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Warren Buffett Just Spent $2.6 Billion Buying 6 Different Stocks for Berkshire Hathaway’s Portfolio. Here’s the Best of the Bunch.

Warren Buffett hasn’t seen very many compelling opportunities in the stock market over the past year. In 2024, he and his fellow portfolio managers at Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A) (NYSE: BRK.B) sold over $143 billion worth of equities. The holding company divested massive portions of its stakes in household names including Apple and Bank of America.

The vast majority of the proceeds from those stock sales went to pay a record tax bill and add to a growing pile of cash and Treasury bills. But Buffett made one thing clear in his letter to shareholders in February: “Berkshire will never prefer ownership of cash-equivalent assets over the ownership of good businesses, whether controlled or only partially owned.”

To that end, Buffett was able to invest about $2.6 billion of Berkshire’s assets in six publicly traded equities in the fourth quarter. Here’s what investors need to know and which one presents the best opportunity right now.

Image source: The Motley Fool.

Berkshire Hathaway reported a net increase in stock purchases of about $3.4 billion in the fourth quarter. But not every equity purchase Berkshire makes is a publicly traded U.S. company. Buffett said it also increased its Japanese investments in the quarter, and it may have bought other non-marketable equities.

Here are the six publicly traded U.S. stocks Buffett and his team added to in Berkshire Hathaway’s portfolio and how much they spent buying shares.

  • Occidental Petroleum, $409.1 million.

  • VeriSign, $89.9 million.

  • Sirius XM, $296.8 million.

  • Pool Corp., estimated $70 million.

  • Domino’s Pizza, estimated $470 million.

  • Constellation Brands (NYSE: STZ), estimated $1.3 billion.

The six publicly traded stocks Berkshire added to its portfolio in the fourth quarter all have one notable thing in common. None of them have particularly large market capitalizations. The biggest of the bunch, Occidental, has a market value of $43.7 billion as of this writing. Sirius XM has a market cap of just $7.7 billion.

Berkshire Hathaway notably already holds substantial portions of Occidental, Sirius XM, and VeriSign, which has a $22.1 billion market value. And with the relatively small market caps of the other appealing investments, Buffett has struggled to invest very much cash recently. There’s simply not enough room in the market for those stocks for Buffett and his team to make a big acquisition, considering they’re managing over $600 billion in total investable assets.

That speaks to Buffett’s insistence on value and the challenges facing Berkshire’s sizable portfolio. “There remain only a handful of companies in this country capable of truly moving the needle at Berkshire,” Buffett wrote in his 2023 letter to shareholders. “Some we can value; some we can’t. And, if we can, they have to be attractively priced.”


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