Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Tops $1 Trillion Market Valuation

Berkshire Hathaway Chairman and CEO Warren Buffett smiles during an interview in Omaha, Neb., on May 7, 2018. Nati Harnik/AP Photo, File

Legendary investor Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway holding company briefly surpassed $1 trillion in market value on Aug. 28, making it the first nontech firm in the United States to reach the milestone.

The Omaha-based conglomerate joined six other companies in crossing the $1 trillion threshold: Apple, Nvidia, Microsoft, Google parent Alphabet, Amazon, and Facebook parent Meta Platforms.

Berkshire Hathaway’s valuation is based on 553,234 Class A and 1,325,192,508 Class B shares outstanding as of July 23.

Its Class A shares were trading at $696,502, while its Class B shares were worth $464.59 at the end of the trading day on Aug. 28, just about pushing it over the $1 trillion mark.

At the time of writing, its market cap had dropped back down to $993.89 billion.

Still, it briefly made Berkshire Hathaway the only publicly traded, nontech firm—excluding Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company, Saudi Aramco—to surpass the valuation milestone.

However, the conglomerate’s valuation lags behind that of software company Nvidia and tech giant Microsoft, both of which are valued at more than $3 trillion.

The milestone comes just two days before businessman Buffett turns 94 years old.

Buffett, who has been nicknamed the “Oracle of Omaha” due to his long-term value investing strategy, has run Berkshire since 1965, transforming it from a small textile company into one of the most valuable firms in the world.

According to Forbes, the businessman has amassed a fortune of roughly $146 billion, making him the world’s sixth-richest person.

Shares of Berkshire Hathaway have gained more than 5,600,000 percent since the year Buffett took over, amounting to roughly 20 percent annually—nearly double the annualized gain in the S&P 500 Index including dividends.

Its shares have risen 27 percent so far this year, far more than the S&P 500’s 18 percent gain.

Berkshire Hathaway owns wholly or controls a majority of voting shares in dozens of companies across the insurance, energy, manufacturing, retail, and service sectors.

They include brands and companies such as bank-holding company American Express, Bank of America, public relations firm Business Wire, restaurant chain Dairy Queen, food company Kraft Heinz, and the Coca-Cola company.

Collectively, they generated $22.8 billion in profit in the year’s first half, up 26 percent from a year earlier.

Berkshire Hathaway has slowed its stock repurchases this year while simultaneously embarking on something of a stock-selling spree in recent months, dumping large amounts of stock in Apple—one of its biggest holdings—and Bank of America, including nearly 25 million shares worth almost $1 billion in the past week alone.

The conglomerate has accumulated vast cash reserves in the process—its holding cash and equivalents soared to $276.9 billion as of June 30, mostly in U.S. Treasury bills.

Buffet owns more than 14 percent of Berkshire Hathaway despite having donated more than half his shares to charity since 2006.

The businessman has vowed to put nearly all his multibillion-dollar fortune into a charitable trust that will be managed by his three children when he dies.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.