Catenaa, Wednesday, August 06, 2025- Berkshire Hathaway shares have underperformed by one of the biggest margins in decades, as Warren Buffett’s retirement as CEO nears and some investors head for the exits.
Berkshire’s shares have tumbled 14% since May 2, the last trading day before 94-year-old Buffett said he would hand control of Berkshire to top executive Greg Abel.
Berkshire’s slide contrasts with a rally in the S&P 500 of 11%, including dividends. Buffett is in the home stretch of a six-decade tour de force atop Berkshire, transforming a struggling textile mill into a financial conglomerate spanning sectors from insurance to natural gas pipelines.
His returns, built on a buy-and-hold, value-driven strategy since he took over Berkshire in 1965, have outperformed the benchmark S&P 500 by more than 5mn percentage points.
The lag to the S&P 500 is among the largest Berkshire has suffered over any three months stretching back to 1990, according to an analysis by the Financial Times.
The company only trailed the index more on a three-month basis early in the pandemic, when investors slashed their equity positions, with insurers and financial services companies, core Berkshire holdings, particularly hard hit.
It is not yet known who has been selling class A shares, Berkshire’s original high-vote stock, which in May changed hands at a record $812,855 apiece.
The A shares have long been held by families who invested with Buffett earlier in his career and passed down through generations.
Operating profits across Berkshire were hit by currency moves, but excluding those shifts, Berkshire generated an 8% rise in earnings from a year earlier in Q2.
Berkshire shares had also surged in the months leading up to this year’s annual meeting in May, rising 18.9%.
Berkshire shares were up by 0.05% on Wednesday morning, taking the stock up over 2.6% year to date.
