Berkshire's Cash Pile Falls $38B as Abel Restarts Buybacks
U.S. markets are closed for the weekend; the next open is Monday, August 10 at 9:30 a.m. ET (4:30 p.m. in Istanbul). Even so, the biggest story of the day landed with the tape shut: Berkshire Hathaway released second-quarter results this morning at 8:00 a.m. ET (3:00 p.m. in Istanbul), with operating earnings up 16% to $12.98 billion from $11.16 billion and net income more than doubling to $25.67 billion from $12.37 billion, helped by double-digit gains in holdings such as Apple and Alphabet.
The real news is not in the profit lines but in the cash. Cash and Treasury bills fell to $359.2 billion as of June 30 from roughly $397 billion on March 31 — a drop of about $38 billion in a single quarter. The mechanism is Greg Abel's appetite for deploying capital: Berkshire repurchased $4.5 billion of its own stock in the quarter, the first meaningful figure after a pause of nearly two years, bought $39.4 billion of equities in the first half, and closed the $8.5 billion Taylor Morrison acquisition in late July. The shares sit near a 52-week high around $525 but are up only about 4.5% year to date against 13% for the S&P 500; the print gets priced on Monday.
The second theme is debt underneath the AI build-out. Michael Burry disclosed on August 6 that he is short Oracle at $144.63 and at $211.77, with a thesis built on off-balance-sheet obligations — he argues the capital spending required to service 's $638 billion in remaining performance obligations will grow faster than revenue recognition. The numbers are sharper at : long-term debt more than doubled to $8.4 billion, 2026 capex guidance was raised to $25 billion from $20 billion, and the stock fell 13.3% in a single session after the disclosure to about $198.65, roughly 34% below its high — the test comes on August 12, when reports second-quarter results.
