HP Stock Surged 11% Premarket as Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Took Stake Worth $4.2 Billion in HP
Berkshire Hathaway has accumulated an 11.4% stake worth $4.2 billion in HP Inc., the maker of personal computers and printers, according to regulatory filings late Wednesday.
The purchases of HP shares ramp up a recent buying spree by Berkshire Hathaway under CEO Warren Buffett. Berkshire (BRK.A and BRK.B) has amassed a nearly 15% stake in Occidental Petroleum worth $7.6 billion and has a deal to buy the insurer $Alleghany (Y)% for $11.6 billion.
The Berkshire holdings in HP were disclosed in two regulatory filings. A Form 3 filing as of April 1 showed that Berkshire owned 10% of HP, some 109.8 million shares.
A second filing, a Form 4, showed that Berkshire held just under 121 million shares of HP as of Wednesday after buying about 11 million shares during the past three days at prices ranging in the range of $35 to $37. Once Berkshire went over a 10% stake in HP, as it did Friday, the company needs to report additional purchases within two business days.
Buffett has a value bent and HP fits the bill as the stocks trades for just eight times projected earnings in its fiscal year ending in October. And HP shares yield nearly 3%.
In late October, Barron’s tech columnist Eric J. Savitz wrote that “with an improving growth story, shareholder-friendly policies, and one of the cheapest stocks in the tech sector, HP looks like a screaming buy.”
Investors have been happy to see Buffett invest some of Berkshire’s huge cash hoard of nearly $150 billion. Yet the HP purchases could also have been made by his two investment lieutenants, Todd Combs and Ted Weschler, who together run about 10% of Berkshire’s $350 billion equity portfolio.