Berkshire Hathaway’s Class B shares closed Tuesday at $512.37, their strongest finish since November 28, when they ended the session at $513.81. The Class A shares closed the same day at $768,010, also the highest close since late November, when they finished at $770,100. The move capped a roughly 3% single-day gain and left the conglomerate at an eight-month high.

Both classes gave back a little ground by week’s end. The B shares finished Friday at $511.54, about 5.2% below their record close of $539.80 set on May 2, 2025 — the day before Warren Buffett told shareholders he would hand over the chief executive role at the end of that year. The A shares closed Friday at $766,600, roughly 5.3% under their all-time closing high of $809,350.

The rally arrives as Berkshire narrows a gap with the broader market that looked far wider only weeks ago. The Omaha conglomerate still trails the S&P 500 by about 7.6 percentage points for 2026, but that deficit stood at 17.5 percentage points two months ago, meaning more than half of the shortfall has been erased since late spring. Berkshire also continues to lag listed comparables in two of its core businesses: Union Pacific, the closest public proxy for the BNSF railroad, has gained roughly 30% this year, and property-casualty insurer Chubb has posted a substantially larger advance than Berkshire as well.

Tuesday’s jump followed a price-target increase from UBS analyst Brian Meredith, who kept a buy rating and lifted his Class B target to $585 from $570 and his Class A target to $877,848 from $854,596. Meredith raised his 2026 and 2027 operating earnings estimates by 1.3% and 0.8%, to $21.05 and $21.32 per B share, pointing to better results at BNSF and lighter catastrophe losses during the second quarter. He pegs Berkshire’s intrinsic value at close to $800,000 per Class A share, roughly 5% above where the stock has been trading, and describes the shares as sitting at about an 8% discount to that figure.

The bigger driver behind the estimate revisions was buybacks. Meredith built his forecasts around assumed repurchases of $8.6 billion, up sharply from the $1.5 billion he had previously modeled, after a review of Buffett’s July ownership filing suggested Berkshire had been buying its own stock aggressively during the April–June stretch. Barron’s analysis of the share-count decline — roughly 11,000 Class A equivalent shares between mid-April and mid-July — produced an estimated range of $5 billion to $11 billion, with about $8.5 billion the most frequently cited midpoint. None of it is confirmed. The company’s own tally will not be public until the quarterly report lands.

That would mark a decisive shift under chief executive Greg Abel, who took over from Buffett at the start of the year. Berkshire repurchased only about $235 million of stock in the first quarter, an almost invisible sum for a company with a market capitalization above $1 trillion and its first repurchase activity after seven straight quarters of none. Abel has also been deploying capital elsewhere: the Taylor Morrison Home acquisition closed during the second quarter, and Berkshire announced on June 1 that it had agreed to buy $10 billion in Alphabet shares directly from the company to help fund AI buildout. Net cash and Treasury bills stood at roughly $380 billion at the end of March.

The equity portfolio has done its share of the work. Apple, still Berkshire’s largest holding at more than $70 billion, is up 13.6% year to date. Coca-Cola, the third-largest position at about $35 billion, has climbed 25% and raised its full-year outlook after beating expectations last week. Bank of America, the fourth-largest stake at nearly $32 billion, has gained 12.6%. The overall marketable equity book is approaching $360 billion.

There are offsets analysts are watching. UBS expects GEICO’s underwriting margins to keep compressing as the insurer chases growth through flat-to-lower rates and heavier advertising, forecasting a combined ratio near 88.3% against 83.5% a year earlier. Reinsurance premiums are seen rising about 5%, helped by a new quota-share arrangement with Tokio Marine, while pricing competition weighs on growth elsewhere in the insurance group. BNSF faces a modest fuel-cost headwind this quarter before that reverses.

Second-quarter results are expected Saturday, August 8, and will be the first full accounting of Abel’s capital allocation across an entire quarter in the chair. Consensus estimates put revenue near $95.3 billion and earnings around $5.24 per B share. The buyback line, more than the earnings line, is what most holders will turn to first.

JBizNews Desk | Omaha

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