What berkshire stocks have split?
Executive summary
Berkshire Hathaway's split history is short and simple: the company has never split its prized Class A shares, while its Class B shares underwent a 50-for-1 split in January 2010; the firm also created the lower‑priced Class B share class in 1996 (a structural issuance, not a conventional split) to broaden accessibility [1] [2] [3]. Warren Buffett's longstanding policy against splitting Class A shares is explicit and has shaped investor expectations ever since [1] [4].
1. The single clear split: BRK.B 50-for-1 in January 2010
The only explicit stock split on record for Berkshire Hathaway was a 50‑for‑1 split of its Class B shares completed in January 2010, an action contemporaneous with Berkshire's acquisition of BNSF Railway and designed in part to create a more convenient share structure for that transaction and for retail investors [2] [3] [5].
2. Class A shares: never split by design
Berkshire Hathaway’s Class A shares have never been split; the company and Warren Buffett have repeatedly resisted splitting A shares as a deliberate governance and investor‑behavior strategy intended to attract long‑term holders and discourage speculative trading [1] [4] [6].
3. The 1996 introduction of Class B shares — issuance, not a classic split
In 1996 Berkshire introduced Class B shares with a price roughly 1/30th of a Class A share (and far fewer voting rights), a structural change that increased accessibility for smaller investors but is typically described as the creation of a new share class rather than a conventional stock split [2]. That initial ratio and the relative voting power were later further altered after the 2010 action, leaving Class B shares with far less voting power per share than Class A [2].
4. Why Berkshire's split history is so simple: Buffett’s philosophy and corporate intent
The sparse split history stems from Buffett’s explicit philosophy: he favors a share structure that attracts committed, long‑term shareholders and resists micro‑management of share price through splits, a rationale outlined in investment commentary and examiner pieces that track Berkshire’s approach to capital allocation and shareholder composition [1] [7].
5. How sources frame the same facts — consistent with minor framing differences
Market data providers and finance outlets uniformly record the 2010 BRK.B 50‑for‑1 split and the absence of any BRK.A splits; some outlets emphasize the split’s role in the BNSF deal [8] [9] [3], while investor education pieces broaden the context to compare Berkshire’s choice with the more common corporate practice of frequent splits [5] [7].
6. Practical consequences and current context
Because Class A shares have not been split, they routinely trade at very high per‑share prices that have continued to rise, whereas the 2010 BRK.B split and the 1996 creation of B shares left Berkshire with a two‑class structure that provides a lower‑priced entry point for many investors without diluting the control preferences embedded in Class A voting rights [2] [4] [3].
7. Caveats, open questions and limits of the reporting
Public records and mainstream aggregators agree on the single BRK.B 50‑for‑1 split in 2010 and the absence of any BRK.A splits [8] [10] [6], but sources differ in emphasis about motives — some tie the split directly to the BNSF acquisition while others stress retail accessibility — and the reporting here is limited to those documented corporate actions; if other internal structural adjustments occurred that are not reflected in these sources, they cannot be asserted from this dataset [5] [3] [2].