CUT-RATE SHARES TO COST $1,000\Company plans to sell $100 million.

Byline: David E. Kalish Associated Press 

Reluctantly conceding that his investment firm's stock may be too pricey, billionaire Warren Buffett announced plans Tuesday to sell new shares of Berkshire Hathaway to the public for the first time since he took over more than 30 years ago.

The new class of common stock will cost one-thirtieth the price of existing shares, which at almost $32,000 each are by far the most expensive on the New York Stock Exchange. But the new stock, at roughly $1,000 a share, still easily would rank as the second priciest. No. 3 Washington Post's stock closed at $289.75 Tuesday.

Berkshire Hathaway Inc. plans to sell at least $100 million of the class B shares shortly after its annual meeting May 6, an offering that would only marginally dilute the company's current $30 billion market value.

Berkshire Hathaway said it was responding reluctantly to attempts by several money managers to exploit its reputation by creating investment trusts to sell investors fractional units of Berkshire Hathaway stock.

Buffett has aggressively fought the trusts, arguing that they were luring investors into paying steep management fees and thus tainting his company's name. Unit investment trusts are similar to mutual funds, except that they maintain a fixed portfolio of stock or other securities.

"We hope to forestall this by this move," Buffett said in a telephone press conference on the new stock offer. "It is very much in our interests not to have a shareholder body that has been disappointed."

However, a manager of one of the prospective trusts said he was moving ahead despite Buffett's plans because $1,000 a share was still too much for most investors.

"The most expensive stock on the stock market today is Berkshire Hathaway and the next most expensive stock is still Berkshire Hathaway at $1,000 a share," said Sam Katz, managing partner at Stafford Capital Partners. The Bala Cynwyd, Pa.-based investment firm is applying to the Securities and Exchange Commission to form a trust through its Five Sigma Investment Partners Ltd. unit.

Berkshire Hathaway's plan to sell cheaper stock "vindicates what we think what was the whole rationale for our activity," Katz said.

Berkshire Hathaway stock fell $200 a share Tuesday to close at $31,700 on the New York Stock Exchange.

Since Buffett took control in 1964, Omaha, Neb.-based Berkshire Hathaway has grown into an aggressive investment conglomerate with interests in everything from Coca-Cola to Geico insurance. In the more than three decades, its annual returns have averaged nearly 25 percent for investors who could afford its increasingly higher per-share price.