Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has increased its stake in Apple by 55%, boosting its bet on the iPhone maker even as other prominent investors have reduced theirs.
The details of the Apple buy and other holdings were contained in Berkshire’s June quarter share trading filing with the US SEC, filed overnight Monday.
Apple shares fell in the quarter, but have rebounded strongly since because of an encouraging quarterly report and a belief the tech giant’s woes are over for the time being.
Berkshire also lightened its holding of Wal-Mart Stores in the quarter, even though the shares rose.
Berkshire owned 15.23 million Apple shares worth roughly $US1.46 billion as of June 30, up from 9.81 million shares at the end of the first quarter on March 31, according to the regulatory filing.
Berkshire revealed in May that it had unexpectedly taken a more than $US1 billion stake in Apple, causing that company’s shares to jump 3.7%.
Apple shares fell 12% in the June quarter (it would have been close to 16% except for the May spike after Berkshire’s stake was revealed) to $US95.60 a share, but rebounded 14.50% to $US109.48 as of Monday’s close in New York.
The second-quarter boost came even as other investors also including David Tepper, Carl Icahn, George Soros and Leon Cooperman cut back or dumped their own Apple stakes completely.
Reuters and other reports said it was unclear whether Buffett or one of his portfolio managers, Todd Combs and Ted Weschler, made the Apple investment, though Buffett is associated with the company’s larger investments.
Berkshire reduced the size of one such investment, Wal-Mart Stores Inc, by 27% in the quarter, lowering its stake to about 40.23 million shares from 55.24 million. Wal-Mart has been in Berkshire’s portfolio for more than a decade.
Wal-Mart shares rose 6.6% in the period to $US73.02 a share. That probably would not have happened had the news of Berkshire’s selling hit screens in trading rooms.
Berkshire also lifted its stake in Liberty Global PLC which rose by 30% to 30.7 million shares from 23.8 million shares. The holding in oil refiner, Phillips 66 increased to 78.8 million shares from 75.6 million shares, but the stake in the farm machinery and equipment maker, Deere & Co. was cut to 21.96 million shares from 23.28 million shares. The stake in Canadian oil group, Suncor was also trimmed.
Some Buffett’s share picks aren’t doing as well. Amex is down 19% over the past year. And IBM trades for less than what he paid to build the multibillion-dollar stake. In fact in its most recent quarterly report, Berkshire said it would not impair the holding because it considered the $US1.4 billion deficit to be temporary.
The overall value of Berkshire’s equity holdings increased 0.9% to $US129.70 billion from $US128.57 billion during the quarter, while the S&P 500 rose 1.9%.
But 61% of that $US129 billion figure is tied up in the four big holdings – Well fargo ($US23.7 billion), IBM, ($US12.3 billion), the Coca Cola Company ($US18.1 billion and Amex ($US9.2 billion).
Berkshire Hathaway also ended the June-2016 quarter with almost $US72.7 billion in cash and cash equivalents (“The Float”). That figure is from the company’s insurance, railroad utilities and energy, industrial and finance and financial companies.
