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Greg Abel Begins Deploying Berkshire Cash With Taylor Morrison Buy

The purchase signals a shift to deploying Berkshire's cash hoard to buy beaten-down assets under Greg Abel's new capital strategy.

Overview

  • Berkshire Hathaway agreed to buy Taylor Morrison for about $6.8 billion in cash and an enterprise value near $8.5 billion.
  • The company plans to fold Taylor Morrison into its Clayton Homes unit to create a top-five U.S. homebuilder.
  • Berkshire paid low valuation multiples of roughly 1.1 times book value and about 9 times trailing earnings for Taylor Morrison.
  • Greg Abel has also committed roughly $10 billion to Alphabet, bringing his early capital deployments to about $17–18 billion from Berkshire's roughly $400 billion cash reserve.
  • Analysts say the move pursues scale and cheaper land and materials to weather high mortgage rates while a White House estimate that the U.S. needs about 10 million homes frames the long-term opportunity for larger builders.