Berkshire Hathaway stock passes $200k. How did Warren Buffett do it?
Warren Buffett's company, Berkshire Hathaway, saw share prices for its Class A stock cross $200,000 for the first time Thursday. Warren Buffett has avoided stock splitting maneuvers that would make Berkshire Hathaway stock cheaper.
Berkshire Hathaway Chairman and CEO Warren Buffett gestures during an interview with Liz Claman on the Fox Business Network in Omaha, Neb., in May. Berkshire Hathaway Class A stock hit $200,000 for the first time in morning trading Thursday, Aug. 14, 2014.
Nati Harnik/AP/File
For the first time ever, a Class A share of Berkshire Hathaway will cost you more than $200,000. That's just one share for the price of a nice 6-bedroom, 4-bath house in Omaha.
The stock hit the milestone about 45 minutes after the start of trading today.
While many companies use stock splits to keep their per-share price under $1000, or even below $100, Warren Buffett isn't a fan of that maneuver because he thinks it encourages short-term trading rather than long-term ownership.
As a result, Berkshire's Class A has, by far, the largest dollar price per share for any stock trading in the U.S.
(Number two on the list: agribusiness and transportation company Seaboard at just under $2,900 per share.)
Berkshire first closed above $1,000 per share almost 31 years ago on August 26, 1983, a few days before Buffett celebrated his 53rd birthday.
It took almost another 9 years to reach $10,000 on October 16, 1992.
The stock closed at $100,000 a share just over 14 years after that on October 23, 2006.
After closing as high as $149,200 on December 10, 2007, Berkshire dropped along with the rest of the stock market during the credit crisis, closing as low as $72,400 on March 5, 2009. That was a drop of 51.5 percent.
Since then, Berkshire has soared around 176 percent, compared to the benchmark S&P's 183 percent surge.
(Berkshire's Class B shares have been split and were added to the S&P in early 2010. They're now trading around $133 each.)
The Class A stock price has remained in six-digit territory since January, 2010.
With Berkshire's stock at the $200,000 level, the company has a market value of more than $167 billion.
Buffett has been giving away big chunks of his Berkshire stock to charity over the past 8 years, but he still owned 321,000 Class A shares as of mid-July. That stock is now worth $64.2 billion.