Berkshire Hathaway is still buying shares of Occidental Petroleum, but the pace is much slower in May than it was two months ago. And a new book details why Warren Buffett stopped looking at Apple as a tech stock.
 | FRI, MAY 13, 2022 | | | |
Buffett is still buying OXY, but much more slowly |
A new SEC filing reveals Berkshire Hathaway was buying more Occidental Petroleum shares this week, but the pace of the purchases has slowed dramatically since two months ago when, in Warren Buffett's words, "We bought all we could." On Tuesday and yesterday, Berkshire picked up another 902 thousand shares at an average price of $57.32. That brings its total disclosed stake to more than 143 million shares, 15.3% of OXY's outstanding shares, valued at almost $9.2 billion at today's closing price of $64.08. It was up 8.2% on the day. Occidental closed at $38.74 on February 25, the last trading day before Berkshire started buying on February 28. Its 65% gain since then has helped add almost $1.8 billion in value to Berkshire's purchase price of approximately $7.4 billion, a gain of almost 24%. |
In four days of buying this month, Berkshire has paid around $388 million for 6.8 million shares. That's an average of around $57.14 per share. Compare that to around 11 days of buying between February 28 and March 16 that saw Berkshire paying approximately $7 billion for 136.4 million shares, an average price of around $51.74. |
Buffett bought Apple after a friend lost a piece of his soul |
Warren Buffett started building his portion of Berkshire's $133.5 billion stake in Apple after he heard from portfolio manager Ted Weschler that Sandy Gottesman told him he "felt like I lost a piece of my soul" when the Berkshire director accidentally left his iPhone in a taxi in 2016. Business Insider reports that story appears in a new book written by Wall Street Journal reporter Tripp Mickle titled "After Steve: How Apple Became a Trillion-Dollar Company and Lost its Soul." According to the book, Buffett then noticed how many people, including his grandchildren, had been come obsessed with their smartphones. Weschler had already bought $1 billion of Apple for Berkshire. Now, writes Mickle, Buffett "realized Weschler was right: the iPhone wasn't tech, it was a modern-day Kraft Macaroni & Cheese." |
BUFFETT AROUND THE INTERNET Some links may require a subscription |
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HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE ARCHIVE |
'Apple is a different kind of business than IBM' |
By early 2018, Warren Buffett had substantially increased Berkshire's holdings in Apple—and sold off most of its IBM stock. In this April 3, 2018 appearance on CNBC's "Squawk Box" from the Warren Buffett Archive, he admits he "was wrong" when he bought IBM—but he's more confident in Apple and the psychological hold the company has over its consumers. |
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BERKSHIRE'S TOP U.S. STOCK HOLDINGS - May 13, 2022 |
Berkshire's top holdings of disclosed publicly-traded U.S. stocks by market value, based on today's closing prices. Holdings are as of December 31, 2021 as reported in Berkshire Hathaway's 13F filing on February 14, 2022, except for Apple, Bank of America, and U.S. Bancorp, which also include shares held as of December 31, 2021 as disclosed in New England Asset Management's 13F filing on February 14, 2022, and except for Occidental Petroleum, which is as of May 12, 2022. In addition to U.S. stocks, shares held as of December 31, 2021 of China's BYD, as listed in Buffett's 2021 letter to shareholders, are included. The price of those shares in U.S. trading is used to approximate the current market value of the position. The value of the stake as a percentage of the company's market value is fixed at what was listed as of December 31, 2021 in the letter. The full list of holdings and current market values is available from CNBC.com's Berkshire Hathaway Portfolio Tracker. |
Please send any questions or comments about the newsletter to me at alex.crippen@nbcuni.com. (Sorry, but we don't forward questions or comments to Buffett himself.) If you aren't already subscribed to this newsletter, you can sign up here. -- Alex Crippen, Editor, Warren Buffett Watch |
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