Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway bet on 3 homebuilders - and sold or slashed a bunch of its stocks last quarter
- Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway added a trio of homebuilders to its portfolio last quarter.
- The investor's company exited three stocks and slashed several other positions, SEC filings show.
Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway pruned its stock portfolio last quarter, swapping out three positions and slashing several existing ones. It also added a trio of homebuilders to its holdings, a Securities and Exchange Commission filing revealed on Monday.
The famed investor's company sold its stakes in McKesson, Marsh & McLennan, and Vitesse Energy last quarter, the filing showed. It also trimmed its key Chevron stake by 7%, and reduced its bets on Activision Blizzard by 70%, Celanese by 39%, General Motors by 45%, and Globe Life by 60%.
On the other hand, Buffett's company established new positions in three residential-construction companies: Lennar, NVR, and DR Horton. Those stakes were valued at $17 million, $71 million, and $726 million respectively at the end of June.
Moreover, Berkshire boosted its stake in Capital One by 26% to 12.5 million shares, worth $1.4 billion on June 30. It established that position in the first quarter, likely after Silicon Valley Bank's dramatic collapse spooked depositors and temporarily tanked regional-bank stocks.
Berkshire also ramped up its Occidental Petroleum wager by 7% last quarter, signaling Buffett and his team are interested in growing their ownership of the oil explorer and producer beyond 25%.
The overall worth of Berkshire's US stock portfolio jumped by 7% to $348 billion during the quarter. That largely reflected a $27 billion surge in the value of its Apple stake to about $178 billion, as the iPhone maker's stock soared during the period. Berkshire owns close to 6% of Apple and counts the technology titan as the most-valuable holding in its stock portfolio by far.
Buffett's company foreshadowed its bout of stock sales in its recent second-quarter earnings. Berkshire noted that it sold close to $13 billion worth of shares and bought less than $5 billion worth, making it a net seller of stocks in the period. Combined with a slower pace of buybacks, that helped boost Berkshire's cash pile by 13% to a near-record $147 billion.
The billionaire's recent lack of stock purchases, buybacks, and big acquisitions suggests he's struggling to find bargains one again, after a historic rally in stocks and other assets this year.