Berkshire Hathaway's portfolio moves in the second quarter highlight a couple of trends as CEO Greg Abel settles into his role after succeeding Warren Buffett at year-end.
Buffett, who turns 96 later this month, remains chairman, and he still likes making big investment decisions involving Berkshire's $350 billion-plus equity portfolio-and letting Berkshire holders know that he's still in the game.
Buffett was behind Berkshire's move to buy Alphabet stock, with Berkshire holding 106 million shares of both publicly traded classes of the search-engine giant's stock at the end of the second quarter.
That stake is now worth $36 billion after Berkshire boosted its holdings from 58 million shares on March 31, an 83% increase. Alphabet is now Berkshire's third-largest equity investment behind Apple and American Express and just ahead of Coca-Cola.
The Alphabet purchase was Berkshire's major equity buy over the past year and accounted for about $17 billion of the $23 billion of equities bought by Berkshire in the second quarter, making it one of its largest quarters of stock purchases in the past five years.
Berkshire doesn't usually identify which manager bought which stock, but Buffett volunteered that information in a CNBC interview in July.
"I initiated it. I normally wouldn't give you an answer on something like that, but I will, because ... I am not doing anything that he doesn't approve of. He's not doing anything I don't approve of," Buffett said, referring to his relationship with Abel.
The second-quarter Alphabet purchases included $10 billion bought directly from the company when it announced an $85 billion equity raise in June to fund its massive AI spending program. Berkshire is underwater on that deal, having bought stock from Alphabet at about $350; the stock now trades around $343.
Buffett has long been a fan of Alphabet, having marveled at its profit margins nearly a decade ago, but it took him a while to buy the stock-and he may be a little late to the Alphabet party, with the company valued at more than $4 trillion and the stock doubling in price since the spring of 2025.
It's not surprising that Buffett is still buying and selling stocks-and he likely pared Berkshire's Bank of America stake in the second quarter. Stock investing is Buffett's first love. He began buying stocks in 1942 when he was 11-Cities Service preferred-and he relishes the game and the challenge.
Abel, meanwhile, seems to be willing to let Buffett and investment manager Ted Weschler handle the equity portfolio decisions. Berkshire's second-largest portfolio move this year was buying 57 million shares of Delta Air Lines, including 17 million shares in the second quarter.
That stake is now worth about $5 billion and probably was initiated by Weschler, who has authority over about $20 billion, or 6% of the portfolio. Weschler runs a concentrated portfolio that likely consists mostly of DaVita ($5.2 billion), Delta, Sirius XM Holdings ($3.6 billion) and Kroger ($2.2 billion).
Barron's is speculating that Weschler owns these investments based on conversations with Berkshire watchers and Weschler's personal stakes in DaVita and Sirius.
Unless things change, Weschler has limited authority to buy more stocks given that he runs about 6% of the portfolio.
Abel has no formal portfolio management experience and doesn't appear to be making any notable stock-picking decisions.
He has his hands full running a $1.1 trillion market-value conglomerate with dozens of divisions and improving the performance of underperforming units like the BNSF railroad, which has had some of the lowest profit margins among major railroads. He's also involved in acquisitions like the $8.5 billion purchase of homebuilder Taylor Morrison in July that expanded Berkshire's sizable homebuilding footprint.
Berkshire also owns about a 6% stake worth over $1 billion in Lennar, the No. 2 U.S. homebuilder by market value, after boosting that holding by 30% in the second quarter.
Abel isn't getting a lot of help on running Berkshire's operations. He has one senior deputy, Adam Johnson, who oversees nearly three dozen Berkshire units involved with consumer products, service, and retailing, including the company's Brooks running shoe division. Johnson had been CEO of NetJets, Berkshire's fractional jet business, before getting the expanded responsibilities. Johnson was named to the job in December. The lean management approach reflects Buffett's philosophy. When he was CEO, he oversaw operations and made equity portfolio moves.
Berkshire didn't replace Todd Combs, who had run about 5% of the equity portfolio for about 15 years before leaving for an investment role at JPMorgan in December.
Berkshire then proceeded to sell nearly all the stocks that had been managed by Combs, including long-standing holdings in Visa, Mastercard, Aon, and Amazon.com. The only major Combs holding that Berkshire retained was a $2 billion stake in VeriSign, Barron's believes.
Combs held more stocks than Weschler and appeared to trade more actively than Weschler. The result is fewer portfolio moves now by the company.
One sign of this is that Berkshire initiated no sizable new equity holdings in the second quarter.
Berkshire's actions raise some interesting questions. How much longer will Buffett be making notable investment calls given that he's slowing down and can't read well anymore due to deteriorating eyesight? He enjoyed going through 10-Qs and 10-Ks on the weekend to get up to speed on dozens of companies.
Should Berkshire give Weschler greater investment authority or hire a team to evaluate and recommend investments? Barron's has argued that both are good ideas as Berkshire seeks to invest a chunk of its roughly $360 billion in cash.
Abel wrote in his inaugural annual letter in February that a couple of big, long-standing Berkshire equity holdings likely won't be touched, including Apple, American Express, Coke, and Moody's.
That could mean that equity investments, which generated the bulk of Berkshire's growth and book-value gains from 1965 to 1995, may not be a focus going forward as Abel focuses on operations and buying entire businesses.
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