(That is the Warren Buffett Watch publication, information and evaluation on all issues Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway. You’ll be able to enroll right here to obtain it each Friday night in your inbox.)
Berkshire was a internet vendor of shares in Buffett’s remaining quarter as CEO
Berkshire has bought Apple shares in every of the final three quarters and in seven of the previous 9 three-month intervals, lowering its shares by a bit greater than 75% because the summer season of 2023.
Even so, Apple stays Berkshire’s largest fairness stake with a price of $60.3 billion based mostly on Friday’s shut.
The Apple gross sales, nonetheless, have helped #2 American Specific shut the hole from nearly $150 billion to simply below $8 billion.
It is six straight quarters of gross sales for Financial institution of America, lowering that stake’s shares by 75% because the center of 2024.
Berkshire’s Amazon.com stake was valued at $2.2 billion on the finish of the third quarter. It is now right down to $478 million after the sale of seven.7 million shares throughout the fourth quarter, a minimize of 77%.
In 2019, when Amazon first appeared in Berkshire’s portfolio with an $860 million place, Buffett went out of his option to inform CNBC’s Becky Fast it wasn’t his determination, he did not suppose it was a big holding, and no large “persona change” had reversed his conventional aversion to tech shares.
Barron’s suggests it was portfolio supervisor Todd Combs who purchased the shares and the large discount could also be associated to his December departure to hitch JPMorgan Chase.
Traders weren’t deterred by Berkshire’s gross sales of the three shares. All of them ended greater on the week.
Shopping for oil and insurance coverage
Berkshire elevated its share stake in Chevron by 6.6% throughout the fourth quarter, including one other $1.2 billion to the place based mostly on the oil big’s year-end inventory worth.
That is the most important increase for any Berkshire inventory in This fall, however there have not been any particularly vital modifications within the Chevron place over the previous three years.
Greater crude oil costs have helped raise Chevron’s share worth by 20.7% because the starting of the 12 months, placing the present worth of the stake at nearly $24 billion, up from $19.8 billion on December 31.
It’s #5 by worth amongst Berkshire’s inventory holdings.
Chubb was the second largest purchase of the quarter with a 9.3% share enhance including about $910 million to the worth of the place based mostly on the insurer’s December 31 inventory worth.
Berkshire’s 34.2 million shares are at present valued at nearly $11.4 billion, making it the eighth largest holding in Berkshire’s fairness portfolio.
Berkshire takes small step again into the newspaper enterprise
The one inventory added to Berkshire’s portfolio throughout the fourth quarter was a comparatively small stake in The New York Instances Firm.
It’s at present valued at $395 million, up from $352 million as of the top of the 12 months due to a 12.4% bounce for the newspaper’s share worth.
The New York Instances constructing is seen in Manhattan, New York, August 3, 2020.
Shannon Stapleton | Reuters
Buffett’s love of newspapers goes approach again. He delivered The Washington Publish and different DC newspapers as a toddler, purchased a really worthwhile Publish stake for Berkshire within the Seventies, had an in depth friendship with Publish writer Katherine Graham, and labored carefully with the editor of a small Berkshire-owned Omaha weekly that gained a Pulitzer Prize in 1973.
However in 2020, Berkshire bought its newspaper holdings, together with Buffett’s hometown each day, The Omaha World-Herald, and The Buffalo Information, a Berkshire property since 1977, to Lee Enterprises for $140 million.
Primarily based on the comparatively small measurement of the Instances stake – it accounts for 0.1% of the worth of Berkshire’s fairness portfolio – it nearly definitely was not a Buffett buy, with both portfolio supervisor Ted Weschler, or Todd Combs (earlier than he departed) making the choice to purchase.
Whereas the Instances buy is sort of spare change by Berkshire requirements, it’s greater than the $250 million Jeff Bezos paid for The Washington Publish in 2013, a worth that was thought on the time to be 4 occasions what the newspaper was price.
The present market worth of the Instances Firm is $12.6 billion, giving Berkshire a 3.1% stake.
Berkshire’s vote of confidence appeared so as to add to the Instances’ momentum, with shares ending the week with a 6.9% achieve at an all-time closing excessive close to $78.
An entire checklist of Berkshire’s U.S. holdings as of December 31 seems under.
Berkshire utility settles federal wildfire claims
Berkshire Hathaway’s PacifiCorp took two vital steps this week to cope with the big legal responsibility claims it faces over wildfires within the West.
On Friday, the Justice Division introduced the utility has agreed to pay $575 million to resolve harm claims lodged by the U.S. authorities over six fires in California and Oregon in 2020 and 2022.
The federal government says PacifiCorp’s electrical traces “negligently” began all six fires. Its information launch notes the “claims resolved by this settlement are allegations solely and there was no dedication of legal responsibility. PacifiCorp continues to disclaim legal responsibility for these fires.”
A DOJ official is quoted as saying the settlement “strikes a steadiness by addressing the federal government’s vital fire-suppression prices and lack of pure sources with out stopping PacifiCorp from providing electrical energy at truthful costs.”
A PacifiCorp assertion says the corporate has now settled “practically 90% of identified claims” for greater than $2.2 billion, “offering certainty for purchasers and progress towards a financially wholesome utility.”
A NASA MODIS satellite tv for pc picture reveals wildfires in Oregon, U.S. September 8, 2020. Image taken September 8, 2020.
Maxar Applied sciences | through Reuters
BUFFETT & BERKSHIRE AROUND THE INTERNET
Some hyperlinks might require a subscription:
HIGHLIGHTS FROM CNBC’S BUFFETT ARCHIVE
How Berkshire’s utilities now reply to the specter of wildfires (2025)
Greg Abel describes how Berkshire utilities are working to scale back the danger their gear may contribute to wildfires.
BECKY QUICK (relaying a shareholders’ query): “Please, focus on your technique on easy methods to defend our firm from future liabilities attributable to wildfires blamed on our electrical utility firms out West.”
WARREN BUFFETT: Effectively, that is an excellent query. And — and we have — we have made some errors up to now after we purchased PacifiCorp in 2000, what, 5?
GREG ABEL: Sure.
WARREN BUFFETT: Walter Scott, and David Sokol, and myself, three guys who — capitalists at coronary heart — and we’re coping with our personal cash.
However we made a mistake by not carving it up into seven states that we have been shopping for. And it got here — it got here with an aggregation, the place it wasn’t state by state. And we — we stored the identical — the identical construction. And that was a — that was a giant mistake.
There are — properly, each a part of the nation goes to want electrical energy. And there are going to be locations the place — the place public electrical — privately-held electrical utilities could be very silly to function.
And the way that will get resolved in a democracy, we are going to discover out.
However these are the info, as they stand now, I’d say.
Greg?
GREG ABEL: Yeah. The truth, the danger across the wildfires, i.e., that the wildfires happen, they are not going away. And we all know that. And the danger in all probability goes up every year, so —
However what we will do to scale back the danger of it impacting our system, and our underlying asserts, and the, sadly, the liabilities that include such occasions, we will change that and handle that…
We then take it even additional. And that is one thing Warren and I’ve mentioned many occasions, is that the utilities have began to acknowledge when we have now these uncommon climate occasions. And Warren touched on what’s been taking place in Nebraska with storms.
However they’re equally occurring — or vital occasions occurring — out West.
However when we have now these, we have gotten very, superb at saying, OK, we have now to handle the system in a different way. We’ll doubtlessly de-energize as a result of there’s prone to be an occasion.
However the one factor we hadn’t tackled — and that is very related to the one vital occasion we had again in 2020 in PacifiCorp — is we did not de-energize the system as the fireplace was approaching, as a result of our staff and the entire administration group had been, all their lives, educated to maintain the lights on.
And the very last thing they need to do is flip these lights off and have a system de-energized.
And after these occasions, and as we actually checked out how we will transfer ahead in managing the belongings and lowering that threat, we have now clearly acknowledged, as a group, that we have now to de-energize these belongings.
BERKSHIRE STOCK WATCH
BRK.A inventory worth: $746,500.00
BRK.B inventory worth: $498.20
BRK.B P/E (TTM): 15.93
Berkshire market capitalization: $1,074,365,958,250
Berkshire Money as of September 30: $381.7 billion (Up 10.9% from June 30)
Excluding Rail Money and Subtracting T-Payments Payable: $354.3 billion (Up 4.3% from June 30)
No Berkshire inventory repurchases since Could 2024.
(All figures are as of the date of publication, until in any other case indicated)
BERKSHIRE’S TOP EQUITY HOLDINGS – Feb. 20, 2026
Berkshire’s prime holdings of disclosed publicly traded shares within the U.S. and Japan, by market worth, based mostly on the newest closing costs.
Holdings are as of December 31, 2025, as reported in Berkshire Hathaway’s 13F submitting on February 17, 2026, aside from:
The complete checklist of holdings and present market values is offered from CNBC.com’s Berkshire Hathaway Portfolio Tracker.
QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS
Please ship any questions or feedback in regards to the publication to me at alex.crippen@nbcuni.com. (Sorry, however we do not ahead questions or feedback to Buffett himself.)
When you aren’t already subscribed to this text, you’ll be able to enroll right here.
Additionally, Buffett’s annual letters to shareholders are extremely really useful studying. There are collected right here on Berkshire’s web site.
— Alex Crippen, Editor, Warren Buffett Watch