He will soon be 91 years old, but his stock is still in demand.
It is only 1 percent that the price increased on Monday, but only because there was already a lot of buying in the run-up to the latest earnings release.
We are talking about the American star investor Warren Buffett and his holding company Berkshire Hathaway.
Martin Hock
Editor in business.
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In the second quarter of the current year, their operating profit rose compared to the same period last year by a whopping 21 percent to 6.7 billion dollars, as the conglomerate announced on Saturday. However, since unrealized investment gains and losses also have to be shown, this value is highly volatile and not very informative with regard to the actual course of business. Nonetheless: Since it is well known in which companies Buffett is invested, a good result could be estimated in advance and so the investors struck even before the publication on the weekend. you don't want to be late.
What is sorely missed at the moment, despite all the enthusiasm for Buffett, is a really big investment. Unsurprisingly, given the high ratings, Buffett is struggling to find suitable targets. In general, there is comparatively little going on in the books of Berkshire Hathaway. Shares were sold for just $ 1.1 billion net in the second quarter. That is basically "housekeeping," said Berkshire shareholder Tom Russo of Gardner Russo & Quinn of the Bloomberg news agency. Buffett is ready to do that on a larger scale. The big investment does not seem to be in the offing.
And so Buffett also runs more or less with a good overall market. In the past twelve months, Berkshire shares only brought about 2.5 percent more than the S&P 500 index. And that was good because he was catching up again. The big days of Buffett - or better, Berkshire Hathaway stock - also seem to be over. Since 2018, it has clearly lagged the broad S&P 500 index over a ten-year period.
In fact, Berkshire Hathaway has been using its enormous liquidity of most recently $ 144 billion since 2018 for share buybacks, which were, however, slightly lower in the second quarter with six billion dollars. In the second quarter, Berkshire Hathaway invested another six billion dollars in the buyback of own shares. In the first half of 2021, the company said it spent $ 12.6 billion on this type of course maintenance. But since the share is already not particularly liquid, Buffett - who has long resisted share buybacks - has to slow down a little.