Warren Buffett Just Gave Away $6 Billion of Berkshire Stock. He Plans to Give Away $138 Billion More by 2034.
Key Points
Berkshire Hathaway said Buffett donated 12 million Class B shares, worth about $6 billion, to four family foundations.
Buffett said his goal is to dispose of all of his Berkshire shares within about eight years, by the end of 2034.
His remaining stake of roughly 188,000 Class A shares is worth about $138 billion at the current share price.
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Warren Buffett gave away about $6 billion of Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRKA)(NYSE: BRKB) stock this week: 9 million Class B shares to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation and 1 million each to three foundations run by his children. The bigger number is what remains -- a stake worth about $138 billion that the 95-year-old chairman says he wants fully donated by Dec. 31, 2034.
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The mechanics matter here. Buffett's fortune sits in Class A shares, each convertible at any time into 1,500 Class B shares, and the conversion only works in that direction. This week's gift of 12 million B shares took 8,000 A shares to create. Buffett owned 196,317 Class A shares as of Berkshire's March proxy statement, so the roughly 188,000 that remain are worth about $138 billion at the current Class A price of about $733,000, as of this writing.
Gifts like this have been an annual event since 2006. Buffett has donated more than $47 billion of Berkshire stock to the Gates Foundation alone over that stretch. This year's shares, though, went entirely to the four family foundations.
For shareholders, the scheduled supply is smaller than it sounds. Spread over eight years, $138 billion works out to something like $17 billion of stock a year finding new owners -- at an insurance-anchored conglomerate valued around $1.1 trillion. And Berkshire can absorb some of it directly. The company repurchased $234 million of its own shares in the first quarter, and it entered the year with about $373 billion in cash and Treasury bills.
The bigger change is control. A Class B share carries 1/10,000th of an A share's vote, so every conversion shrinks Buffett's voting power, which stood at 30.2% of the company as of the proxy. As the A shares convert and disperse, the block that has anchored Berkshire's governance for decades gradually dissolves.
The gifts don't change what Berkshire owns or earns. They change who votes. By the mid-2030s, the company Greg Abel runs will likely be one where no single shareholder holds a controlling grip -- and shareholders will have had about eight years of notice. As transitions of power go, a slow, pre-announced handover is about as gentle as it gets.
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Daniel Sparks and his clients have positions in Berkshire Hathaway. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Berkshire Hathaway. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
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