- Warren Buffett's company exited BNY Mellon, US Bancorp, and Taiwan Semiconductor last quarter.
- Buffett recently slammed banks' bad behavior and raised concerns about China-Taiwan tensions.
Warren Buffett's $4 dumped several notable stocks, built a nearly billion-dollar stake in a financial company, and began reporting a subsidiary's holdings as its own last quarter.
The famed investor's conglomerate sold its remaining shares in BNY Mellon, US Bancorp, and Taiwan Semiconductor, its $4 revealed on Monday. Those positions were worth $2.4 billion, $3.1 billion, and $4.1 billion each — or $9.7 billion collectively — as recently as September 30 last year.
Buffett foreshadowed the disposals during Berkshire's $4 earlier this month. Without naming names, he $4 of recklessness and deceptive accounting, and said he liked the banking business less now than in the past. He also expressed discomfort with investing in Taiwan as opposed to Japan, likely because of mounting tensions between China and Taiwan.
Berkshire cashed out its entire RH stake, worth $631 million at the end of December, and pared several other holdings last quarter. On the other hand, Buffett and his team amassed 9.9 million shares of Capital One, a position valued at $954 million at the end of March.
They also disclosed a new stake in Vitesse Energy, which was worth just under $1 million at the quarter's close. Moreover, they $4 their Occidental Petroleum holdings to almost 212 million shares, as separate filings have shown.
Buffett's company also reported bigger stakes in Apple, Bank of America, Citigroup, HP, and Markel, plus a new position in Diageo. However, it noted in a $4 that those shares weren't purchased last quarter — they were previously disclosed by $4, a subsidiary of Gen Re.
Berkshire acquired Gen Re in 1998 and prior to the first quarter of this year, NEAM filed its SEC disclosures separately from Berkshire. Buffett and his colleagues have now started to include Gen Re's holdings in Berkshire's portfolio filings, excluding NEAM's client holdings where NEAM is acting as investment manager.
The inclusion of Gen Re's stocks helped to boost the value of Berkshire's portfolio by 9% to $325 billion as of March 31. Adding them offset the $13.3 billion of shares — or $10.4 billion on a net basis — that Buffett and his team $4.
For example, Berkshire included 2.1 million Chevron shares from Gen Re, which tempered the $4 to about 31 million shares or 19%.
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