Two companies backed by Warren Buffett strike deals worth a combined $8.6 billion
- Two companies that count Warren Buffett as a shareholder announced acquisitions this week.
- Liberty Global has agreed to buy Swiss telecoms rival Sunrise Communications for $7.5 billion in cash, while Brazilian payments group StoneCo is set to acquire software group Linx for $1.1 billion in cash and stock.
- Assuming Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway hasn't altered its stakes in the two companies, they are currently worth a combined $1.3 billion.
- The deals come after Berkshire reached a $10 billion agreement to buy most of Dominion Energy's natural gas assets in early July.
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Two companies backed by Warren Buffett followed the famed investor's lead this week, by announcing acquisitions worth a combined $8.6 billion.
Liberty Global plans to buy Swiss telecoms rival Sunrise Communications for $7.5 billion in cash, while Brazilian payments group StoneCo intends to purchase software group Linx for $1.1 billion in cash and stock.
Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway reached a $10 billion agreement in early July to buy most of Dominion Energy's natural-gas assets after several months of inactivity, perhaps giving the green light for its portfolio companies to also strike big deals.
Berkshire owned a total of 27 million Liberty Global "A" and "C" shares at the last count, or more than 4% of the shares outstanding. The conglomerate also held around 14 million StoneCo shares, giving it a 5.1% stake.
Those positions are worth about $588 million and $742 million respectively, based on the two companies' closing stock prices on Tuesday. Liberty Global shares are slightly down this year, while StoneCo has been one of Buffett's best-performing stocks in recent months.
Berkshire will provide an update on those holdings when it discloses its portfolio as of June 30 later this week.
Liberty, whose chairman is media mogul John Malone, has agreed to pay 110 Swiss francs per share ($120) per Sunrise share — a 32% premium to Sunrise's volume-weighted average share price over the past 60 days.
StoneCo will pay cash and stock worth a total of 33.8 Brazilian reals ($6.27) per Linx share, representing a 42% premium to Linx's volume-weighted average share price over the 60 days to August 6.