Berkshire Hathaway boosted stake in Alphabet, homebuilders in the second quarter
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Berkshire Hathaway is increasing the size of its stake in Google’s parent company and beefing up its holdings in homebuilders, according to the conglomerate’s latest snapshot of its investment portfolio.
The Omaha, Nebraska-based company also continued to pare its stake in financial companies and a number of other stocks in the April-June quarter, according to a regulatory filing filed late Friday.
CEO Greg Abel, who took over from Warren Buffett at the start of the year, agreed in June to make a $10 billion stock investment in Alphabet, expanding on the stake that Berkshire started to build last fall.
In the second quarter, Berkshire picked up roughly 48.1 million shares in Alphabet, bringing its total shares in the tech giant to roughly 106 million. That stake was valued at about $37.76 billion as of June 30, according to the filing. As recently as the end of December, Berkshire held only 17.8 million Alphabet shares worth $5.6 billion.
Alphabet has said it plans to raise $80 billion to pay for the computing infrastructure needed to power its AI offerings.
Beyond tech, Berkshire continued to boost its investments in the U.S. homebuilding sector. Its stake in homebuilder Lennar increased nearly 30% in the second quarter. Berkshire also established a small new stake in D.R. Horton that was worth $580,504 at the end of June.
In July, Berkshire completed a $6.8 billion acquisition of homebuilder Taylor Morrison.
Berkshire also sharply increased its shares in Delta Air Lines and Macy’s in the second quarter. The stakes were worth about $5.37 billion and $173 million, respectively, as of June 30.
Berkshire also pruned its investment portfolio in the second quarter, reducing its stake in several companies relative to where they stood in the first quarter, including supermarket operator Kroger, steel manufacturer Nucor and dialysis giant DaVita.
The company also dumped all its holdings — 632,890 shares — in beverage company Constellation Brands.
Berkshire also pared its shares in several financial companies. Its stakes in Bank of America and Ally Financial declined by around 6% and 6.9%, respectively, and it slashed its shares in Capital One Financial by 58%.
Many investors have followed Berkshire’s portfolio closely over the years because they liked to copy Buffett’s moves. He remains the company’s chairman and largest shareholder.
But Berkshire, which owns dozens of businesses including major insurers like Geico and BNSF railroad, never comments on the moves it makes to its stock portfolio from quarter to quarter because it doesn’t want to discuss what it is buying and selling.
