Under CEO Greg Abel, Berkshire Hathaway bought its own stock in the second quarter.

After more than three years of sitting on a massive cash pile, Berkshire Hathaway finally loosened up and found a stock worth buying - its own.

The storied conglomerate announced Saturday that after building a record cash holding of $397.4 billion at the end of the first quarter, it spent $31.9 billion, whittling those holdings down to $365.5 billion.

Berkshire said it spent $349.6 million to repurchase 478 shares of Class A $(BRK.A)$ common stock and $4.18 billion to buy back 8.6 million Class B $(BRK.B)$ shares. Both of those share classes have gained just over 3% this year and roughly 12% in one year. The S&P 500 SPX has gained 13% this year and 21% over the last 52 weeks.

In March, new CEO Greg Abel announced that the company saw enough value in Berkshire shares to recommend buying them, and that's what the company did.

Berkshire has said in the past that buybacks can happen whenever Abel - after consulting with Chairman Warren Buffett - believes the company's share price is below its intrinsic value.

An investment Substack called Maverick Equity Research calculated that most of the Berkshire purchases in the second quarter were done at 1.4 times book value. That's right around the 10-year average of the stock. When Berkshire bought its own stock more aggressively, the stock was priced around 1 to 1.2 times book value, which would require a big drawdown from current prices.

However, not everyone was in agreement with the latest move by Berkshire. "Big Short" investor Michael Burry, wrote that he has feared any successor to Buffett would be "too old," and have no patience for "the fat pitch," in reference to Abel.

"I do not find Berkshire an attractive investment going forward," he said on a Substack post. "I realize not too much of the cash pile has been spent, and the cash pile remains large. However, these first steps look to be more framing moves than investment moves."

Macrae Sykes, portfolio manager at Gabelli Funds, appeared to disagree, telling clients that the $4.5 billion repurchase of Berkshire stock are positive in two ways, the first being management believes those share are undervalued, and also are "finding opportunity to deploy cash in this market environment."

-Barbara Kollmeyer