Andrew Bary
Berkshire Hathaway director Meryl Witmer bottom-ticked the stock in May 2020 near the depth of the Covid bear market, purchasing eight Class A shares and 1,000 Class B shares. Two of the Class A shares were bought by her spouse not her.
The A shares were bought for $261,000 apiece, near the pandemic low in the stock . Barron's wrote at the time that the purchase was timed auspiciously.
Witmer's spouse, Charles Witmer, sold two A shares on March 3 near the recent peak in the stock. This is the first transaction in Berkshire stock by the Witmer family since the May 2020 purchase.
The two Class A shares were sold for nearly $776,000, or a total of $1.55 million, acc ording to a form 4 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday. Those two shares were held in an individual retirement account.
Berkshire's Class A stock is up 0.9% to $749,540 Wednesday. It hit an intraday high of almost $778,000 on Monday -- its peak over the past year.
Meryl Witmer, 63, has been a Berkshire director since 2013 and is a member of the Barron's Roundtable. She is a well-regarded value-oriented investor and general partner at Eagle Capital, an investment partnership.
Meryl Witmer owns 11 Class A shares including those held in trust for members of her family and 2,000 Class B shares. Her husband holds two shares in an individual retirement account after the recent sale.
Witmer significantly boosted her stake in Berkshire in May 2020 near the pandemic low in the stock when it traded for just 1.1 times book value. That price was cheap in absolute terms -- below where the stock traded in 2018 -- and inexpensive relative to book value.
The stock now trades for close to 1.7 times book value -- near the highest price/book ratio in the past decade.
Write to Andrew Bary at andrew.bary@barrons.com
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 05, 2025 16:49 ET (21:49 GMT)
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