Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway tops $1 trillion market value

By Jonathan Stempel

(Reuters) -The market value of Berkshire Hathaway surpassed $1 trillion on Wednesday, reflecting investor confidence in the conglomerate that Warren Buffett built over nearly six decades into what many consider a proxy for the American economy.

Berkshire joined six other companies, mainly from the technology sector, above $1 trillion: Apple, Nvidia, Microsoft, Google parent Alphabet, Amazon.com and Facebook parent Meta Platforms.

The valuation is based on Berkshire's 553,234 Class A and 1,325,192,508 Class B shares outstanding as of July 23. Berkshire has slowed its stock repurchases this year.

In morning trading, the Class A shares traded up 0.7% at $696,005.94.

Berkshire's dozens of insurance, energy, manufacturing, retail and service businesses generated $22.8 billion of profit in the year's first half, up 26% from a year earlier.

The businesses include Geico car insurance, the BNSF railroad, Berkshire Hathaway Energy, Brooks running shoes, Dairy Queen ice cream, Ginsu knives and the World Book encyclopedia, among others.

Berkshire also has a huge stock portfolio led by Apple, though it has sold more than half its Apple shares this year.

Stock sales are a major reason Berkshire's holdings of cash and equivalents soared to $276.9 billion as of June 30, mostly in U.S. Treasury bills.

Buffett, who turns 94 on August 30, has run Berkshire since 1965.

When Berkshire's value hit $1 trillion, its shares had gained more than 5,600,000% since the year Buffett took over.

That's about 20% annually, nearly double the annualized gain in the Standard & Poor's 500 including dividends.

Buffett still owns more than 14% of the Omaha, Nebraska-based company despite having donated more than half his shares to charity since 2006.

As of Tuesday, Buffett's fortune was about $144.9 billion, making him the world's sixth-richest person, Forbes magazine said.

Through Tuesday, Berkshire shares had risen 27% this year, compared with the S&P 500's 18% gain.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York, Editing by Franklin Paul and Nick Zieminski)