Berkshire Hathaway continued to trim its stakes in Bank of America and Apple in the fourth quarter and it initiated a new holding in New York Times, buying five million shares of the newspaper publishing company, according to a 13-F filing after the close of trading Tuesday.
Berkshire also sold most of its holdings in Amazon.com in the period.
Berkshire reduced its stake in Bank of America by 51 million shares, or about 9%, to 517 million shares, while trimming its interest in Apple by 4%, or 10 million shares, to 227 million.
Berkshire initiated a holding in New York Times that is now worth about $375 million. New York Times stock is up almost 4% in after-hours trading to $76.88 in reaction to the Berkshire news after rising 1.5% in regular trading and hitting a new 52-week high.
Berkshire also added to its stakes in Chevron and Chubb in the fourth quarter.
Berkshire cut its stake in Amazon.com by almost 80% in the period to 2.3 million shares.
Source: Whale Wisdom
Investors were interested in the fourth-quarter Berkshire holdings since it was the last period during which Warren Buffett was CEO. He gave up that role to Greg Abel at year-end while remaining chairman. The quarter also saw the departure of Berkshire investment manager Todd Combs, who left in December for an investment position at JP Morgan.
Berkshire's purchase of New York Times marks a trip down memory lane for the company since Berkshire has long had a soft spot for the newspaper business.
Berkshire held a sizable stake in Washington Post (now Graham Holdings) for about 40 years before swapping it for a TV station held by Graham Holdings in 2014. Berkshire realized big profits on that investment and Buffett was close to the Post's longtime CEO and chairman, Katharine Graham, who died in 2001.
Buffett liked the monopoly status of newspapers -- which has been largely destroyed over the past 20 years, leaving the industry greatly shrunken and far less profitable.
New York Times has been an industry bright spot thanks to the success of the paper's website and related web properties. Given the small size of the Berkshire holding of about $350 million, it's unclear if the Times holding was initiated by Buffett, who normally traffics in stake of more than a few billion dollars, or investment managers Combs and Ted Weschler, who ran about 10% of the company's $300 billion equity portfolio.
Berkshire now has reduced its Apple stake by about 80% from its peak. The Apple holding of 228 million shares remains Berkshire's largest at around $60 billion, ahead of No. 2 American Express at about $52 billion.
Berkshire has cut its Bank of America stock in half since July 2024 to 517 million shares now worth about $27 billion. The sharp reduction in the size of the Amazon stake to 2.3 million shares from 10 million shares in the fourth quarter could have reflected the Combs departure in the period.
Berkshire sold shares associated with a departing investment manager, Lou Simpson, about 15 years ago and it dumped most of the equity holdings of insurer Alleghany after it bought the company in 2022.
Berkshire doesn't disclose which equity holdings are associated with which Berkshire manager but some Berkshire watchers thought the Amazon stake had been accumulated by Combs.
Berkshire lifted its stake in Chubb by almost three million shares in the period to 34.3 million shares, and boosted its holding in Chevron by eight million shares to 130 million shares.
Berkshire trimmed its stakes in Aon, Davita, Constellation Brands and Pool in the period.
Berkshire's stake in Liberty Live Holdings, some 11 million nonvoting shares and five million voting shares, was unchained in the fourth quarter, but the company changed its name in December after being separated from Liberty Media, where it had traded as a tracking stock.
Overall, it was an uneventful quarter for Berkshire to end what was a generally uneventful year for the company's equity portfolio. Buffett made no major moves in his final quarter as CEO.
It's likely that Buffett's moves in the period were the reduction in the Apple and Bank of America equity interests and the increase in the holdings in Chubb and Chevron. The New York Times stake, as noted, looks like a question mark as to which Berkshire manager bought it.
Barron's estimates based on the 13-F data that Berkshire was a seller of more than $6 billion of stock in the fourth quarter, while buying about $3 billion, continuing a trend of net sales in recent quarters.
