Berkshire Hathaway Stock Has Gone Almost Nowhere in a Year. Should You Buy It Right Now?

Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRKA)(NYSE:BRKB) has spent the past year standing still. The B shares trade near $510 as of this writing, and they haven't traded below about $464 or above about $538 over the past 52 weeks.

Sometimes a flat stretch like that can mean the market thinks a company's best days are behind it. And sometimes the price simply stops moving while the business keeps going, leaving the stock a little cheaper with each passing quarter.

I think Berkshire's flat year is mostly the second kind. The company's first year under CEO Greg Abel (Warren Buffett remains chairman) has featured growing profits and something Berkshire hasn't been in years: a buyer.

Image source: The Motley Fool.

The business didn't go sideways

Berkshire reported its second-quarter results in early August, and the headline figure was strong. Operating earnings grew 16% from the same quarter a year ago, to about $13 billion. Operating earnings are the company's preferred yardstick because they leave out the swings in the value of its enormous stock portfolio, which accounting rules otherwise pour into reported profit.

Berkshire's businesses outside of insurance carried the quarter. Earnings from manufacturing, service and retailing jumped 24% year over year, to about $4.5 billion, Berkshire Hathaway Energy grew its earnings 27% to $891 million, and the BNSF railroad added 6% to about $1.6 billion. Insurance, however, was the soft spot -- underwriting profit fell 13% year over year, and insurance investment income slipped 9%. Of course, a currency swing on debt Berkshire owes in foreign currencies also flattered the total, so the underlying growth was more modest than 16%.

Still, the direction is right. Quarterly operating earnings have been stepping up -- about $11.2 billion a year ago, about $11.3 billion in the first quarter of 2026, and about $13 billion in the most recent period.

And the insurance operation kept doing its quieter job. Float (the premium money Berkshire holds and invests before claims come due) grew about $1.1 billion in the first half, to about $177.5 billion.

Berkshire is a buyer again

The earnings aren't the main reason to like the stock here, though. The buying is.

Berkshire had been a net seller of stocks for 14 consecutive quarters. That streak ended in the second quarter, when the company bought nearly $20 billion more in equities than it sold. Across the first half, purchases totaled about $39 billion against about $28 billion of sales, and Alphabet now sits among Berkshire's five largest stock holdings.

The company also closed two acquisitions this year -- the industrial chemicals maker OxyChem in January and the homebuilder Taylor Morrison in late July, for a combined price of more than $16 billion.

And after a first quarter with hardly any buybacks, Berkshire stepped up the pace and repurchased about $4.5 billion of shares in the second.

In short, Berkshire can afford all of it. The company was still holding about $365 billion in cash and Treasury bills at the end of the second quarter.

The price hasn't run away

At about $510 per B share, Berkshire's market value is about $1.1 trillion, against about $750 billion of shareholders' equity. That works out to nearly 1.5 times book value -- hardly cheap, but not a level with years of good news already priced in. And the multiple of book value has drifted lower this year, because shareholders' equity grew about 4% over the first half while the share price barely moved.

Berkshire's own repurchase policy offers a more practical test. After all, the company buys back stock only when Abel, after consulting with Buffett, believes the price sits below a conservative estimate of what Berkshire is worth. In May, Berkshire paid an average of about $476 per B share. In June, it paid about $488.

As of this writing, the stock trades about 5% above that June average.

Sure, the quiet year didn't come from nowhere. Insurance results have softened, a company already valued near $1.1 trillion is never going to compound the way the Berkshire of decades past did, and the stock could stay quiet for a while longer.

So, should you buy Berkshire Hathaway stock right now?

I think so. The businesses are growing, and the cash is finally moving. And the stock costs only a little more than what the company itself was recently willing to pay for it. I'd buy the shares today and plan on holding them for years to come.

Daniel Sparks and his clients have positions in Berkshire Hathaway. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet and Berkshire Hathaway. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.