Investment: Buffett's successor goes on the offensive with new investments
The conglomerate increases its operating profit by 16 percent. At the same time, the cash reserve declines, while the Alphabet stake grows.
Frankfurt. Berkshire-Hathaway CEO Greg Abel is buying back the company's own shares on a large scale. The successor to star investor Warren Buffett increased the buybacks in the past quarter to $4.5 billion. This was announced by the conglomerate from Omaha, Nebraska on Saturday. In addition, he bought billions of dollars' worth of shares for the highly regarded portfolio.
Abel took over as CEO in January from Buffett. The 95-year-old had been at the helm of Berkshire for 60 years and now continues as chairman of the board of directors. After his first two quarters as CEO, Abel is now showing that he is leaving his mark on the company.
The share buybacks were the largest since 2021, according to data from news agency Bloomberg. The cash reserves fell to $365.5 billion as a result. In the first quarter, the total had still been $397 billion.
Investors are welcoming this move. Many have been urging the company for years to invest some of its unusually high cash holdings. In recent years, however, Buffett had largely reduced the highly regarded stock portfolio and realized profits. The star investor had long been looking for opportunities to invest the funds either through takeovers or share investments, but he often found the prices too high, as he himself explained.
Translated by urgent.news from Handelsblatt's report. Machine-written; read the original for the full account.
