Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE:BRK) (NYSE:BRK) said Saturday that second-quarter net earnings attributable to shareholders jumped to $25.67 billion, more than double the $12.37 billion posted a year earlier, as a rebound in the conglomerate’s stock portfolio combined with a sharp step-up in share repurchases under CEO Greg Abel.

On a per-share basis, net earnings worked out to $17,868 per Class A equivalent share, versus $8,601 a year ago. The headline number was driven in large part by roughly $16 billion in investment gains, reflecting unrealized appreciation across core holdings including Apple, Alphabet, American Express, Bank of America and Coca-Cola — the five positions that together make up the bulk of Berkshire’s equity book.

Berkshire’s Earnings: What Lies Beneath?

Strip out the investment swings and the underlying businesses still had a strong quarter. Operating earnings — the figure Abel and former CEO Warren Buffett have long argued is the truer read on the company’s health — climbed 16% to $12.98 billion from $11.16 billion.

The gains were broad-based. Manufacturing, service and retailing earnings rose 24% to roughly $4.47 billion. Berkshire Hathaway Energy’s profit surged 27% to about $891 million. BNSF, the railroad, was up 6% to $1.56 billion. Insurance was the soft spot: underwriting income fell 13% to $1.73 billion, while insurance investment income slipped 9% to about $3.06 billion.

The Buyback Signal Investors Were Waiting For

The bigger story for markets may be capital allocation. Berkshire repurchased approximately $4.5 billion of its own shares during the quarter — a dramatic acceleration from the mere $235 million spent buying back stock in the first three months of the year, and enough to push first-half buybacks to roughly $4.76 billion.

Under Berkshire’s long-standing policy, repurchases are left to management’s discretion as long as cash and equivalents stay above a $30 billion floor — a threshold the company remains nowhere near testing. Some analysts had penciled in even bigger numbers; a Barron’s review of SEC filings had suggested Abel could have spent as much as $11 billion buying in stock during the quarter based on the drop in Class A shares outstanding. The actual figure, while smaller than that upper estimate, still marks the most aggressive quarter of buybacks since Berkshire resumed the program in March following a nearly two-year pause.

Cash Pile Comes Off Its Record High

Berkshire’s cash and Treasury holdings — which had swelled to a record of roughly $380 billion in the prior quarter — were drawn down to about $364.7 billion, alternately reported near $365.5 billion, as Abel put money to work across buybacks, acquisitions and fresh stock purchases.

That deployment extended well beyond repurchases. Berkshire became a net buyer of equities for the first half, purchasing roughly $39.4 billion of stock against $27.8 billion in sales — a sharp reversal from the modest $7.1 billion it bought over the same stretch last year. The period also included a roughly $10 billion addition to the Alphabet stake in June, the completed acquisition of homebuilder Taylor Morrison, and the close of a $9.7 billion deal for Occidental Petroleum’s OxyChem unit — together representing more than $16 billion of committed capital outside the buyback program.

How Abel’s Approach Is Taking Shape

The results represent the second full quarter Abel has overseen since formally succeeding Buffett as CEO at the start of 2026, and they offer investors their clearest look yet at how he intends to handle the balance sheet he inherited. The pickup in repurchases, paired with the swing to net stock buying, suggests a manager willing to lean on both the public markets and Berkshire’s own shares when he judges the price is right — a discipline investors have long associated with Buffett’s approach to intrinsic value.

Operating cash flow for the first half came in at $21.7 billion, against $10.6 billion of capital spending, with Berkshire Hathaway Energy and BNSF accounting for the bulk of that outlay and roughly $8.6 billion more expected before year-end.