General
Berkshire Hathaway Hits $1 Trillion in Market Value
Warren Buffett’s conglomerate joined a small club of companies that have crossed the mark.
Warren E. Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway climbed past a market valuation of $1 trillion on Wednesday, joining a small club of mammoth companies dominated by tech firms like Nvidia and Microsoft.
Berkshire’s shares rose 0.7 percent on Wednesday, bringing their gain this year to more than 28 percent and adding more than $200 billion to the company’s market capitalization — a rally that has outpaced the broader market’s rise. The S&P 500 is up 17.2 percent for the year.
Berkshire owns and controls firms like the insurance giant GEICO and the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad, and holds stakes in many blue-chip companies like Apple and Coca-Cola. The conglomerate’s ascent further entrenches Mr. Buffett’s reputation as one of the most successful investors of all time, with Berkshire averaging a gain of about 20 percent a year since he took the helm in 1965.
Reaching a $1 trillion market valuation is “a big deal,” said Kevin Heal, an analyst who covers the company for Argus Research, adding that the threshold “goes to show the long-term performance” of Berkshire and Mr. Buffett.
Every year, Berkshire holds its shareholder meeting in Omaha, where tens of thousands of people pack an arena to hear Mr. Buffett’s folksy investing wisdom. This year’s meeting, in May, was the first without Mr. Buffett’s longtime foil at Berkshire, Charles T. Munger, the firm’s vice chairman, who died in November at age 99.
Mr. Buffett, who turns 94 on Friday, and Mr. Munger built Berkshire’s fortune by adhering to what’s known as value investing: ignoring fads and seeking undervalued companies to invest in for the long term. Mr. Buffett broke it down in 1986 in what has become a much-repeated quote: “We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.”
