Berkshire Hathaway sold off its remaining holdings of
General Motors
in the third quarter as the car maker’s shares retreated. The Warren Buffett-led conglomerate also asked the Securities and Exchange Commission that one or more of its equity holdings be kept confidential and omitted those holdings from its 13-F filing.
There is a good chance the mystery stock or stocks are financials.
Berkshire
(ticker: BRK.A/BRK.B) disclosed in its recent 10-Q that its holdings in financial stocks went up by $1.2 billion in the quarter and no additions to financial stocks were disclosed in the 13-F filing released late Tuesday.
Buffett occasionally requests confidentiality when Berkshire accumulates stocks and doesn’t want to tip off the markets. Berkshire did so in late 2020 when the company was accumulating stakes in
Chevron
(CVX) and
Verizon Communications
(VZ).
It’s notable that Buffett is requesting confidentiality on what is a small holding for Berkshire—probably around $1 billion—against a total equity portfolio of around $350 billion. Buffett doesn’t like to reveal more than he has to about Berkshire’s moves in the stock market. It’s unusual for big investors to request confidentiality and sometimes the SEC doesn’t grant the requests.
According to the 13-F filing, Berkshire no longer held GM stock at the end of the third quarter. Shares of the auto maker have dropped 16% since the start of the year. The Detroit-based company also faced worker strikes that recently ended.
Berkshire
also sold off some of its smaller holdings, including positions in
Procter & Gamble
(PG),
Mondelez International
(MDLZ), and
United Parcel Service
(UPS). It reduced its holdings in
HP
(HPQ) and oil major
Chevron.
Berkshire showed new positions in Liberty Live tracking stock in both the
class A voting shares
(LLYVA) and
nonvoting shares
(LLYVK). Those holdings, totaling 16 million shares, were the result of a spinoff in August from Liberty SiriusXM tracking stock in which Berkshire holds about 63 million shares. Each Liberty SiriusXM holder got 0.25 shares of the Liberty Live tracker for each share of Liberty SiriusXM share.
Berkshire watchers believe the Liberty SiriusXM holding was initiated by Ted Weschler, one of two investment managers who works with Buffett. Weschler and Todd Combs, another Berkshire manager, run about 10% of the Berkshire equity portfolio and often operate independently of Buffett.
Berkshire initiated a new position in
Sirius XM
(SIRI) worth $44 million. Shares jumped 8% on Wednesday. That position was also likely initiated by Weschler.
The filing also shows a new holding of about 223,000 shares in
Atlanta Braves Holdings
(BATRK) that likely came from a spinoff from the Liberty Formula One tracker held by Berkshire.
These moves were orchestrated by
Liberty Media,
which is controlled by media mogul John Malone. The various trackers are under the Liberty Media umbrella of companies.
Berkshire’s stake in
Apple
(AAPL), which accounts for 50% of Berkshire’s portfolio, dropped to $157 billion from $176 billion in the quarter, though Berkshire neither bought nor sold shares of the company. It also kept other top holdings of
Bank of AmericaCorp
(BAC),
American Express
(AXP), and
Coca-Cola
(KO) unchanged.
Billionaire investor Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway largely sat out of the stock market in the quarter. The company sold $7 billion in shares and bought $1.7 billion in the third quarter. In the first nine months of the year, it was a net seller of about $23 billion in shares, compared with being a net buyer of $49 billion in the first nine months of 2022.
At the end of September, Berkshire was sitting on a record $157 billion in cash and equivalents, up from almost $10 billion at the end of June. It also bought back $1.1 billion of its own shares.
Write to Andrew Bary at andrew.bary@barrons.com and Brian Swint at brian.swint@barrons.com
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