Warren Buffett’s company sold almost one-third of its remaining IBM Corp shares in the third quarter of this year and made several tweaks to its stock investments.
Berkshire Hathaway Inc on Tuesday filed a quarterly snapshot of its portfolio with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Investors watch Berkshire’s filings closely because of Buffett’s successful record.
The company sold off nearly 32 percent of its remaining IBM shares to leave it with 37 million shares at the end of the third quarter.
Before this spring, Berkshire held more than 80 million IBM shares.
Berkshire officials do not generally comment on the quarterly filings or the reasons for their portfolio moves.
However, Buffett has said that IBM has not performed the way he expected since he first bought shares in 2011.
IBM’s stock rose to US$215 in March 2013, but on Tuesday closed at just less than US$149, a decline of more than 30 percent, as it has faced stiff competition in the cloud-computing business from Microsoft Corp and Amazon.com Inc.
The quarterly filings with the commission do not make clear who made all the investments at Berkshire.
However, Buffett handles the biggest investments in Berkshire’s portfolio, such as Coca-Cola Co and Wells Fargo & Co, while investments of less than US$1 billion are likely to be the work of Berkshire’s two other investment managers.
The latest quarter is the first since Berkshire exercised the Bank of America Corp warrants it received in 2011, when Buffett invested US$5 billion in the bank.
Berkshire reported holding 679 million Bank of America shares at the end of September.
During the quarter, Berkshire also picked up nearly 4 million more Apple Inc shares to give it 134 million shares of the iPhone maker.
Berkshire also boosted its investment in Synchrony Financial to 20.8 million shares, up from 17.5 million in June.
The Omaha-based conglomerate Buffett leads also added to its Monsanto Co Inc investment and it trimmed its stakes in Wells Fargo and Charter Communications Inc.
Besides investments, Berkshire owns more than 90 companies, including insurance, retail, manufacturing, railroad and candy companies.
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