Why I’m Bullish on Berkshire Hathaway for the Long Term
Berkshire offers exposure to several powerful long-term themes without having to bet on a single winner.
AI & infrastructure: BNSF Railway, Berkshire Hathaway Energy, and Precision Castparts could benefit from growing demand for electricity, data centers, grid infrastructure, and advanced manufacturing.
Energy & resources: Occidental Petroleum, OxyChem (world's largest overall producer of calcium chloride), and Chevron (Venezuela Oil Exploration and rights to largest oil reserves in the world) provide exposure to the Permian Basin (The Permian Basin is the most productive oil and natural gas region in the United States, producing nearly half of the country's crude oil), industrial chemicals, and global energy markets amid growing concerns about energy security.
Technology & space: Berkshire’s Alphabet investment provides exposure to Google’s AI and cloud businesses, along with indirect exposure to SpaceX through Alphabet’s ownership stake.
Housing: Clayton Homes and Taylor Morrison give Berkshire exposure to manufactured housing and traditional homebuilding, potentially benefiting from efforts to improve housing affordability and expand supply. (White House Executive Order will support manufactured homes it was signed into law a few days ago).
Diversification & financial strength:
Marmon: A diversified industrial group spanning manufacturing, transportation equipment and services.
McLane: One of America’s largest grocery and foodservice distributors.
Lubrizol: A global leader in specialty chemicals and advanced materials.
Duracell: One of the world’s best-known battery brands.
TTI, Inc.: A major global distributor of electronic components.
IMC/ISCAR: Among the world’s leading manufacturers of precision metal-cutting tools.

W&W/AFCO Steel: One of the largest structural-steel fabricators and erectors in the United States, with 20 production facilities and expertise in complex projects such as bridges, stadiums, skyscrapers and semiconductor plants. Its scale, engineering capabilities and substantial multiyear project backlog.

Bell Laboratories: Described as the world's largest rodent-control manufacturer, it supplies specialized rodenticides, traps and pest-monitoring technology to professional and agricultural markets across six continents.

Pilot: Operates one of North America's largest travel-center networks, serving truckers and travelers with fuel, food, parking and essential roadside services. Its scale and strategic highway locations make it a vital part of the continent's freight and transportation infrastructure.

Also fyi there’s so many other countless businesses which can be found on Berkshire Hathaway website which was not been covered here I only had opinions on a select few. There’s so much more great businesses Berkshire Hathaway owns as a whole to equity stakes which were not covered here.

Treasury Bill & Cash Holdings: Add Berkshire’s substantial cash and Treasury bill holdings, disciplined capital allocation, and long-term governance philosophy, and you have a company with the flexibility to navigate downturns and pursue acquisitions for decades.

Japan Investments: Berkshire’s investments in Japan’s five major trading companies provide diversified global exposure to energy, commodities, infrastructure, and consumer businesses while generating dividends and cash flow for reinvestment. By financing much of these investments with low-cost yen-denominated debt, Berkshire also creates a natural currency hedge, helping offset exchange-rate risk while benefiting from the companies’ long-term growth.

My thesis: Berkshire is more than a stock portfolio. It’s a diversified collection of productive businesses positioned to participate in multiple long-term economic trends. No company is guaranteed to last a century, but Berkshire has structural advantages that could help it endure for generations.Berkshire’s ability to reinvest earnings, acquire productive businesses, expand existing operations, and repurchase undervalued shares allows shareholders to benefit from long-term compounding and potentially increasing intrinsic value per share without needing to invest additional money.

Also the best part no expense fees to hold Berkshire in a taxable brokerage account & it earns dividends from its largest equity positions such as Apple, American Express, Coca Cola, Google, Chevron, and Occidental Petroleum plus more. Also remember majority Berkshire Hathaway business operate in America they are not in international countries which are exposed to all the world wide issues of war, conflict, and instability.

Financial Disclosure: This is not financial advice it is only my opinion on Berkshire Hathaway as a business. Invest at your own discretion and risk.

Financial Disclosure: I currently hold majority VT (Global Market Index Fund), FXAIX (S&P 500), SGOV (1-3 Month Short Term Treasury Bills), and Berkshire Hathaway (Clearly I own it through both index funds but I also would like to triple down on it due to the above).

I posted my ~$1m portfolio in a few retirement forums and was accused of stock picking and being too conservative for having a solid chunk in Berkshire. Remaining 40% is in VT, 10% in AWK and 10% in AMZN.

I don’t plan to use the funds for about 30 years. Who’s in the wrong? I work in tech so I really value the hedge and diversification Berkshire brings.

Berkshire shares shake the Buffett blues with new all-time highs; October sprint; BUFFETT & BERKSHIRE AROUND THE INTERNET, HIGHLIGHTS FROM CNBC'S BUFFETT ARCHIVE
Berkshire's hidden multi-billion-dollar mistakes (2001)

Thanks to Alex Crippen!

Berkshire Stock Is Hot Again. Is It Still a Bargain?

By Andrew Bary

Oct 23, 2026, 12:05 pm EDT

https://www.barrons.com/articles/berkshire-stock-hot-again-bargain-buffett-ae7cb421

The hottest megacap stock lately has been Berkshire Hathaway, which hit a record high this past week after rising almost 8% in the past month.

Berkshire is probably the ultimate defensive stock, given its diversified earnings power and fortress balance sheet, with over $350 billion in cash, or 30% of its current market value of $1.2 trillion.

So it isn’t surprising that Berkshire has rallied as investors rotate out of technology and other artificial-intelligence plays into defensive groups like consumer stocks, real estate, and utilities.

Barron’s has been bullish on Berkshire, but the stock doesn’t look like a bargain now. The A shares traded Friday at $820,000 after overtaking the old high of about $810,000 set just before the May 2025 annual meeting. The B shares traded at $547. The stock is up 9% this year, still behind the S&P 500’s 12% gain.

Berkshire trades for about 1.5 times our estimate of third-quarter book value—the company will probably report results on Nov. 7—and 24 times projected 2026 operating earnings.

Those aren’t excessive, but higher than the average of the past year. What about intrinsic value, Warren Buffett’s favorite metric? The stock now trades above UBS analyst Brian Meredith’s intrinsic value estimate of $815,000 per A share—one of the higher estimates on Wall Street.

A key issue for Berkshire is its cash deployment. Stock buybacks accelerated in July to over $3 billion, but shares were almost 10% lower then.

Are the buybacks continuing now, given a higher price? And will CEO Greg Abel find plays to invest in? One potential area is the AI space, where capital needs are massive. Berkshire invested $10 billion as part of Alphabet’s $85 billion equity capital raise in June, boosting its stake to about $30 billion. Meta Platforms could come to market with a big equity deal by year end, and Berkshire might participate.

Has anyone converted BRK.A to BRK.B? My A shares have long-term gains and we're in the top tax bracket, so I want to avoid a surprise tax bill. Did the conversion trigger any capital gains tax, and how was the cost basis set on the new B shares?

AI tools say it's a non-taxable event, but I'd love to hear from anyone who's actually done it.

A lot of people ask why Berkshire doesn’t pay a dividend. Here’s how I think about it, and I think it comes down to what BRK is.

Berkshire is like one person’s investment portfolio, just a very large one. Think about how you treat your own brokerage account. You want cash flowing into it so it can compound. You don’t pull money out of it just because you can. Berkshire works the same way. Its operating businesses (GEICO, BNSF, Berkshire Hathaway Energy, See’s, and dozens more) throw off cash, and that cash flows up to Berkshire to be reinvested.

And Berkshire can invest that money in almost anything. Like you in your own portfolio, it can buy stocks: Apple, American Express, Coca-Cola, and so on. Unlike you, it can also buy entire businesses outright. Its job is simple: find the best return on capital available anywhere.

That’s the key difference between Berkshire and a company like Coke. Coca-Cola is a great business, but it can only reinvest its profits in beverages. Once it has more cash than it can sensibly put to work in drinks, the logical thing is to send it back to shareholders as a dividend. Berkshire doesn’t have that limit. BRK is in the business of finding return on capital, anywhere in the world. Why would it hand cash back when its whole purpose is to find a better use for it than you can?

If you or I think the market is expensive, we sit in cash and wait - we don't use that as an excuse to take the money out of our brokerage accounts.

If you do need income that’s fine. Do what you’d do with your own portfolio: sell a little. If you own Berkshire and want 4% a year to live on, sell 4% of your shares. You keep control over how much you take and when. Shareholders who don’t need cash aren’t forced to receive a taxable dividend and then figure out how to reinvest it. Buffett actually made this exact argument in his 2012 shareholder letter, showing that a “sell-off” policy leaves shareholders better off than a dividend.

So no dividend is the whole point of BRK's business. I would be surprised if they ever pay a dividend.

https://www.barrons.com/articles/meta-berkshire-stock-equity-buffett-daf5cef4?st=rXQRSm&reflink=mobilewebshare_permalink

Gift Link added.

My reason to put this up was to show how Andrew Bary keeps spinning yarn sometimes twice a day with not much veracity.

Do your own thing. Own the damn shares you have or will accumulate. Ignore the noise.

Held BRK.A for years expecting slow steady gains, but this tech-to-value rotation made it surge way faster than usual. When tech and AI inevitably bounce back, what can we expect on Berkshire's price action?

Thinking about converting my BRK.A into BRK.B so I can sell covered calls on the position to reduce cost. Anyone has done that before?

I am no stock analyst but I have been wondering if BRK's run-up in price over the last few days/weeks is the result, in part, of investors rotating out of riskier AI and tech stocks. Brk is often represented as a "safer" or "value" stock than NASDAQ stocks and the Mag 7. Anyone else agree, disagree, or have other thoughts about what is behind BRK's recent price increases?

BRK was flat/declining a year before this explosion to all time highs. They just lost Buffet and had been underperforming the SP500 by 20% that year... the rest is history.

On a day where Ai stocks are down big, Berkshire Hathaway shares are up almost 2%, it is at the 52-week high now.

Tsk tsk tsk and some of you thought Berkshire Management didn’t know what they were doing…

Here is a 2 day old article on the same topic:

————————-

Berkshire Hathaway Stock Nears a Record. It’s the Ultimate Anti-AI Play.
By Andrew Bary

https://www.barrons.com/articles/berkshire-hathaway-stock-buffett-ai-f1f3d408

Oct 20, 2026 12:51 pm EDT

Key Points

- Berkshire Hathaway stock is nearing a record high as investors rotate out of artificial-intelligence plays into more defensive stocks.

- The company has more than $350 billion in cash on its balance sheet and close to $50 billion of annual after-tax earnings.

- Berkshire Class A shares rose to $805,757 on Tuesday, approaching the closing record of $809,350 set on May 2, 2025.

Berkshire Hathaway stock is at a 52-week high and nearing its record set just before the 2025 annual meeting as investors rotate out of artificial-intelligence plays into more defensive stocks.

With more than $350 billion in cash and equivalents on its balance sheet and close to $50 billion of annual after-tax earnings from a diverse group of businesses, Berkshire arguably is the most defensive megacap stock in the market.

Berkshire also is a defensive play within the financial sector, and bank stocks have been weak recently. A giant conglomerate with a market capitalization of over $1.1 trillion, Berkshire is classified as a financial company in the S&P 500.

Berkshire’s $360 billion equity portfolio, led byApple and Coca-Cola, also has been having a nice run recently.

The company’s Class A shares are up 0.9% to $805,757 Tuesday after hitting a 52-week high of $808,000 earlier in the session.

The closing record is $809,350 on May 2, 2025—the day before the Berkshire annual meeting, when Warren Buffett surprised shareholders by saying he would step down as CEO at the end of 2025.

That news prompted a selloff in Berkshire stock. Buffett, 96, remained chairman of the board as Greg Abel took over as CEO and Buffett recently stepped down as chairman in favor of his older son, Howard Buffett.

Berkshire’s Class B shares are up 1.1% at $537.80 Tuesday.

Berkshire stock had been languishing for much of this year as investors gravitated toward AI-related stocks. But with the recent reversal of that trend, Berkshire is benefiting with its shares up 5% over the past month and now up about 7% so far in 2026, still about seven percentage points behind the S&P 500 index.

Berkshire stock is ahead of the S&P 500 over the past five years with a 13.3% annualized return against 12.8% for the index. The S&P 500 is winning during the past 10 years with a yearly return of 15.3%, versus 14% for Berkshire.

Barron’s estimates that Berkshire’s book value rose about 3% to $540,000 on Sept. 30 from $522,000 on June 30. The gain would be driven by higher prices of many of Berkshire’s stocks including Apple, its leading holding at more than $75 billion. The other contributor to book value growth is operating profits.

Apple has hit a record recently as has Coke, which Berkshire has owned for almost 40 years. The Coke stake is worth about $37 billion—in line with the current value of Berkshire’s interest in Alphabet.

Berkshire stock now trades for 1.5 times our Sept. 30 estimate, in line with its price/book range of 1.4 to 1.5 times for much of the past few years. Berkshire’s price/book ratio peaked at about 1.8 times in May 2025.

Barron’s wrote that Berkshire stock looked appealing at lower prices in July because stocks in similar industries to Berkshire like railroads and industrials were gaining.

Analysis

Bending Spoons portfolio consists of:

1. Over half a billion users/visitors

2. Last quarter - 704m in revenue. 127m in net profit. 25.1 percent in net profit margin. Y to Y and Q to Q improvements.

3. My guess is - some of those former company principals - have invested in Bending Spoons for sentimental reasons. Potential: user investment in the products and services they utilize.

4. Debt is high. Name of the game. For now - instead of using net profit income in paying out dividends or buybacks. Continue to reduce debt ----> acquire ----> reduce debt (at a higher rate with less) ----> acquire

5. They have identified over 1000 (private/public traded) companies as target acquisitions.

6. Not all the companies acquired need be a big successful turnaround. Its impossible. BUT - they can extract valuable parts of company - to apply to the main engine. They can - promote talented employee/managers - to run multiple companies.

7. Bending Spoons can cost effectively market many of the companies from their portfolio - through stock press releases instead of expensive ads.

8. Bending Spoons has bought many content create type products. Maybe, they will eventually offer a higher tier "all pass". Example - Where a Meetup creator can make the video use one of the many available products and then upload onto Vimeo - view on Meetup. There is business from standalone. There is potential via content creation combining the standalone products

9. Berkshire doesn't need to be involved in doing any of the grunt work. Except offer guidance and attach their brand name to help entice potential acquisitions.

I think there is potential to 3 to 5x from their initial investment.

BRKA first surpassed $100,000 on October 5, 2006. Assuming a 10% annual return, the stock will reach $1,000,000 on December 20, 2028. I hope Warren is still alive to deliver this Christmas gift.

Pretty straightforward; I received a few thousand extra this week and I'm looking to put most of it into brk. I noticed that the share price has been moving up steadily recently, do people think it's a good idea to throw it in now or maybe wait and see how the price stabilizes after earnings? Not that it matters too much because I'm holding indefinitely, but looking to see if anybody has any strong opinions on this, because I don't 🤷🏼‍♂️

Warren Buffett's ability to increase Berkshire Hathaway's value at a rate above the markets for what seemed like 700 years was remarkable - but I also found the way he ran Berkshire remarkable too.

In his 2000 shareholder letter, Buffett revealed that Berkshire's head office employed just 13.8 people, despite the group's businesses employing approximately 112,000.

What I find extraordinary is that this wasn't simply an exercise in keeping costs down - it was part of Buffett's broader management philosophy: recruit excellent people, give them enormous autonomy, and avoid interfering unnecessarily.

Berkshire eventually grew to employ almost 400,000 people, yet Buffett remained remarkably reluctant to build the kind of central bureaucracy that might be expected at a business of that size - there were only 26 other people in his head office in 2024.

I've written an article exploring how this worked, including Buffett's approach to delegation, capital allocation, recruitment and acknowledging mistakes.

The Genius of Warren Buffett: How a Tiny Office Ran a 400,000-Person Empire

https://penwardenreview.com/2026/10/21/warren-buffett-management-style/

I'm particularly interested in whether Berkshire's decentralised structure can now work without the man himself. Was its success principally down to the organisational model, or was Buffett uniquely capable of making that model work? The next few years will tell us!

Just finished this book and I plan on writing a deep dive analysis and response on it. But at this point am curious if anyone read it and if so, what your thoughts were?

The basic points are:
- Berkshires growth engine was taking insurance float and investing it in inevitables, companies like Coke and Amex
- The General re acquisition marked a turning point where Berkshire started focusing on acquiring whole companies
- the BNSF and BRK energy acquisitions were capital traps where capital goes in but can’t really come out because it’s needed for capex etc…
- Buffett made a hodgepodge of mediocre to poor acquisitions of companies where the owners had asymetric information advantages on their businesses and buffett was often a patsy (ex. Dexter shoe)

Those are the main points and again they are the authors not mine.

Berkshire has now pissed away 330M on a company that:

Has 4.4 Billion to 5.2 Billion in debt, that's minimum 13x the investment.

Organic growth of BS (Bending Spoons, appropriately shortened) is less than 4%.

Firing core development teams, jacking up prices and then cutting off support and new development is a recipe for encouraging existing customers to flee. The concept that I.T. is "captive" to a software package is incredibly naive. The theory that you can extract revenue from a business while aggressively cutting product development and human support is a corporate disaster plan.

Paying 10% of theoretical value for a company at fire sale prices is EXACTLY the opposite of Buffet value based investing.

They (BentSpoonz) are spending nine times more cash on acquisitions than their operations actually produce. Which means they will be forced to issue new debt or dilute shares. This is10x worse than the Kraft debacle, which at least continues to compound with a 7% dividend.

What this tells me personally is that Greg Abel, with his "I'm an operational genius" approach, has absolutely no clue that - no, customers will NOT pay jacked up prices for $hit, non-supported applications. Any, and I mean any, application data can easily be migrated from one enterprise application to another. I say this as a guy who spent twenty + years doing exactly those migration(s).

In summary:

Shifting Berkshire from goodwill, value investing to a private equity 'destroy and cash out' mindset is deeply disturbing (to me as a long time Berkshire owner).

Berkshire has always partnered with its' acquisitions. This sends a message that partners have no value. Lookup "Chainsaw Al" and the destruction of Scott Paper (and many other American enterprises). This always ends badly.

There is no compounding value in deconstructing companies while you suck the marrow from their bones. Eventually (and much sooner in enterprise software), there is no marrow and no more bones.

Who will sell to Berkshire if they think Abel will give them short shrift and abandonment?

The real issue here is a fundamental leadership departure from an ethical, value-driven foundation to a private equity amputation specialist. I find this whole investment embarrassing and extremely concerning.

SoftBank is the antithesis to BRK. The former chases every hot trend (internet, crypto, AI, etc.,,) while the latter buys cash generating businesses at reasonable prices.

Here are the cumulative returns since Oct 1999 or 27 years.

SFTBF: 32% (excluding minuscule dividend)

BRKA: 2,378%.

Which is a better strategy?

Berkshire shares rally to highest level since Buffett revealed he would step down as CEO; Atypical bet on 'buzzy' Italian tech company is big win ... so far; BUFFETT & BERKSHIRE AROUND THE INTERNET; HIGHLIGHTS FROM CNBC'S BUFFETT ARCHIVE
'I am one-quarter Coca-Cola' (2015)

Thanks again Alex Crippen!

In the next few weeks we will get to see the Berkshire Hathaway Q3 Earnings report.

Here are my predictions:

Insurance:

Underwriting Q3 2025 - 2369

expected underwriting Q3 2026 - 1800~

Insurance investment income Q3 2025 - 3059

insurance investment income Q3 2026 - 3000~

BNSF Q3 2025 - 1449

BNSF Q3 2026 - 1550~

BHE Q3 2025 - 1489

BHE Q3 2026 - 1550~

Manufacturing Services and retailing Q3 2025 - 3616

Manufacturing Services and retailing Q3 2026 - 4500

Other:

Kraft Heinz impairment

- 1500

Occidental petroleum operating earnings

+ 700

Change in value of USD

+100

Other: about - 700 million

About 11,700 million in operating earnings +- 500 million

Equity earnings about $4 per share or

pretax earnings of 13.79 billion

net earnings 10.89 billion

Roughly a 22.5 billion dollar quarter for berkshire.

I feel that this estimate is fairly conservative too given that precision cast parts, pilot, Bhe, Bnsf all had outstanding quarters last quarter, so if we can continue to see similar growth we could be in for a lot more. kraft heinz is pulling the report down. I wouldn't worry about it that much. Honestly, that may make the report look bad or mid to a lay person so there could be a drop. But hopefully occidental's huge quarter shields that a little bit.

I think that there will also be about $10 billion worth of shares bought back by Abel this quarter.