- Warren Buffett built a cash mountain, sold stocks, and halted buybacks last year.
- He nearly doubled Berkshire Hathaway's cash to $334 billion and sold a net $134 billion of stocks.
- Berkshire paid the most corporate income tax to the IRS of any American company in history, he said.
Warren Buffett stacked up record amounts of cash, made sweeping cuts to his stock portfolio, and even stopped buying back his own company's shares last year, as the world's foremost bargain hunter steered clear of a red-hot market.
The stock sales meant the famed investor's Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate paid the most corporate income tax of any American company in history, Buffett said in his annual shareholder letter on Saturday.
The four charts below tell the story of Buffett's remarkable year.
Buffett continued to balk at lofty valuations for public companies and private businesses in 2024. Instead of paying top dollar, he opted to build Berkshire's pile of dollars, Treasury bills, and other liquid assets.
The value of Berkshire's cash and cash-equivalent assets nearly doubled last year, from around $168 billion to $334 billion (or $321 billion after subtracting $12.8 billion of payables for purchases of Treasury bills). Both figures exceed the $307 billion market value of one of Buffett's favorite companies, Coca-Cola.
It also means nearly a third of Berkshire's $1 trillion market value is effectively money in the bank.
Buffett and his team jettisoned several longheld stocks in Berkshire's portfolio last year, and pared their two largest positions: Apple and Bank of America.
A dearth of compelling deals meant they only spent about $9 billion on stocks, down from around $16.5 billion in 2023 and $68 billion in 2022.
On the other hand, they disposed of stocks worth $143 billion — more than triple the $41 billion worth they sold in 2023, and more than quadruple the $34 billion figure for 2022.
On a net basis, Buffett and his team offloaded $134 billion or a Boeing's worth of stocks in 2024, dwarfing their net $24 billion of sales in 2023.
Buffett preaches that a company should only repurchase its stock if it's trading at a material discount to its intrinsic value. Berkshire's Class B shares have more than doubled since the start of 2021 to trade at a substantial 60% premium to book value.
Following his own guidance, Buffett has pulled back on share repurchases as the stock price has climbed. Berkshire bought back more than $20 billion of its own stock in both 2020 and 2021, then less than $10 billion worth in 2022 and 2023.
It repurchased $2.6 billion of stock in the first quarter of last year, then only $300 million worth in the second quarter. It ceased repurchases altogether in the third and fourth quarters.
The message to investors is that Buffett has stopped viewing Berkshire stock as undervalued, and no longer believes it's worth repurchasing.
Berkshire paid $26.8 billion in corporate income tax to the IRS in 2024, Buffett revealed on Saturday.
The 94-year-old CEO wrote that was the largest amount ever paid by any US company ever, and made up about 5% of all the federal income tax paid by American companies last year.
Berkshire's income tax payments totaled $28.5 billion last year, more than triple the $7.8 billion it paid 2023. The sharp increase largely reflects its stock sales last year, as the company realized taxable gains on holdings such as Apple.
