Berkshire Hathaway Buys Back $9.6 Billion of Its Own Shares as Operating Profit Falls 5.8% Under New CEO Greg Abel

Introduction

Berkshire Hathaway spent $9.6 billion buying back its own shares in the third quarter of 2026, the fastest pace of repurchases the company has managed this year, even as its operating profit slipped. The Omaha conglomerate reported the figures on Saturday, November 7, in its first full set of quarterly results under Greg Abel, who took over as chief executive at the start of the year. The contrast between the two numbers tells the story of the quarter: the businesses Berkshire owns earned less than a year ago, while the company used its enormous cash pile to shrink the number of shares in outside hands.

The results also mark a visible change in style at the top of the company. Warren Buffett, who led Berkshire for six decades, was famously reluctant to buy back stock unless he judged it clearly cheap, and repurchases had been paused entirely a year ago. Abel, by contrast, has now spent more on buybacks in a single quarter than the company spent in the whole first half of the year. Investors will be watching closely to see whether the pace continues, and whether the insurance weakness that dragged on the quarter proves to be a short setback or something longer lasting. The Berkshire Hathaway Q3 2026 buybacks under Greg Abel in November 2026 are the clearest signal yet of how the new chief executive intends to run the company.

1. What Berkshire reported on Saturday

Berkshire released its third-quarter figures on Saturday morning, November 7, alongside its quarterly filing with the United States securities regulator. The headline was a fall in operating earnings, the measure Buffett long urged investors to watch because it strips out the swings in the value of the stocks Berkshire owns. Operating earnings came in at $12.705 billion, down 5.8 percent from $13.485 billion in the same quarter a year earlier. On a per-share basis, that worked out to about $8,954 for each Class A share, according to Reuters, down from about $9,376 a year ago. The company also reported revenue of $105.65 billion, up 11 percent from a year earlier, its second straight quarter of double-digit growth.

The wider profit figure fell much more sharply. Net earnings attributable to Berkshire shareholders dropped 28.2 percent to $22.11 billion, or $15,502 per Class A share, from $30.8 billion a year earlier. That fall was driven largely by investment gains, which dropped by nearly half to $9.407 billion. Berkshire has long warned that net earnings can swing wildly from quarter to quarter because accounting rules require it to record paper gains and losses on its huge stock portfolio, and the company has repeatedly asked investors to judge it on operating earnings instead. Even by that preferred measure, though, the quarter was weaker than the year before.

1.1 The headline numbers

The numbers that matter most from the quarter fit on a single page, but each one points in a slightly different direction. Operating earnings of $12.705 billion were down 5.8 percent, yet the equivalent figure for the first nine months of the year was up 8.0 percent, at $37.034 billion against $34.286 billion a year earlier. Net earnings of $22.112 billion were down from $30.796 billion. Revenue rose 11 percent to $105.65 billion. Share repurchases totalled about $9.6 billion in the quarter, and about $2 billion more was spent in the first four weeks of October, according to Reuters. Cash and equivalents stood at $356.9 billion at the end of September, down from $380.2 billion six months earlier, while the broader cash pile including short-term securities reached $377.4 billion, up from $365.5 billion at the end of June, according to the Associated Press.

Four analysts surveyed by FactSet had predicted operating earnings of $8,821.84 per Class A share, so the reported figure of about $8,954 came in slightly ahead of that expectation. The buyback figure, by contrast, was well above the estimates compiled by Visible Alpha, according to one report. That gap between expectations and reality is part of why the buybacks, rather than the earnings decline, dominated the reaction to the results. Berkshire’s Class A shares were trading at about $856,612 and its Class B shares at about $570.89 around the time of the release, both up roughly 13.5 percent so far this year.

1.2 How the quarter compares with the year so far

The contrast between the quarter and the nine-month picture is striking, and it is largely a story about insurance. Over the first nine months, operating earnings rose 8.0 percent to $37.03 billion, a solid advance for a company of Berkshire’s size. In the third quarter alone, they fell 5.8 percent. The difference was driven by the insurance businesses, where underwriting profit dropped 42.9 percent in the quarter, while other parts of the group, including the railroad, continued to grow. A currency swing also hurt: Berkshire recorded a $343 million loss on its non-dollar debt in the quarter, against a gain of $331 million a year earlier.

The nine-month figures also reflect the two large purchases Berkshire completed this year, which added new earnings streams to the group. Results reflected purchases this year of Occidental Petroleum’s chemicals business for $9.4 billion and the Taylor Morrison home builder for $6.8 billion, according to Reuters. Those deals mean the year-to-date comparison is not quite like for like, since the new businesses were not part of Berkshire a year ago. Even so, the direction of travel is clear: the operating businesses as a whole earned more over nine months, while the third quarter alone was pulled back by insurance claims and costs.

2. The buyback acceleration

The single most talked-about number in the results was the $9.6 billion spent on share repurchases between July and September. That was more than double the $4.5 billion spent in the second quarter, and more than the $4.8 billion spent in the whole first half of the year, according to Reuters. It took the nine-month total to $14.4 billion. Berkshire also repurchased about $2 billion more in the first four weeks of October, suggesting the pace did not slow once the quarter ended. One report described the quarterly figure as likely an all-time single-quarter record for the company, citing Barron’s.

Buybacks matter because they are the most direct way a company can return cash to shareholders without paying a dividend, which Berkshire has never done. When a company buys its own shares and cancels them, each remaining share represents a slightly larger slice of the business. For a company with a cash pile as large as Berkshire’s, the question has always been whether management thinks its own stock is cheap enough to buy. Abel’s answer, at least for this quarter, appears to be yes, and on a much bigger scale than his predecessor attempted in recent years.

2.1 How much Berkshire spent and when

The timing of the spending is as interesting as the total. About $3.4 billion of the repurchases came in July alone, according to one analysis derived from changes in the company’s share count. That early burst suggests the decision to step up buybacks was taken quickly after the second quarter ended, rather than drifting through the summer. The pace then continued through August and September, and into October, when about $2 billion more was spent in the first four weeks. Taken together, Berkshire has now spent roughly $16.4 billion on its own shares in 2026 through late October by one count, although the filing-based total for the first nine months stands at $14.4 billion, and the two figures differ because of the October spending and different counting methods.

The scale of the programme is also notable in historical terms. A year ago, in the third quarter of 2025, Berkshire bought back no shares at all. Buffett had paused repurchases, judging the stock too expensive to buy at the prices then prevailing. The swing from zero to $9.6 billion in a year is one of the sharpest changes in Berkshire’s capital allocation in recent memory, and it is the clearest evidence yet that Abel is willing to use the cash pile more aggressively than Buffett did in his final years.

2.2 Why the pace matters under Greg Abel

Abel officially took over as chief executive on January 1, 2026, succeeding Buffett after six decades at the helm. He certified the quarterly report as president and principal executive officer, a formality that underlines that the results are now his responsibility. The buyback acceleration is the first major capital-allocation decision of his tenure to be visible in the numbers, and investors have been waiting for exactly this kind of signal. Reuters reported that Abel has demonstrated a greater willingness than his predecessor to put the conglomerate’s enormous cash hoard to use.

The signal matters for two reasons. First, it suggests Abel believes Berkshire’s own shares offer better value than the alternatives, including the large acquisitions that have traditionally absorbed the company’s cash. Second, it changes the arithmetic for shareholders: with fewer shares outstanding, future earnings are spread across a smaller base, which lifts earnings per share even if the underlying businesses grow slowly. Whether that judgement proves right will depend on where the share price goes from here, but the willingness to act at this scale is itself new. Abel has now put his stamp on the company in a way that every shareholder can measure in dollars.

3. Insurance drags the quarter

If buybacks were the good news, insurance was the bad news. Berkshire’s insurance operations, which have long been the engine of the group because they generate the cash known as float that Berkshire invests, had a weak quarter. Insurance underwriting profit dropped 42.9 percent, and insurance profit as a whole fell 26 percent. The main weak spot was GEICO, the car insurer, where pretax profit fell 45 percent. The pressure came from several directions at once: higher accident losses, more spending on advertising, and price cuts that reduced the premiums coming in.

The insurance result also explains most of the gap between Berkshire’s operating earnings and what the market had expected. Underwriting is the profit an insurer earns from premiums after paying claims and costs, and it is the part of insurance most sensitive to the cost of accidents, repairs and medical care. When claims costs rise faster than premiums, underwriting profit falls quickly. That is what happened at GEICO, and the effect was large enough to drag down the whole group’s quarterly result, even though other businesses grew.

3.1 GEICO’s difficult quarter

GEICO’s numbers show how quickly an insurer’s fortunes can turn. Its underwriting profit fell to $1.35 billion from $2.4 billion a year earlier, according to the Associated Press. Its loss ratio, the share of premiums paid out in claims, rose to 76.6 percent from 71.5 percent a year earlier. That five-point move is large for an insurer, and it reflects a combination of more expensive claims and lower premiums. CFRA Research analyst Cathy Seifert said GEICO is in a tough spot right now, with insurance premiums declining at the same time as the average cost of claims is increasing.

The company pointed to higher accident losses, increased advertising spending and price cuts as the causes. Advertising is a choice: GEICO has long spent heavily to win customers, and that spending pays off only if the customers it wins stay and pay premiums that exceed their claims. Price cuts are also a choice, made to stay competitive in a market where rivals are fighting for drivers. The question for Berkshire is whether the higher loss ratio is a temporary squeeze or the start of a longer period in which car insurance becomes less profitable. The answer will shape the group’s results for several quarters to come.

3.2 The rest of the insurance group

GEICO was the main problem, but the insurance weakness was broader. Insurance investment income, the money Berkshire earns by investing the premiums it holds before claims are paid, also declined, falling 14 percent in the quarter. That decline partly reflects lower returns on the investments themselves, and it matters because investment income has traditionally smoothed out the ups and downs of underwriting. When both underwriting and investment income fall at the same time, the insurance group has nowhere to hide.

Berkshire’s other insurance operations, including its reinsurance businesses, which insure other insurers, also contributed to the weaker result, although the reports focused on GEICO as the largest single cause. The reinsurance business is lumpy by nature: a single large catastrophe or a quiet hurricane season can move its results sharply in either direction. The filing showed underwriting profit for the insurance group as a whole falling to $1.352 billion, and that figure, down 43 percent, captures the scale of the setback across the division. Berkshire has weathered insurance downturns before, and its size means it can absorb them, but the quarter was a reminder that the division is not immune to rising costs.

4. The businesses that grew

Away from insurance, much of Berkshire’s empire performed well. The railroad BNSF saw its earnings climb 19.3 percent in the quarter, a strong result for a business that carries freight across the western United States and is sensitive to the wider economy. The railroad’s improvement helped offset the insurance decline and showed that the non-insurance half of Berkshire remains healthy. Operating profit from the wholly-owned businesses fell 5.8 percent overall, but that figure masks a split: insurance down sharply, and railroad, energy and manufacturing earnings growing.

The contrast underlines how diversified Berkshire has become. The company owns dozens of businesses outright, from railroads and utilities to manufacturers, retailers and service companies, alongside its huge stock portfolio. When one division stumbles, others can cushion the blow. That diversification is the reason the nine-month operating earnings still rose 8 percent despite the weak third quarter. It is also why investors watch the divisional breakdown closely: the headline number alone does not show which parts of the empire are thriving and which are struggling.

4.1 BNSF railroad gains

BNSF, the freight railroad Berkshire bought in 2010, delivered one of the strongest divisional results of the quarter, with earnings up 19.3 percent. Railroads earn money by moving goods, and their results tend to track the volume of freight and the prices they can charge for carrying it. A gain of that size suggests both volumes and pricing moved in BNSF’s favour, although the company reports did not break out the precise drivers in the summaries published on Saturday. The railroad is one of Berkshire’s largest businesses, and its performance is often read as a signal about the wider American economy.

The result also matters because railroads are capital-hungry: they must constantly spend on tracks, locomotives and wagons. A strong earnings performance gives BNSF more room to fund that spending from its own cash flow rather than leaning on the parent company. For Berkshire as a whole, the railroad’s gain partly offset the insurance decline, and it demonstrated that the group’s operating diversity still works as intended. When insurance had a bad quarter, the railroad had a good one.

4.2 Energy, manufacturing and retail

The reports also noted growth in railroad, energy and manufacturing earnings, although the summaries did not give a full divisional breakdown in the first accounts of the results. Berkshire Hathaway Energy, which owns utilities and renewable power assets, and the manufacturing group, which includes everything from industrial parts to consumer goods, both contributed positively. The retail and service businesses, which include car dealerships, furniture stores and jewellers, are smaller individually but add up to a meaningful part of the group.

These businesses are less glamorous than the stock portfolio or the insurance float, but they are the steady core of Berkshire’s operating earnings. They tend to grow slowly and predictably, and they throw off cash that Berkshire can reinvest. The third quarter showed that core still functioning: even with insurance down sharply, the group’s operating earnings fell by only 5.8 percent, because the other divisions grew. That cushioning effect is exactly what Buffett built the conglomerate to deliver, and Abel now inherits it.

5. The cash pile and what it signals

Berkshire’s cash pile remains one of the most watched numbers in world finance, and the third quarter did little to shrink it. The company ended September with $356.9 billion of cash and equivalents, down from $380.2 billion six months earlier, according to Reuters. The Associated Press reported a broader figure of $377.4 billion for cash and short-term securities, up from $365.5 billion at the end of June. The two figures differ because they count different things, but both tell the same story: even after spending $9.6 billion on buybacks, Berkshire still holds more cash than any other American company, by a wide margin.

The cash pile has been a talking point for years. Critics have argued that holding so much cash earns little return, while supporters have said it gives Berkshire the firepower to act when opportunities appear, whether that means buying a whole company or buying back its own shares cheaply. The third quarter shows Abel beginning to use that firepower. Even so, the pile barely moved, because Berkshire’s businesses generate cash faster than it can spend it. Operating cash flow more than replenished the buyback outlay, which is why the broader cash measure actually grew during the quarter despite the near-$10 billion of repurchases.

5.1 How much cash Berkshire holds

The scale of the cash holding is hard to grasp. At $377.4 billion, Berkshire’s cash and short-term securities exceed the entire stock market value of most of the world’s largest companies. The company holds the money mostly in United States Treasury bills, the safest short-term investment available, which earn interest while waiting to be deployed. That interest income itself is a meaningful source of profit: Berkshire earns billions a year simply from the interest on its cash pile.

The $356.9 billion cash-and-equivalents figure reported by Reuters is the narrower measure, and it fell from $380.2 billion six months earlier, largely because of the buybacks and the two acquisitions completed this year. The broader $377.4 billion figure rose from $365.5 billion at the end of June, according to the Associated Press, because operating cash flow during the quarter exceeded the money spent. Both measures point to the same conclusion: Berkshire remains extraordinarily liquid, and the buyback programme has barely dented its reserves.

5.2 What Abel has done with the money so far

Abel’s use of the cash so far falls into three buckets: buybacks, acquisitions and the ordinary running of the businesses. The buybacks took $9.6 billion in the quarter. The acquisitions of Occidental Petroleum’s chemicals business for $9.4 billion and the Taylor Morrison home builder for $6.8 billion were completed earlier in the year and absorbed a large sum. The rest of the cash continues to sit in Treasury bills, earning interest while Abel decides what to do next.

Investors will now be watching for the next move. One possibility is that buybacks continue at the current pace, which would shrink the share count materially over a year. Another is that Abel finds a large acquisition, the kind of deal Buffett called an elephant, that would absorb a much bigger sum at once. A third possibility is that the cash pile keeps growing, as it has for years, because the businesses generate more cash than the company can sensibly spend. The third-quarter results suggest the first of those paths is now firmly in play, but they do not rule out the others.

6. The deals behind the numbers

The two acquisitions completed this year shaped the quarterly results in ways that go beyond their price tags. Berkshire bought Occidental Petroleum’s chemicals business for $9.4 billion and the Taylor Morrison home builder for $6.8 billion, according to Reuters, and both deals closed before the third quarter. Their earnings now flow into Berkshire’s operating results, which helps explain why the nine-month operating earnings rose 8 percent even as the third-quarter figure fell. The chemicals business adds an industrial operation with steady demand, while the home builder adds exposure to the American housing market.

The deals also show Abel’s approach to acquisitions. Both were substantial purchases of established businesses, the kind of transaction Berkshire has favoured for decades. They were not speculative bets on new technology or fast-growing start-ups. Instead, they were mature companies with real earnings, bought at prices Abel evidently judged fair. That pattern suggests continuity with Buffett’s approach to buying businesses, even as the buyback policy changes. The difference is one of emphasis: Abel appears readier to buy Berkshire’s own shares when he cannot find an outside business at the right price.

6.1 Occidental chemicals and Taylor Morrison

The Occidental chemicals business, known as OxyChem, makes basic chemicals used in everything from water treatment to construction materials. It is the kind of unglamorous industrial business Berkshire has long favoured: steady demand, limited competition and cash generation that can be relied upon. The $9.4 billion price tag made it one of the larger acquisitions in Berkshire’s recent history, and its earnings now contribute to the manufacturing and industrial side of the group. The deal also deepened Berkshire’s relationship with Occidental Petroleum, in which it already held a large stock investment.

Taylor Morrison, the home builder, cost $6.8 billion and gives Berkshire a direct stake in the construction of new homes across the United States. Home building is a cyclical business: it booms when interest rates fall and housing demand rises, and it suffers when rates climb and buyers pull back. Berkshire already owned businesses exposed to housing, including a brick maker and a flooring company, so the purchase fits a pattern of owning several pieces of the same supply chain. Together, the two deals added more than $16 billion of acquired businesses to the group in a single year.

6.2 How the acquisitions show up in results

Acquisitions show up in Berkshire’s results in two ways: the earnings of the new businesses are added to operating profit, and the cash spent on them leaves the balance sheet. The first effect helped the nine-month figures, while the second explains part of the fall in cash and equivalents from $380.2 billion to $356.9 billion. The third-quarter figures also reflect the integration of the new businesses, although the published summaries did not separate their individual contributions. What is clear is that Berkshire’s operating earnings would have looked weaker still without them, since the acquired businesses added earnings in a quarter when insurance subtracted them.

There is a longer-term question about whether the acquisitions will earn their keep. Berkshire judges a purchase by the return it generates on the money spent, measured over years rather than quarters. OxyChem and Taylor Morrison will be judged the same way. For now, their main visible contribution is to the nine-month growth in operating earnings and to the diversification of the group. They also demonstrate that Abel is willing to spend large sums on whole businesses, not only on buybacks, and that the two uses of cash can proceed side by side.

7. How investors and analysts reacted

The market reaction to the results was shaped less by the earnings decline than by the buyback surprise. Berkshire’s Class B shares had closed at a record $579.09 on November 4, just before the results, and both classes of shares were up about 13.5 percent for the year at the time of the release. The buyback figure came in well above the estimates compiled by Visible Alpha, according to one report, and that surprise was the main talking point among analysts. A company that buys back $9.6 billion of its own stock in a quarter is sending a message about value, and the market heard it.

Analysts also noted that the operating earnings figure, at about $8,954 per Class A share, came in slightly ahead of the $8,821.84 predicted by the four analysts surveyed by FactSet. The beat was modest, but it mattered because it showed the underlying businesses performing slightly better than expected once insurance was taken into account. The combination of a small earnings beat and a large buyback surprise gave investors two reasons to look past the headline decline in operating profit.

7.1 The share price and the record close

Berkshire’s shares have had a strong year. Class A shares were trading at about $856,612 around the time of the results, and Class B shares at about $570.89, both up roughly 13.5 percent since the start of the year. The Class B shares had closed at a record $579.09 on November 4, two days before the figures were published, suggesting investors were already optimistic about what the quarter would bring. The record close came before the buyback figure was public, so it reflected expectations about the results rather than the results themselves.

The share price matters for the buyback programme in a practical way. Berkshire can only buy back stock at the market price, so a rising share price makes each dollar of buybacks purchase fewer shares. Abel’s willingness to spend $9.6 billion while the shares were near record highs suggests he still judged them good value, or at least better value than the alternatives. That judgement will be tested by the market in the months ahead: if the shares keep rising, the buybacks will look well timed; if they fall, critics will say the money should have been kept in Treasury bills.

7.2 What analysts expected and what they say now

The analysts who follow Berkshire had set their expectations before the release, and the results beat them on the measure that mattered most to the market. The FactSet survey of four analysts had predicted operating earnings of $8,821.84 per Class A share; the reported figure of about $8,954 was ahead of that. The buyback figure was the bigger surprise, coming in well above the estimates compiled by Visible Alpha. That combination helps explain why the reaction focused on capital allocation rather than on the insurance shortfall.

Analyst commentary after the release concentrated on two themes. The first was Abel’s willingness to deploy cash, which several reports presented as the defining feature of the new chief executive’s early tenure. The second was GEICO, where the rising loss ratio and falling underwriting profit raised questions about how quickly the insurer can restore its margins. Cathy Seifert of CFRA Research described GEICO as being in a tough spot, with premiums falling while claim costs rise. Those two themes, the buybacks and the insurance squeeze, are likely to dominate discussion of Berkshire until the next quarterly results.

8. What remains unconfirmed and what to watch next

Several important questions remain unanswered after the third-quarter results. The first is whether the buyback pace will continue. Berkshire spent about $2 billion more in the first four weeks of October, which suggests the programme did not stop at the quarter end, but the company does not announce a target or a timetable for repurchases. The pace could slow if the share price rises further, or accelerate if Abel judges the stock cheap. Investors will only learn the answer when the next quarterly filing appears.

The second open question is GEICO. The insurer’s loss ratio rose to 76.6 percent, and its underwriting profit fell by more than 40 percent. Berkshire has not said publicly how quickly it expects those figures to recover, or whether further price changes or cost controls are planned. The third question is the cash pile itself: with more than $350 billion still on hand, the market will keep asking when Abel will make a large acquisition, and what kind of business he would choose. The answers to all three questions will shape Berkshire’s story for the next year.

8.1 Questions still unanswered

The results left a number of specific points unclear. The published summaries did not give a full divisional breakdown, so the precise contributions of the energy, manufacturing and retail businesses were not spelled out. The exact split of the $9.6 billion of buybacks between Class A and Class B shares was not reported in the first accounts. The reasons for the 14 percent fall in insurance investment income were described only in broad terms. The future of the reinsurance operations, which can swing sharply with catastrophe losses, was not discussed in detail. Each of these points may be clarified in the full quarterly filing, but the summaries published on Saturday did not answer them.

There is also uncertainty about how the two acquisitions are performing individually. OxyChem and Taylor Morrison now sit inside Berkshire’s operating results, but their separate earnings were not broken out in the first reports. Investors who want to judge whether the $16.2 billion spent on the two deals was well used will have to wait for more detail. The same applies to the currency loss of $343 million on non-dollar debt, which reversed a gain of $331 million a year earlier: the filing will show which currencies and which debts were involved, but the summaries did not.

8.2 What to watch next

The next milestones are clear. The fourth-quarter results, due early in 2027, will show whether the buyback pace held up through the end of the year and whether GEICO’s loss ratio stabilised. Any large acquisition announced in the meantime would be a major signal about Abel’s priorities, since a single big deal could absorb tens of billions of dollars at once. The share price will also be watched: if it keeps rising, the buybacks will look like good value; if it falls, the decision to spend so heavily will face harder questions.

Investors will also watch the insurance market more broadly. Car insurance pricing, repair costs and medical costs all feed into GEICO’s results, and trends in those areas will determine whether the third quarter was a blip or the start of a tougher period. The housing market will matter for Taylor Morrison, and industrial demand will matter for OxyChem. Berkshire’s size means no single business decides its fate, but the combination of buybacks, insurance and the cash pile will define Abel’s first year in charge. The coming weeks will provide the answers.

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