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Berkshire was a net seller of stocks in Buffett’s final quarter as CEO
Berkshire has sold Apple shares in each of the last three quarters and in seven of the past nine three-month periods, reducing its shares by a bit more than 75% since the summer of 2023.
Even so, Apple remains Berkshire’s biggest equity stake with a value of $60.3 billion based on Friday’s close.
The Apple sales, however, have helped #2 American Express close the gap from almost $150 billion to just under $8 billion.
It’s six straight quarters of sales for Bank of America, reducing that stake’s shares by 75% since the middle of 2024.
Berkshire’s Amazon.com stake was valued at $2.2 billion at the end of the third quarter. It’s now down to $478 million after the sale of 7.7 million shares during the fourth quarter, a cut of 77%.
In 2019, when Amazon first appeared in Berkshire’s portfolio with an $860 million position, Buffett went out of his way to tell CNBC’s Becky Quick it wasn’t his decision, he didn’t think it was a significant holding, and no big “personality change” had reversed his traditional aversion to tech stocks.
Barron’s suggests it was portfolio manager Todd Combs who bought the shares and the big reduction may be related to his December departure to join JPMorgan Chase.
Investors were not deterred by Berkshire’s sales of the three stocks. They all ended higher on the week.
Buying oil and insurance
Berkshire increased its share stake in Chevron by 6.6% during the fourth quarter, adding another $1.2 billion to the position based on the oil giant’s year-end stock price.
That’s the biggest boost for any Berkshire stock in Q4, but there haven’t been any especially significant changes in the Chevron position over the past three years.
Higher crude oil prices have helped lift Chevron’s share price by 20.7% since the beginning of the year, putting the current value of the stake at almost $24 billion, up from $19.8 billion on December 31.
It is #5 by value among Berkshire’s stock holdings.
Chubb was the second biggest buy of the quarter with a 9.3% share increase adding about $910 million to the value of the position based on the insurer’s December 31 stock price.
Berkshire’s 34.2 million shares are currently valued at almost $11.4 billion, making it the eighth largest holding in Berkshire’s equity portfolio.
Berkshire takes small step back into the newspaper business
The only stock added to Berkshire’s portfolio during the fourth quarter was a relatively small stake in The New York Times Company.
It is currently valued at $395 million, up…
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