responsible for overseeing buybacks and other major capital allocation decisions.
Buybacks can help Buffett allocate Berkshire's growing cash and equivalents. By the end of last year, the total amount of these cash and equivalents had reached 167.6 billion US dollars. However, Buffett's huge cash reserves and measures to increase his own repurchase efforts also seem to indicate that it is still difficult to find convincing acquisition and investment targets.
Berkshire bought back a total of 2.2 billion US dollars of shares in the fourth quarter of last year, doubling compared to 1.1 billion US dollars in the third quarter, and the scale of repurchases this quarter is clearly even greater than in the fourth quarter of last year.
Berkshire bought back a total of $9.2 billion of shares throughout 2023. 2021 was the peak year for Berkshire's recent buybacks. The total amount of buybacks in that year reached 27 billion US dollars.
Berkshire said in its annual report released in February that it will maintain a cash buffer of 30 billion US dollars, and “financial strength and abundant liquidity will always be paramount.”
It is worth mentioning that in the context of Berkshire's stock price continuing to rise during the year, the “stock god”'s actions to speed up the pace of stock repurchases may indeed be a good choice. As of last Friday, Berkshire's stock price had risen 14% during the year, almost double the increase in the S&P 500 index.
Editor/Somer