Editorial StaffYou need to keep up on Warren Buffett stocks, because while the Berkshire Hathaway (BRKB) chief sticks to a winning investing formula, that doesn’t mean sitting still.
Berkshire Hathaway Sells Drug Stocks Again
In the third quarter, Berkshire was a net seller of stocks for the fourth straight quarter, according to its latest quarterly report Saturday. A 13F regulatory filing by Nov. 15 will detail the stocks that the conglomerate bought and sold in Q3. Check back for updates.
In Q2, Buffett’s Berkshire reduced stakes in drug stocks Merck (MRK), AbbVie (ABBV) and Bristol-Myers Squib (BMY) for a second straight quarter, after buying them for the first time in Q3 2020. He also trimmed Chevron (CVX) and General Motors (GM), while exiting Biogen (BIIB) altogether.
However, Buffett added to consumer stocks such as grocery chain Kroger (KR) and luxury furniture retailer RH (RH) in Q2, while picking up Merck spinoff Organon (OGN) for the first time.
Meanwhile, Berkshire kept positions in some of its biggest and longest-held holdings steady last quarter. Those included Bank of America (BAC) and Apple (AAPL), as well as Coca-Cola (KO) and American Express (AXP), both holdings since Q1 2001.
Major Turnover
Buffett is known as a buy-and-hold investor, hanging on to stocks for years and even decades. But there has been major turnover lately.
This year, he’s been shedding drug stocks after holding them for a handful of quarters.
In 2020, Berkshire quickly bought and sold Pfizer (PFE) and Barrick Gold (GOLD). It also dumped Costco (COST) and all of its airlines stocks amid the coronavirus hit to global air travel.
That came after Berkshire ditched drywall maker USG (USG) in 2019, IBM (IBM) in 2018, and General Electric (GE) in 2017.
Top Buffett stocks tend to be dividend growers. Take Coca-Cola stock, which Buffett began gathering in 1987 and which has grown dividends for nearly 60 years in a row.
Top Warren Buffett Stocks By Size
Here are the top 10 Warren Buffett stocks by number of shares, as of June 30:
- Bank of America (BAC), 1.01 billion
- Apple (AAPL), 887.1 million
- Coca-Cola (KO), 400 million
- Kraft Heinz (KHC), 325.6 million
- Verizon (VZ), 158.8 million
- American Express (AXP), 151.6 million
- U.S. Bancorp (USB), 128.9 million
- Bank of New York Mellon (BK), 72.4 million
- Kroger (KR), 61.8 million
- General Motors (GM), 60 million
Apple Stock Is No. 1 By Value
The Oracle of Omaha is a major institutional owner of Apple stock, which you could call the poster child for Warren Buffett stocks due to its strong earnings, returns and management.
In Q2, Berkshire Hathaway kept its huge position in the iPhone maker steady after making cuts last year. It also left a relatively smaller stake in Amazon.com (AMZN) unchanged. Berkshire first bought Apple in Q1 2016 and Amazon in Q1 2019.
Berkshire Hathaway also kept Bank of America unchanged last quarter, after plowing more than $2 billion into its shares in 2020.
While Bank of America is the No. 1 Warren Buffett stock by number of shares, Apple is the No. 1 stock in Berkshire’s portfolio by market value, worth a whopping $121.5 billion at the end of June.
Apple stock makes up 42% of Berkshire’s total equity portfolio, up from 6% at the end of 2016. It accounts for a big chunk of the portfolio’s surge in value over that period.
Between 1965 and 2020, the widely followed Berkshire Hathaway portfolio posted a 20% compounded annual gain, double that of the S&P 500 index, with dividends included.
