(Bloomberg) — Berkshire Hathaway’s cash pile reached $325.2 billion in the third quarter, as Warren Buffett continued to hold back on major acquisitions while shedding some of his most important stakes, leaving the conglomerate It became a record.
Berkshire announced in a statement Saturday that it would again reduce its stake in Omaha, Nebraska-based Apple Inc. The company’s stake in the iPhone maker was valued at $69.9 billion at the end of the quarter, down from $84.2 billion in the second quarter, indicating Berkshire cut its stake by about 25%.
Berkshire first made its Apple stock public in 2016, spending $31.1 billion on 908 million Apple shares it owned by the end of 2021.
Buffett said in May that Apple would likely remain Berkshire’s largest shareholder, suggesting tax issues were a motive for the sale. “We are not concerned at all about building a cash position under the current circumstances,” he said at the company’s annual general meeting.
“It’s hard to believe that Warren Buffett was this comfortable with technology,” said Edward Jones analyst Jim Shanahan.
Kathy Seifert, a research analyst at CFRA, said Berkshire’s Apple stock is “starting to make up an unusually large portion” of its overall portfolio. “I think it made sense to lighten that exposure a little bit,” she said.
