- Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway added Ulta Beauty and Heico to its stock portfolio last quarter.
- Berkshire dumped Snowflake and Paramount and halved its Apple stake, filings confirmed.
Warren Buffett's company placed new bets on Ulta Beauty and Heico, exited Snowflake and Paramount Global, and halved its Apple stake last quarter.
The famed investor's Berkshire Hathaway detailed the striking changes to its stock portfolio in a regulatory filing on Wednesday. The conglomerate purchased about 690,000 Ulta shares, securing a stake in the cosmetics retailer worth $266 million at the end of June.
It also scooped up about a million Heico shares — a position in the electronic equipment maker worth $185 million at the quarter's close.
Berkshire's vote of confidence sent Ulta shares up as much as 16% and Heico shares up 4% in premarket trading on Thursday as other investors piled in — a reflection of the "Buffett effect." Ulta and Heico were both down by about a third this year at Wednesday's close, with the retailer valued at just under $16 billion.
Ulta sells both mass market and prestige cosmetics including Rihanna's Fenty Beauty, fragrances, skin care and hair care products from about 1,400 stores and online.
Buffett and his investment managers, Todd Combs and Ted Weschler, also closed out their wagers on cloud-computing specialist Snowflake and Paramount. Those stakes were valued around $1 billion and $89 million respectively at the end of March.
Apple crunched
Berkshire held 400 million Apple shares at the end of June, mirroring its Coca-Cola stake. The company foreshadowed its Apple sales in its recent second-quarter earnings, which revealed the value of its largest portfolio holding fell from $135 billion to $84 billion last quarter. It had already pared the position by 13% in the first quarter.
Ulta and Heico are likely stock picks by Combs and Weschler, as Buffett tends to make multibillion-dollar wagers. Both companies look to be within Berkshire's comfort zone, given it fully owns retailers like Fruit of the Loom and Helzberg Diamonds, along with aerospace supplier Precision Castparts.
The Apple disposals accounted for the lion's share of Berkshire's $97 billion of stock sales in the first half, during which it only purchased stock worth $4.3 billion.
Buffett's company ended June with an unprecedented $277 billion cash pile, including $235 billion in short-term Treasurys — more than the Federal Reserve holds in T-bills.