Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway has slashed its HP stake by nearly 60% in 3 months - and looks to be cutting its losses

• Berkshire Hathaway sold another 46 million HP shares in October and November, filings show.
• Warren Buffett's company has more than halved its stake, cutting its ownership to about 5%.

Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway has pared its HP holdings by 57% since mid-September, slashing its ownership of the PC maker from over 12% to about 5%, and the value of its position from about $5 billion at its peak to around $1.6 billion today.

The famed investor's company sold roughly 46 million shares between October 4 and November 30, reducing its holding to about 52 million shares, a SEC filing revealed on Monday. It likely pocketed about $1.3 billion from the sales, based on HP's trading range in the period.

Buffett's conglomerate established its HP stake in the first quarter of 2022, and grew it to 121 million shares by early April that year, making it the computing company's largest shareholder. It didn't touch the position until September 11 this year; it promptly cut it to about 98 million shares, or just under a 10% stake, by October 3.

With its latest sales, Berkshire has now offloaded a total of 69 million HP shares in under three months, more than halving its holding. It likely pocketed about $1.9 billion in proceeds, based on the average sale prices disclosed by Berkshire for its earlier disposals, and HP's trading range in recent months.

HP appears to have been a losing bet for Berkshire. Buffett and his team bought in when the stock was trading around $34 to $36 early last year, and they've dumped it for below $30 in recent months, reflecting the stock's 20%-plus decline since the start of 2022. They appear to have paid an estimated $4 billion to build the position, and have now sold nearly 60% of it for less than $2 billion.

Buffett and his team are yet to explain why they've pared their HP bet. They may have soured on the business, or might want to free up cash to place other wagers. Berkshire has sold close to $40 billion of stocks on a net basis over the last four quarters, which helped to lift its cash pile to a record $157 billion at the end of September.

It's worth pointing out that Berkshire's HP position is small in the context of its roughly $350 billion stock portfolio, which includes an estimated $177 billion stake in Apple, and stakes worth over $20 billion in Bank of America, Coca-Cola, and American Express. One of Buffett's two deputies, Todd Combs and Ted Weschler, may have spearheaded the bet on HP, and might now be seeking to close it out.

Bill Hewlett and David Packard founded Hewlett-Packard in a California garage in 1939, when Buffett — who turned 93 in August — was only 8 years old. The veteran hardware company has kept its PC and printer business under the HP Inc name, after spinning off its enterprise division in 2015.