Play Video Buffett: I have better things to do than tweet
Berskhire Hathaway Chairman Warren Buffett said the company has bought back some of its shares as it changes the metric it uses to decide when repurchases are a good move.
Buffett did not disclose how much stock Berkshire bought back, but he did confirm that he has changed his views.
"We bought back a little yeah," he told CNBC's Becky Quick during a "Squawk Alley" interview. "We tie it now to intrinsic business value, which we should have done all along but for a while book value was a good proxy. It didn't fully describe intrinsic value .. it was a reasonable proxy."
Earlier this year, Buffett made headlines when he said he would consider buybacks as a strategy to deploy what was then a $116 billion cash pile. The company's standard had always been to do repurchases when the company's stock hit 120 percent of book value; both the class A and B shares are currently at 150 percent.
Berkshire's B shares are up 6.1 percent year to date, lagging the S&P 500's 8.8 percent increase.
However, Buffett stressed that decisions are not based on near-term thinking about what the stock is doing but rather on the best long-range strategy for investors.
"What really counts is what are the businesses worth along with the securities we own, and if it's at a discount to that figure Charlie (Munger) and I will buy, and we bought some," he said.
"We're totally in sync," he added to describe the thought process between him and Munger, 94, Berkshire's vice chairman and Buffett's long-time right hand in running the company.
Buffett spoke on his 88th birthday and ahead of his annual lunch in New York with the winning bidder of the Glide auction.
"We need a big enough discount so we're buying at what we know is a price where the continuing shareholders are going to be better off because we bought it. We're running a business for the people who are going to stay, not the ones who are going to leave," he added.
