- Warren Buffett's company slashed or exited a bunch of bets in the fourth quarter, a filing revealed.
- The investor's company pared its stakes in Paramount and HP, and offloaded Markel and other stocks.
- Buffett and his team asked the SEC to keep confidential at least one position still being built.
Warren Buffett's company boosted three of its stock bets, exited four positions, and kept at least one holding under wraps in the fourth quarter, a Securities and Exchange Commission filing revealed on Wednesday.
The famed investor's Berkshire Hathaway raised its stake in Chevron by 14% last quarter, but the energy giant's stock slumped by over 10% in the period, meaning Berkshire's position was almost flat at $18.8 billion at the end of December. Berkshire also more than quadrupled its stake in SiriusXM to over 40 million shares, worth $220 million at the year's end, and added to its Occidental Petroleum position as previously disclosed.
On the other hand, Buffett's conglomerate slashed its stakes in Paramount Global by 32% and HP by 78%. It also sold its DR Horton, Markel, StoneCo, and Globe Life holdings in their entirety.
Buffett and his team omitted one or more in-progress bets from their public portfolio update, requesting confidential treatment from the SEC for a second straight quarter.
They took the same approach when amassing their multibillion-dollar stakes in Chevron and Verizon in 2020, as they worried that disclosing the incomplete wagers would drive up the price of the stocks, making it more expensive to finish building their desired stakes.
Berkshire's latest raft of stock sales won't surprise close followers, given Buffett's company disposed of a hefty $24 billion of shares on a net basis in the first nine months of last year.
In just the third quarter, it exited several long-held positions, including names like General Motors and Procter & Gamble which it had owned for over a decade.
Buffett, a value investor who specializes in sniffing out bargains, has struggled to find deals in recent years. Stocks have surged to record levels, there's been fierce competition for acquisitions from private equity firms, and even buybacks have grown less attractive as Berkshire's stock has climbed to fresh highs.
The dearth of buying opportunities helped fuel an increase in Berkshire's pile to an unprecedented $157 billion in the third quarter.