New York. Billionaire investor Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway briefly surpassed $1 trillion in market value on Wall Street on Wednesday, becoming the first company outside of the tech giants to achieve this milestone.
The group became the eighth member of a club of companies that have surpassed this symbolic level of market capitalization, along with the six US technology titans – Apple, Nvidia, Microsoft, Alphabet (Google’s parent company), Amazon and Meta (Facebook’s parent company) – as well as the oil company Saudi Aramco.
The impetus to overcome this level came from the announcement of the sale of around one billion dollars of Bank of America shares.
At 16:05 GMT (09:05 Central Mexico time), Berkshire shares rose 0.84 percent and the company reached a market value of $1.001 trillion. At the close of the session, Berkshire Hathaway shares closed with an increase of 0.8 percent and the market capitalization of the firm stood at $994 billion.
From a small textile company to one of the most valuable groups in the world.
It is the latest stage in the unstoppable rise of the firm, which grew from a small textile company in decline in 1965, when Buffett took over, to become one of the world’s most valuable conglomerates, spanning vast sectors of the traditional economy, including insurance, railroads, retail, manufacturing and energy.
Over the years, Buffett built a giant by acquiring other companies. Today he owns the Geico insurance company, the Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) railroad, the Fruit of the Loom clothing brand and Duracell batteries.
Berkshire Hathaway is also a major investor, owning 21 percent of American Express, 13 percent of Bank of America (as of end-June) and 9 percent of Coca-Cola.
Berkshire also has a huge stock portfolio, even after selling billions of dollars of stakes this year, first in Apple and more recently in Bank of America.
The sales are a major reason Berkshire’s cash reserves, mostly in Treasury bonds, soared to $276.9 billion as of June 30.
So far in 2024, Berkshire shares have risen more than 28 percent, outpacing the average 20 percent annual growth the group has achieved under Buffett’s leadership and nearly double the annual gain of Wall Street’s benchmark Standard and Poor’s (S&P) 500 index.
Reasons to celebrate your 94th birthday
Buffett, who turns 94 on Friday and remains the company’s chief executive, is worth an estimated $146.5 billion and still controls about 15 percent of the firm, despite having donated billions of dollars worth of Berkshire Hathaway stock to charities including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Inspired by his colleague Charlie Munger, another Wall Street legend who accompanied him from 1978 until his death in November 2023, Warren Buffett adopted a rational and dispassionate approach to business, often underpinned by a long-term strategy, contrary to the opinion of many investors.
The investment philosophy of these two market veterans became so popular that Buffett is considered one of the gurus of modern capitalism and nicknamed the “oracle of Omaha,” the city of Nebraska where he was born and lives.
Every year, thousands of people flock to the venue to hear the group’s financial statements presented and to listen to the businessman’s thoughts during the Berkshire Hathaway general meeting.
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– 2024-09-02 11:08:28
