A $10,000 investment in Berkshire Hathaway’s B shares in August 2016 has grown to approximately $33,900 as of August 2026.
Berkshire pays no dividend, meaning the price return is the total return, compounding at roughly 13% annually over the decade.
That sounds impressive until you compare it to a simple S&P 500 index fund over the same period, which tells a different story entirely.
The same $10,000 placed into the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSEMKT: SPY), with dividends reinvested, grew to about $41,300, finishing approximately $7,400 ahead of Berkshire.
The index delivered roughly 15% per year, driven in large part by the dominance of major technology companies and the artificial intelligence investment boom.
Berkshire’s core operating businesses, including insurance, freight, and power, largely sit outside those high-growth sectors and have not benefited directly from the AI spending surge.
What makes Berkshire’s decade genuinely interesting, however, is how closely the stock tracked the underlying growth of the business itself.
In 2016, Berkshire reported $17.6 billion in full-year operating earnings, the measure Warren Buffett consistently directed investors to focus on when evaluating the company.
By 2025, that figure had climbed to $44.5 billion, roughly two and a half times the 2016 level, with per-share growth even stronger due to an aggressive share buyback program.
Berkshire reduced its Class A-equivalent share count from approximately 1.64 million in 2016 to about 1.43 million at midyear 2026, a reduction of roughly 13%.
Spreading larger earnings across a smaller share count meant per-share operating earnings nearly tripled, closely mirroring the stock price appreciation over the same window.
The first half of 2026 showed continued momentum, with operating earnings of $24.3 billion running 17% ahead of the prior year’s pace.
The BNSF railroad contributed $2.9 billion in operating earnings, up about 10% year over year, while the energy business rose 11% and the manufacturing, service, and retailing group gained 15%.
Berkshire’s insurance float, a key engine of the company’s long-term compounding, also expanded significantly, growing from about $91.6 billion at the end of 2016 to approximately $177.5 billion at midyear 2026.
Float represents premium money Berkshire holds and invests for its own benefit before claims are paid, and doubling it effectively doubles the capital available for investment.
Second-quarter 2026 operating earnings rose 16% year over year, and Berkshire repurchased about $4.5 billion of its own stock during the quarter, following $235 million in buybacks during the first quarter.
At around $504 per B share as of late August, Berkshire trades roughly 6% below its 52-week high of $537.74, with a total market value of approximately $1.1 trillion.
Measured against annualised second-quarter operating earnings, the stock trades at about 21 times operating earnings, a valuation that no longer looks like a bargain compared to earlier in the decade.
The straightforward takeaway from Berkshire’s ten-year performance is that the stock tripled primarily because the business tripled, not because investors grew more enthusiastic about paying up for each dollar the company earns.
Buyers today, at roughly 21 times operating earnings, are essentially paying for that business growth to continue at a similar rate into the next decade.
