Greg Abel's Berkshire Hathaway spent $9.6 billion buying back its own stock last quarter as its cash pile slipped to about $357 billion

Warren Buffett spent years telling shareholders he could not find enough to buy at sensible prices. His successor is finding at least one thing: Berkshire Hathaway itself. In its third-quarter report released on Saturday, the Omaha conglomerate said it repurchased about $9.6 billion of its own stock between July and September, according to coverage by Reuters and Bloomberg, a sharp step-up for a company that went more than a year without buybacks before this year.

Greg Abel took over as chief executive at the start of 2026, and this was his third quarter in charge. The report gives investors the clearest look yet at how he plans to use one of the largest cash piles in corporate America.

Buybacks up, stock buying down

The buyback figure stands out because Berkshire was otherwise quiet in the stock market. It bought about $2.4 billion of stocks and sold about $2.8 billion during the quarter, according to Business Insider, making it a net seller of a little over $400 million. Bloomberg's tally put the net sales at $426 million.

That is a reversal from the second quarter, when Berkshire bought roughly $20 billion of stocks on a net basis, its largest net outlay on equities since early 2022, according to Business Insider. In other words, the emphasis shifted from other companies' shares to Berkshire's own.

Berkshire resumed repurchases earlier this year after Abel concluded the shares were trading below their intrinsic value, Bloomberg reported. Buffett used the same test for years, which meant buybacks came in bursts rather than on a fixed schedule.

The cash pile

Even with the buybacks, Berkshire is still sitting on an enormous amount of money. After subtracting about $20.5 billion of Treasury bill purchases that had not yet settled, cash and equivalents stood at roughly $357 billion at the end of September, according to Business Insider and Bloomberg. Reuters put the figure at $356.9 billion, down from $380.2 billion six months earlier.

For context, Berkshire's cash and Treasury bills were about $380 billion at the end of March and about $365 billion at the end of June, excluding payables, according to Business Insider's earlier reporting.

Where profits came under pressure

Operating earnings, the measure Berkshire asks investors to focus on, fell about 6% to $12.7 billion from a year earlier, according to Reuters and Bloomberg. The weak spot was insurance. Underwriting profit dropped 43%, with Geico facing higher losses and a jump in underwriting expenses, according to the two outlets.

Berkshire's net income figure also includes unrealized gains and losses on the stocks it holds, which can swing by tens of billions of dollars from quarter to quarter. The company has long told shareholders to look past that number, which is why operating earnings get most of the attention.

Why it matters beyond Omaha

Berkshire is often treated as a read on the broader U.S. economy because its businesses span insurance, the BNSF railroad, utilities and energy, manufacturing and consumer brands. A softer insurance quarter alongside steady activity elsewhere fits the picture of an economy that is still growing but facing higher costs.

The bigger question is strategy. Abel has pushed Berkshire toward artificial intelligence-related investments in recent months, Bloomberg reported, a bet that now faces a tougher backdrop after last week's selloff in AI stocks and the political pushback against new data centers. Buybacks are a lower-risk way to deploy cash, but they also signal that management did not find something more compelling to buy at today's prices.

What to watch

Investors will look for any further disclosure on buybacks in October and November, and for the company's next filing of its stock holdings, which will show which positions Abel trimmed. For now, the message from the third quarter is simple: the new boss is willing to spend, and so far his favorite target has been his own company.