Berkshire Hathaway bought more than $23 billion of stocks in the second quarter, one of its most active periods for purchases in several years, including at least $10 billion of Alphabet stock.
The company likely will detail much of the remaining $13 billion in a quarterly 13-F filing due late Friday.
Berkshire, like other big institutional investors, details its U.S-listed equity investments in quarterly 13-F reports due within 45 days of the end of each quarter. The 13-F due Friday will list equity holdings as of June 30.
Berkshire disclosed its $23-plus billion of stock purchases in its recent 10-Q for the second quarter, but that filing doesn't identify the amounts spent on individual securities.
Alphabet disclosed in June that Berkshire had purchased $10 billion of its shares, at around $350 a share, as part of its program to raise over $85 billion of equity for its enormous AI-driven capital spending program this year.
Berkshire had already accumulated a sizable stake in Alphabet of about 58 million shares since late 2025, and the additional $10 billion brought that total to about 86 million shares, Barron's estimates.
Barron's also estimates that Berkshire's June quarter-end Alphabet stake likely will be higher, at close to 100 million shares, based on disclosures in its recent 10-Q report. To come up with this estimate, we did some math involving the size of Berkshire's largest stock holdings relative to its total $324 billion equity holdings disclosed in the 10-Q.
If the Alphabet stake is close to 100 million shares, it would be worth nearly $35 billion and make it tied for Berkshire's No. 3 equity holding, about equal to Coca-Cola and behind Apple and American Express.
Berkshire also bought almost $2 billion of Japanese insurer Tokio Marine in the second quarter as part of a disclosed strategic alliance. It also bought $1 billion or more of the Japanese trading companies in which it holds more than $35 billion based on disclosed buys.
Assuming Berkshire bought additional Alphabet stock beyond the disclosed $10 billion, that would leave about $7 billion in unaccounted-for purchases that could be disclosed Friday.
One possible purchase is Microsoft -- there is some speculation that Berkshire took advantage of Microsoft's depressed stock in the second quarter to establish a position.
The unaccounted-for new equity holdings likely are concentrated in the category of what Berkshire calls commercial, industrial, and other. That is one of three categories of its equity holdings, along with consumer and financial. Berkshire disclosed a sizable increase in its cost basis of commercial and industrial stocks in its second quarter 10-Q, showing that it was a buyer of stocks in that category.
Berkshire sold more than $3 billion of stocks in the second quarter, according to the 10-Q. That's much less than the $24 billion of sales in the first quarter, when it unloaded about $15 billion of stocks held by former investment manager Todd Combs. The 13-F should provide some detail on those sales.
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