The most expensive stock per share every publicly traded of all time is the Berkshire Hathaway A shares (BRK. A) that traded for $445,000 a share on May 7, 2021 on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).
This is the New England textile company that Warren Buffett starting buying at $7.60 in 1962. The Buffett partnership’s average share purchase price was $14.86 as Warren Buffett took control of the Berkshire Hathaway company in 1965.
After Warren Buffett took over the company he slowly converted it to a corporate conglomerate that used its insurance company float to acquire other great cash flowing companies for decades. Berkshire Hathaway is a portfolio of companies selected to own in full by Buffett and it also holds Buffett’s portfolio of stocks in publicly traded companies he bought at a great value for future cash flows.
The reason that the Berkshire Hathaway stock price is so high is that Warren Buffet never wanted to split the shares because he preferred having long term investors hold the shares and not short-term traders and speculators. High stock prices make it difficult to actively trade.
Berkshire Hathaway did finally do a partial stock split to create Class B shares (BRK.B) in 1996. Through a Unit Investment Trust they created the ticker symbol BRK.B and kept the per-share value of the lower priced shares to approximately 1⁄30 of the original Class A share (BRK.A) price. BRK.B currently trades at approximately $289 a share.
It is important to understand that the amount of shares outstanding sets the value of a company and not the stock price alone. Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A) currently has a market cap of $657.2 billon and is the 7th largest company in the United States.
Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A) is the most expensive stock in the world currently priced at $435,000 a share.
