Key Highlights

● One Class A share corresponds to 1,500 Class B shares.

● At 29 July 2026 there were 488,450 Class A and 1,408,035,161 Class B shares.

● Second-quarter net earnings were $25.67 billion, or $17,868 per equivalent Class A share.

● Repurchases of Class B and Class A shares continued in the first half of 2026.

Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE:BRK.A) has two common stock lines, Class A and Class B (BRK.B). According to its latest Form 10-Q, covering the quarter ended 30 June 2026, there were 488,450 Class A shares and 1,408,035,161 Class B shares outstanding at 29 July 2026. The company is one business with one set of assets and earnings. Both appear in the company's per-share tables, so the relationship is checkable. The practical differences lie in how the economic interest is sliced, and so in the price of a single share, and in how conveniently small amounts can be bought.

The 1,500 to one relationship

The filing states that Class B earnings per share are one-fifteen-hundredth of the equivalent Class A amount, so one Class A share corresponds to 1,500 Class B shares. Dividing the Class B total by 1,500 gives roughly 938,700 Class A equivalents, which, added to the Class A shares, is about 1.427 million. On that arithmetic, genuine Class A shares represent about 34 per cent of the equity. That is a calculation, not a figure published by the company. The 10-Q itself reports 1,431,693 equivalent Class A shares outstanding at 30 June, before July repurchases that press reports put at more than $3.3 billion. Average equivalent shares in the second quarter were 1,436,443, against 1,438,223 a year earlier, a fall of 0.1 per cent.

Per-share earnings on each class

The same ratio appears in reported earnings. Second-quarter net earnings attributable to shareholders were $25.67 billion, equal to $17,868 per average equivalent Class A share and $11.91 per equivalent Class B share; dividing the first by 1,500 returns the second. Press reports put operating profit at about $9,068 per Class A share, on a total of $12.98 billion. A holder of 1,500 Class B shares and a holder of one Class A share therefore receive the same earnings claim, even though the headline price per share differs enormously. A year earlier the equivalents were $8,601 and $5.73, so the earnings per Class A share rose by 108 per cent, and the Class B figure by the same proportion.

Share counts and buybacks

The two classes can be traced over time. The FY2020 Form 10-K cover showed 640,586 Class A and 1,336,348,609 Class B shares in February 2021. Class A shares are now 24 per cent fewer, while Class B shares are higher. In Class A equivalents, the total has declined about 6.8 per cent, from roughly 1.53 million to 1.43 million. The 10-Q shows 9,029,655 Class B and 511 Class A shares repurchased in the first six months of 2026, equal to about 6,500 Class A equivalents, or 0.5 per cent of the 1,431,693 outstanding at 30 June. The documents do not explain why the Class A count has fallen. Berkshire's repurchase note says purchases occur when the chief executive, after consulting the chairman, judges the price below conservatively determined intrinsic value, with no maximum share count and no expiry.

Class Choice Changes Share Size and Liquidity, Not the Business

The S&P 500 constituent table lists only BRK.B. Press reports put Class A shares up 3 per cent this year against 13 per cent for the S&P 500, with market value near 1.5 times book value. The class choice does not alter business risks. Insurance underwriting earned $1.73 billion after tax against $1.99 billion, with Geico's pre-tax underwriting profit down 45 per cent according to press reports, and five holdings make up 66 per cent of the equity portfolio. The class decision concerns share size and liquidity, not ownership quality.