Warren Buffett’s company found more bargains among beaten-down marquee stocks during the first quarter as it added to its sizable investments in Wells Fargo & Co, US Bancorp and Johnson & Johnson.
Berkshire Hathaway Inc revealed those investments and several other changes to its roughly US$41 billion US stock portfolio in documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday. The filing offers a snapshot of Berkshire’s holdings as of March 31.
Berkshire’s bank stock purchases are in line with comments Buffett made as his company held its annual shareholder meeting earlier this month. Buffett called US Bancorp and Wells Fargo extremely strong banks, and he said he would be willing to invest in them at current prices.
So perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that Berkshire bought nearly 12.4 million shares of Wells Fargo during the first quarter, giving it 302.6 million shares of the San Francisco-based bank.
It also added nearly 1.5 million shares of Minneapolis-based US Bancorp, so now it owns 69 million shares.
Berkshire’s investments in M&T Bank, SunTrust Banks Inc and Bank of America Corp remained unchanged at the end of March.
Berkshire bought 3.9 million shares of Johnson & Johnson during the quarter, giving it 32.5 million shares. That will replace some of the 33.1 million shares of the New Brunswick, New Jersey-based drug and medical products maker Buffett sold last year to free up cash for other investments.
Buffett told shareholders at his annual meeting that he would have rather held onto Berkshire’s stake in Johnson & Johnson, but last fall he decided Berkshire needed more cash on hand so it could invest US$8 billion in Goldman Sachs Group Inc and General Electric Co.
In addition to its investments, Berkshire owns more than 60 operating companies, including furniture, insurance, jewelry and candy firms, restaurants, natural gas and corporate jet firms.
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