Few investment moves are watched as closely as Berkshire Hathaway’s, as they give some insight every quarter into Warren Buffett’s thinking on equities.
Late Tuesday, the firm notified the SEC of its stock holdings as of June 30. The result: Buffett & Co. bought more shares of Goldman Sachs, Apple, Teva Pharmaceuticals, and two airlines: Southwest Airlines and Delta Air Lines.
The disclosures were made in Berkshire Hathaway’s 13-F form filed each quarter with the SEC.
Berkshire first bought Goldman’s preferred stock during the financial crisis in 2008. In the second quarter, it increased its stake by 21% to hold 13.3 million Goldman shares worth $2.92 billion at the end of June.
While Buffett has tended to steer clear of the tech industry, he’s made an exception with Apple, saying it has “an enormously useful product” in the iPhone. Berkshire boosted its stake in Apple by about 5% to 252 million shares on June 30, a stake worth nearly $47 billion. The purchases came as Apple continued its march toward a $1 trillion valuation.
Buffett has also lamented some of his past investments in airlines, saying they are capital expensive and earn little money. But Berkshire increased its stakes in two airlines—Delta and Southwest—while trimming holdings in United and American Airlines, the form showed.
Berkshire also increased its stake in drugmaker Teva Pharmaceutical by 6.7% in the second quarter, after adding to it substantially in the first quarter.
For decades, Buffett ran Berkshire along with his partner Charlie Munger, although recently the firm has also relied on the firm’s money managers Todd Combs and Ted Weschler. Berkshire wholly owns companies such as GEICO, Dairy Queen and Fruit of the Loom but also invests in publicly traded companies.
