berkshire share buy back

[shalab]

Starting a separate thread as this can boost shared holder returns significantly:

Number of shares bought back in Q4 till Oct 25

From the cover page of 10-Q:

Number of shares of common stock outstanding as of October 25, 2018:
Class A — 733,152
Class B — 1,362,792,906

From Page 4 at quarter end:

Average Class A shares outstanding 736,262
Average Class B shares outstanding 1,360,940,890

Total A equivalents from cover page: 733152 + (1362792906/1500) = 1641681
Total A equivalents at the end of Q3: 736262 + (1360940890/1500) = 1643556

Buyback of A equivalent: 1875

Money spent on buy back in Q4: > 0.5 billion

[gfp]

Don’t use average as quarter end

[shalab]

Don’t use average as quarter end

Fair point. Let us look at end of Q2. July 26, 2018

From the cover of Q2:
Class A - 734527
class B - 1365840748

Total: 734527 + (1365840748/1500) = 1645088

Total from cover of Q3: 1641681

Difference: 3407 A shares.

From page 45 of Q3 report, total shares bought back in Q3 is 2985. So 3407 - 2985 is 422 'A' equivalent shares bought back in Q4.

[gfp]

So here's my math:

9/30/2018 share count was 1,642,269 A share equivalents [2,463,403,858 B share equivalents] - from page 23 of the Q3 10Q

10/25/2018 share count was 1,641,681 A share equivalents [2,462,520,906 B share equivalents] - from front cover of Q3 10Q

So subsequent to quarter-end, they resumed repurchases and it was about $181 million worth of stock through 10/25.  Which means they didn't stop in August because of a black-out period - they stopped because they have a ceiling price on their purchase plan.

* [sorry, should have included the difference, about 588 A share equivalents repurchased in Q4 up to 10/25, or 882,900 B shares eq.]

[shalab]

Thanks - looks like there will continue to be more opportunities to buy this quarter if the prices remain low

So here's my math:

9/30/2018 share count was 1,642,269 A share equivalents [2,463,403,858 B share equivalents] - from page 23 of the Q3 10Q

10/25/2018 share count was 1,641,681 A share equivalents [2,462,520,906 B share equivalents] - from front cover of Q3 10Q

So subsequent to quarter-end, they resumed repurchases and it was about $181 million worth of stock through 10/25.  Which means they didn't stop in August because of a black-out period - they stopped because they have a ceiling price on their purchase plan.

* [sorry, should have included the difference, about 588 A share equivalents repurchased in Q4 up to 10/25, or 882,900 B shares eq.]

[aws]

Surprised there weren't more buybacks in the drop after Q3 end.  I wonder if any buyback restriction was involved, or simply that the market value loss in their equity portfolio depressed book value enough to limit buys.  Anyone have a sense of what the delta was between their portfolio values when they were buying back at 207 in Q3 vs what it was when they presumably bought a little back under 200? 

[John Hjorth]

aws,

That's discussed and covered in this topic.

[Dynamic]

I found the actual quarter end share counts versus year end 2017 buried deep in the notes to the 10-Q, around p23 of I recall correctly and they generated exactly the closing Book Value Per Class A share that the News Release contained. It also included conversions of Class A to Class B.

The lowest price in October of around $197.50 happened on October 26th, a day after the page 1 share count,, so I could imagine further repurchases in October would have been likely unless there's a blackout period. I was lucky enough to add exposure close to the bottom tick.

I'm on my phone now, so not ideally placed to do the calculations based on those figures, though clearly globalfinancepartners must have made a sufficiently good calculation.