For Warren Buffett and his investment managers at Berkshire Hathaway, it was more of the same in the three months to March, according to an investment report filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday night, our time.
No new stocks were added to the Berkshire portfolio in the three months to March (although the company did the huge deal with HJ Heinz and Brazil’s 3G Group in late March). The portfolio’s value shrank to $US107.1 billion from $US109.4 billion at the end of December.
Berkshire bought $US1.62 billion and sold $US1.11 billion of equities overall, so a net half a billion or so was invested in the market in the quarter.
Berkshire’s filing revealed it raised its stake in Wells Fargo (America’s biggest mortgage lender) by about 2% to 470.3 million shares, and in IBM by roughly 3% to 79.6 million shares. The US Bancorp stake (a mid level US bank) grew rose 5% to 83.8 million shares.
Other holdings that grew include Deere & Co, the big farm machinery group), Liberty Global Plc (the international arm of John Malone’s media empire), Phillips 66, Precision Castparts Corp and Twenty-First Century Fox Inc where the stake was raised by 2 million non voting shares to around 6.7 million.
Holdings which were sold down included stakes in Bank of New York Mellon Corp, Charter Communications Inc (also part of the Malone empire), National Oilwell Varco Inc (another oil group), Viacom Inc (controlled by Sumner Redstone, another US media figure) and Wabco Holdings Inc (a big industrial machinery group like Caterpillar).
Stakes in DirecTV (31.3 million), General Electric (10.58 million), General Motors (41 million) and Goldman Sachs (12.6 million) were all unchanged.
At the end of the quarter, Berkshire’s biggest holding was Well Fargo ($US25 billion), followed by Coca-Cola ($US16.2 billion), IBM ($US12.billion), American Express (US$11.8 billion), and Wal-Mart ($US5 billion). Wal-Mart reports its first quarter earnings this week.
