Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA +0.92%)(BRKB +0.95%) has a share price few investors can afford. Its Class A stock costs around $759,000 as I write, about 6% under its 52-week high of about $806,000.
The leader who kept it that way has stepped back, too. Greg Abel became CEO on Jan. 1. Later, on Sept. 18, Berkshire made Warren Buffett chairman emeritus and elected his son, Howard Buffett, board chairman.
With Buffett no longer running the business or chairing its board, could the A shares finally be split? As far as I can find, neither Abel nor the board has said anything publicly about it. And I don't think the leadership change matters here as much as it might seem.
Image source: Image source: The Motley Fool.
Buffett's objection
Buffett explained his thinking in his annual letter for 1983, when one Berkshire share was around $1,300. He worried that a lower price would draw owners less focused on the company's intrinsic value.
"Were we to split the stock or take other actions focusing on stock price rather than business value, we would attract an entering class of buyers inferior to the exiting class of sellers," he wrote.
Instead of a split, Buffett proposed a second class of stock in early 1996, with each A share convertible into 30 Class B shares.
He aimed the B shares at high-fee unit trusts pitching themselves as low-priced "clones" of Berkshire. But he also pointed out that shareholders wanting a split had "gained a do-it-yourself method of bringing one about."
The 2010 split was about a railroad
Berkshire did split its stock in 2010 -- but not the A shares.
Its board approved a 50-for-1 split of the Class B stock on Nov. 3, 2009, the same day Berkshire announced a deal to buy the rest of railroad BNSF. Splitting the B shares let even the smallest BNSF owners swap into Berkshire stock in a tax-free exchange.
Shareholders approved the split on Jan. 20, 2010. The A shares were left alone, and each became convertible into 1,500 B shares rather than 30.
The lower B share price also helped Berkshire enter the S&P 500 (^GSPC -0.47%), where it replaced BNSF once the deal closed in February 2010. Index funds tracking the S&P 500 had to buy the B shares.
In short, the B split served the deal and left Buffett's argument about the A shares intact.
What would an A share split change?
A split wouldn't change Berkshire's valuation. It just slices the same company into more pieces. Berkshire's market cap would still be around $1.09 trillion, and its price-to-earnings ratio wouldn't move.
The company already reports its profits both ways. Second-quarter net income was $17,868 per average equivalent A share and $11.91 per B share. Both more than doubled from a year ago, mainly because of swings in Berkshire's investments.
Access wouldn't change much, either. Divide the A share's price by 1,500 and you get around $506 -- almost identical to the B shares' price of about $507 as I write.
I'd say the bigger difference between the two classes is voting power. Every B share has 1/1,500 of an A share's economic rights but just 1/10,000 of its vote. As of June 30, Berkshire had 501,101 A shares and almost 1.4 billion B shares outstanding. By my math, that leaves the A shares with around 35% of the company's economic interest but about 78% of its votes.
That matters because, if the 2010 split is any guide, a Class A split would probably need a shareholder vote, too. And Buffett owned 188,290 A shares as of mid-July, around 38% of the class and about 30% of the company's total voting power. Of course, he no longer runs the company. But his vote would still count more than anyone else's.
NYSE: BRKB
Key Data Points
Meanwhile, the do-it-yourself split Buffett described keeps going on its own. In the first half of 2026, owners converted 14,223 A shares to around 21.3 million B shares. Including buybacks, the A share count dropped almost 3% over that stretch, to 501,101 from 515,835.
So, is a Class A split finally coming? I doubt it, at least not soon. Sure, a new CEO and a new chairman could see it differently someday. But nothing Berkshire has said since the leadership change points to one.
For investors who just want to own a piece of Berkshire, a split wouldn't add much anyway. The B shares already do the job, at around $507 each.
