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appears to have bought back about $6.4 billion of its shares from the end of March through June 21 as the company extends a sizable repurchase program.
Barron’s estimated the buybacks based on a filing made by CEO
Warren Buffett
Wednesday that discloses his Berkshire holdings following his big annual gift of stock to several philanthropies, notably the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Most of the repurchases in the second quarter appear to have come since April 22, when Berkshire (ticker: BRK.A and BRK.B) disclosed its share count in its quarterly 10-Q filing. Barron’s estimates that Berkshire bought back $5 billion since then and $1.4 billion in the first three weeks of the second quarter.
Berkshire has ramped up its stock buyback program in recent quarters, buying back about $9 billion of stock in both the third and fourth quarters of 2020 and $6.6 billion in the first quarter of this year.
CEO Buffett has viewed stock buybacks as the best way to return capital to Berkshire shareholders and a better use of money than buying publicly traded stocks.
Berkshire repurchased $24.7 billion of stock last year, roughly 5.2% of its shares outstanding. The large buybacks have cheered Berkshire investors as a sign that Buffett views the stock as inexpensive. Berkshire pays no dividend and likely won’t do so as long as the 90-year-old Buffett remains CEO given his aversion to them at Berkshire.
The estimated second-quarter buybacks are equivalent to about 1% of Berkshire’s shares outstanding.
Buffett disclosed in a 13-D filing Wednesday that he held 238,624 class A Berkshire shares and 2,412 of the class B stock on June 21 after making a $4.1 billion gift to the philanthropies. His stake is worth about $100 billion. Buffett disclosed that he held an economic interest in Berkshire of 15.8%.
This indicates that Berkshire had 2.265 billion of its class B shares outstanding on June 21 (with class A stock converted to class B equivalent), down about 23 million since March 31 and off 18 million from the April 22 figure, Barron’s estimates. Each A share can be converted to 1,500 B shares.
Berkshire’s class A stock ended Wednesday at $413,890, down 1.2%, and the class B shares finished at $274.66, off 0.8%. Berkshire’s class B shares are up about 18% this year, topping the roughly 13% return in the S&P 500 index.
Write to andrew.bary@barrons.com
