Berkshire Hathaway significantly boosted its stake in Alphabet in the second quarter and added to its holdings in Delta Air Lines, Macy’s, New York Times and Lennar.
Berkshire’s Alphabet stake—consisting of the search giant’s voting and nonvoting shares—rose about 80% in the quarter to 106 million shares, reflecting a purchase directly from Alphabet in June and open-market buys, based on a 13-F report with the Securities and Exchange Commission late Friday.
The Alphabet stake is now worth about $36 billion, placing it in a rough tie with Coca-Cola for the third-largest Berkshire equity holding behind Apple and American Express.
Berkshire didn’t initiate any consequential new equity holdings in the second quarter—marking a rare three months without a major new investment.
Berkshire was a seller of part of its sizable stake in Bank of America, cutting it by 30 million shares to 483 million shares now worth about $31 billion.
Berkshire’s Alphabet purchases could have totaled about $16 billion, accounting for most of its $23 billion of stock purchases disclosed in its 10-Q report for the second quarter.
The second-largest purchase in the second quarter was Delta Air Lines, with Berkshire boosting its stake by about 40% to 57 million shares, a holding now worth about $5 billion. The Delta purchases in the period totaled about $1.5 billion, Barron’s estimates.
Berkshire boosted its stake in homebuilder Lennar by 3 million shares to 13 million shares, more than doubled its stake in Macy’s to 7 million shares, and slightly increased its stake in New York Times to 15.7 million shares.
The Alphabet purchases and Bank of America sales likely were orchestrated by chairman Warren Buffett, while the moves in smaller holdings probably were made by Berkshire investment manager Ted Weschler, who handles about $20 billion of Berkshire’s $350 billion-plus equity portfolio.
Berkshire reduced its interests in several equity investments, including Kroger, Capital One Financial, Nucor and Ally Financial in the second quarter.
The Kroger stake fell about 20%, or 11 million shares, to 39 million shares. The Capital One stake dropped by 4 million shares to 3 million shares; the Nucor interest declined about 50% to 1.9 million shares and the Ally stake was down less than 10% to 27 million shares.
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