Berkshire Hathaway appears to be supplementing its open-market purchases of the company’s stock with privately negotiated sales with Berkshire holders involving the company’s supervoting Class A shares.

During the third quarter, Berkshire repurchased $9.6 billion of stock, a record quarterly amount. Most of that consisted of the more liquid Class B shares, but some $3.4 billion involved the A stock.

There is very light volume in the A shares, averaging just 183 shares a day in the third quarter, against 4.3 million shares for the B shares, Bloomberg data show.

The buybacks amounted to more than 35% of the A share volume in the third quarter, above the 25% limit that most companies like to maintain. So that suggests that Berkshire supplemented the open-market buys of the B shares—and some of the A shares—with private transactions of the A stock with longtime holders, or a holder’s estate or beneficiary, such as a charity.

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