Berkshire Hathaway stock was rallying Monday on the company's earnings report, nearing a record high set more than a year ago.

The Class A shares are up 2.6% to $800,495 Monday, about a percentage point away from the record close of $809,350 reached on May 2, 2025, just before the annual meeting when Warren Buffett surprised shareholders by saying he would step down as CEO at the end of 2025.

The Class B stock is up 2.3% to $533,89, shy of the closing peak of $539.30 also on May 2, 2025. The Class B stock now is up 6% this year, still trailing the S&P 500, which has returned about 14%. Both the A and B shares hit new 52-week highs Monday.

There could be more upside to Berkshire because the stock is a laggard relative to the S&P 500 and companies in industries in which it operates like Chubb and Union Pacific.

Investors reacted favorably to some key aspects of the second-quarter earnings report. Operating profits after taxes excluding currency swings were up about 6% to $12 billion -- topping the consensus estimate -- on strength in Berkshire's industrial businesses.

The company boosted in stock repurchases, buying back $4.5 billion in the second quarter and $3.4 billion in July (a Barron's estimate based on the share count in the second quarter 10-Q report released Saturday).

Those buybacks are among the most aggressive ever by Berkshire and signal that CEO Greg Abel and chairman Buffett see the stock as attractive and want to deploy capital. Buybacks totaled just $235 million in the first quarter.

Berkshire was an active buyer of stocks in the period, purchasing about $23 billion, including some $10 billion of disclosed Alphabet purchases, up from $16 billion of buys in the first quarter, and the company sold just $3 billion of stock in the second quarter. Berkshire will disclose details of its stock purchases in a 13-F report expected Friday.

Investors like that Abel is starting to deploy more capital and bringing down the company's huge cash position that totaled about $365 billion on June 30, down from around $380 billion on March 31. Berkshire's $8.5 billion deal for home builder Taylor Morrison closed in July and the company paid an attractive price for it.

Book value continued to rise, gaining about 3% in the second quarter versus the first quarter to about $522,000 per class A share, on earnings and stock market gains that lifted the value of Berkshire's $350 billion-plus equity portfolio. Berkshire now trades for about 1.5 times book value, which is higher now than on June 30 due to equity market gains since then.

"We continue to view Berkshire as an attractive defensive investment, supported by a strong balance sheet, upside to earnings from operational improvements, and deployment of excess cash into accretive acquisitions and/or share repurchases. BRK's shares are currently trading at a 3% discount to our estimate of intrinsic value," wrote UBS analyst Brian Meredith in a client note after the earnings report.

He boosted his Street-high target to about $906,000 per class A share from around $878,000 while maintaining his Buy rating. A cautionary note on the stock is that it's now trading close to Meredith's intrinsic value estimate of about $810,000 per A share.