Berkshire Hathaway Owns More Than 20% of American Express. Here's What That Means for Individual Investors.

1 hour ago 3

Neil Patel, The Motley Fool

Sun, August 9, 2026 astatine 11:05 AM CDT 3 min read

Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRKA) (NYSE: BRKB) owns a monolithic $354 cardinal portfolio with dozens of antithetic positions. One of its apical holdings, however, is American Express (NYSE: AXP), a concern the Omaha-based conglomerate has held since the 1990s.

As of March 31, Berkshire Hathaway owned astir 152 cardinal shares of the recognition paper giant, giving it a sizable 22.5% involvement successful the company. This has worked retired rather good recently, arsenic the financial banal has generated a full instrumentality of 119% successful the past 5 years (as of Aug. 6).

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Here's what the American Express presumption means for idiosyncratic investors.

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Warren Buffett's stamp of support

During his multi-decade tenure arsenic CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett oversaw superior allocation decisions that resulted successful the conglomerate's banal compounding astatine a jaw-dropping 19.7% annualized pace. This way grounds is genuinely peculiar successful the satellite of investing, mostly due to the fact that of its longevity.

Buffett's doctrine focuses connected identifying large businesses and letting them compound implicit agelong periods. When helium finds a institution helium likes, idiosyncratic investors surely instrumentality notice. The Oracle of Omaha's stamp of support tin beryllium a almighty awesome to the remainder of the marketplace that American Express is simply a fantastic concern that deserves a person look.

The payments banal should marque it connected investors' ticker list. If it passes Buffett's screen, past it astir apt possesses a wide economical moat. This is simply a wide denotation that it's a high-quality company. American Express has built an incredibly beardown marque done its premium positioning targeting affluent customers. This boosts spending enactment connected the platform, portion supporting industry-leading charge-off rates.

Additionally, it benefits from a web effect. Merchants tin seizure much income arsenic the fig of paper members grows. And these paper holders person much places to store arsenic merchant acceptance expands.

The premium recognition paper marque is performing good

Investors are astir apt present reasoning astir buying American Express shares. If there's 1 crushed to hesitate, it mightiness beryllium the valuation. The banal trades astatine a guardant price-to-earnings ratio of 19.9. This isn't expensive, successful my opinion. However, it's decidedly not a bargain, either.

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