Berkshire Buys Back $9.6 Billion as Profit Falls

Berkshire Hathaway more than doubled its share repurchases in the third quarter, buying back $9.6 billion of its own stock, the company said Saturday in its quarterly earnings report.

The stepped-up buying came alongside weaker results. Overall profit declined more than 28%, a drop driven by swings in the value of the conglomerate’s investment portfolio, according to AP. Operating profit, the measure the company and many of its shareholders tend to focus on, also fell, CNBC reported. Geico, Berkshire’s auto insurance business, posted disappointing results for the period.

The buybacks, rather than the profit decline, are drawing the most attention from investors. The repurchases took place as a selloff driven by artificial intelligence stocks rattled the broader market, and Berkshire’s shares outperformed through that turbulence. Investors are treating the company’s decision to put billions of dollars into its own stock as a signal about how its leadership views the shares’ value, and they will be watching how the market reads that signal when trading opens Monday.

The context

Berkshire Hathaway, the conglomerate led by Warren Buffett, reports earnings that are often distorted by accounting rules requiring it to mark the value of its large investment portfolio to market each quarter. That is what happened this quarter: swings in the portfolio’s value pulled overall profit down more than 28%. Operating profit, which strips out those investment swings, declined as well, suggesting weakness beyond the accounting effects. The results arrived against a difficult backdrop for equities generally, with an AI-driven selloff pressuring the broader market and the S&P 500. Berkshire’s shares held up better than the market during that stretch. The $9.6 billion in third-quarter repurchases represents more than double the company’s buyback pace from the prior period, a notable shift in how it is deploying its cash.

Why it matters

Berkshire’s willingness to spend $9.6 billion buying its own shares while profits fall is being read by investors as a statement of confidence from one of the market’s most closely watched companies. With AI stocks correcting and the broader market under pressure, the move offers a visible indication of where defensive money is flowing. For millions of U.S. investors who track Buffett’s capital decisions as a market signal, the buyback figure may matter more than the earnings decline itself heading into Monday’s session.

What’s next

The first test comes at Monday’s market open, when investors will show how they weigh the record repurchases against the profit decline. Key questions remain open: whether Berkshire sustains this pace of buybacks in future quarters, whether Geico’s results improve, and whether the broader AI-driven selloff continues to pressure the market that Berkshire’s shares have so far outperformed.