Berkshire Intraday High Tops $100,000

Warren E. Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. rose above $100,000 a share for the first time during trading Thursday as investors bet that fewer hurricanes in 2006 would limit insurance payouts.

Berkshire’s Class A shares, which have never been split, rose as high as $100,100, their all-time record and 77 times the next-highest-priced stock listed on a U.S. exchange. The stock, which has gone eight sessions without falling, closed at $98,995, up 1.3%.

“The hurricane season this year appears to be extremely mild,� said Stanley Nabi, who holds 100 shares of Berkshire among the $7.5 billion he helps manage at Silvercrest Asset Management. Given that the share price only regained 2004 levels in August, he said, “there’s more room on the upside.�

Berkshire is up about 12% this year amid optimism that its insurance units, which account for about half its profit, will emerge from the 2006 Atlantic hurricane season relatively unscathed. Last year, the company had $3.4 billion in claims from Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma.

A beneficiary of the stock’s gain is charity. Buffett said in June that he would give away most of his estimated $47-billion fortune to a foundation run by Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates and his wife.

Buffett, 76, has spent the last four decades building Berkshire from a failing Massachusetts textile manufacturer into a holding company with dozens of businesses and a market value of $152.3 billion. In the process, he became the world’s second-richest man, after Gates.

Reaching $100,000 “was inevitable given the rate at which they accumulate cash and don’t pay a dividend,� said Donald Yacktman of Yacktman Asset Management.