.png "Global Insight")
Warren Buffett built Berkshire Hathaway into the world's most watched investment empire by buying other people's businesses. His successor is spending billions buying Berkshire itself. In the third quarter of 2026, the company repurchased $9.6 billion of its own stock — double the $4.8 billion it bought back across the whole first half of the year — even as its operating profit slipped. It is the clearest signal yet of how Greg Abel, chief executive since January 2026, intends to run the company he inherited.
The pace is not slowing. According to reports from SRN News, Berkshire spent roughly another $2 billion on buybacks in the first four weeks of October, taking the nine-month total to about $14.4 billion. For a company that for years bought back its shares only in fits and starts, that is a deliberate change of gear — and it comes at a moment when the businesses underneath are sending a more mixed message.
Profit down, revenue up
Operating earnings — the measure Buffett himself always said matters most, because it strips out the swings of the stock market — fell between 5.8% and 6% to $12.71 billion, or roughly $8,954 per Class A share, against $13.49 billion a year earlier. Net income dropped much more sharply, down 28% to $22.11 billion from $30.80 billion, but that figure is heavily shaped by investment gains, which fell to $9.41 billion from $17.31 billion. Berkshire's portfolio moves with the market, and this quarter the market gave back less.
Revenue, meanwhile, rose 11% to $105.65 billion — a reminder that the conglomerate's sprawling operations, from railroads and energy to retail and manufacturing, are still growing their top line even while profits sag. The divergence between rising sales and falling operating profit is the story of this quarter: Berkshire is selling more, but earning less on each sale.
Insurance is where the pain sits
The sharpest pressure came from insurance, long the engine room of Berkshire's finances. Insurance profit fell 26%, and underwriting profit — the money made from the insurance business itself, before investment returns — dropped 43% to $1.35 billion. At Geico, the car insurer that is one of Berkshire's best-known businesses, pretax underwriting profit fell 45% to $982 million, with its loss ratio climbing to 76.6% from 71.5% a year earlier. In plain terms, Geico paid out more in claims for every dollar of premiums it took in.
That matters beyond the quarterly numbers. Insurance is not just a Berkshire business; it is the source of the "float" — the premiums held before claims are paid — that Buffett used for decades to fund acquisitions. When underwriting weakens, the machine still works, but it works less efficiently. Abel's answer, at least this quarter, has been to put the cash to work in the most direct way available: buying Berkshire's own shares.
A $357 billion question
Berkshire ended September with $356.9 billion in cash, down from $380.2 billion six months earlier. That is still an enormous war chest — larger than the entire market value of most public companies — but the direction of travel is now clear. The company is spending its cash rather than hoarding it, and the buyback is the main outlet. The logic is straightforward: if Abel believes Berkshire's shares are worth more than the price they trade at, buying them back is the highest-return investment available to him, and it needs no negotiation, no regulatory approval and no integration risk.
The open question is what comes next. A $9.6 billion quarter is a statement; a sustained run at that pace would be a strategy. Investors will watch whether Abel keeps buying at this rate through the fourth quarter, whether the insurance businesses recover their margins, and whether any of that mountain of cash finally goes toward the kind of large acquisition Buffett was famous for. For more on big corporate moves this month, see our explainers on the CVS split into two companies and the Nasdaq correction and the market sell-off. As Source First News noted in its earnings coverage, the quarter ultimately turns on a single judgement: that Berkshire's own stock, at today's price, is the best deal in its own portfolio. Abel has now put $9.6 billion behind that judgement in a single quarter.