Berkshire Hathaway’s stunning new tech stake

As Warren Buffett will get nearer to stepping down as CEO on the finish of subsequent month, he instructed shareholders he might be “going quiet,” however solely “kind of.”

Extra on his Thanksgiving letter, which appears prefer it may grow to be a considerable annual custom, under.

First:

There was a notable shock in Berkshire Hathaway’s end-of-Q3 fairness portfolio snapshot, launched after Friday’s closing bell.

Somebody in Omaha bought greater than 17.8 million Class A shares of Google’s dad or mum, Alphabet.

They’re presently valued at $4.9 billion, making them the most important Q3 addition in greenback phrases.

The information despatched the inventory 3.5% greater in after-hours buying and selling.

At this level, we do not know who made the decision.

Buffett has sometimes made purchases of this dimension, but it surely does not really feel like his form of inventory.

It’s up 51.3% year-to-date, together with a 37% climb within the third quarter.

Additionally, he has historically shied away from tech shares. (He considers Apple a client merchandise firm.)

On the 2019 Berkshire assembly, Buffett and Charlie Munger lamented that they’d “screwed up” by not shopping for Alphabet earlier as a result of they “may see in our personal operations how properly that Google promoting was working. And we simply sat there sucking our thumbs.”

On that day, the shares have been going for round $59, and so they gave no indication there have been ready to rectify their error.

Incoming CEO Greg Abel is not encumbered by that historical past, and Buffett has been handing over a lot of his duties to him.

Or it could possibly be one or each of the portfolio managers, Ted Weschler and Todd Combs.

Keep tuned.

Alphabet was by far the most important Q3 addition at $4.3 billion, primarily based on the September 30 value, properly forward of a $1.2 billion enhance for Chubb.

The most important decreases, Apple and Financial institution of America, had been foreshadowed by hints in Berkshire’s 10-Q virtually two weeks in the past.

(The Verisign discount was disclosed in early August.)

Berkshire’s Apple place was lower by virtually 15%, or $10.6 billion, to round 238 million shares.

It is down 74% since Berkshire started promoting two years in the past.

However Apple stays Berkshire’s largest fairness place at $64.9 billion, which is 21% of the portfolio’s present worth.

The Financial institution of America discount was smaller, simply 6.1%, or round $1.9 billion.

The remaining 238 million shares are presently valued at $29.9 billion, Berkshire’s third largest place, making up virtually 10% of the portfolio’s present worth.

It has been lower by 43% since early final 12 months.

An entire itemizing of Berkshire’s Q3 13F seems under. 

Many of the headlines on information tales about Warren Buffett’s Thanksgiving letter on Monday included this citation: “I am ‘going quiet.'”

However there was one other phrase that adopted that line close to the highest of the letter, getting its personal paragraph: “Kind of.”

Beginning subsequent 12 months, Greg Abel, “a fantastic supervisor, a tireless employee and an sincere communicator,” might be writing the annual assembly to shareholders and answering questions on the annual assembly. Buffett plans to take a seat on the world flooring with the opposite administrators.

However he wrote, “I’ll proceed speaking to you and my kids about Berkshire by way of my annual Thanksgiving message.”

This 12 months’s letter ran a bit greater than seven pages, in comparison with round three pages final 12 months, and sounded quite a bit just like the annual letters he is been writing for many years, with sections on the significance of luck, getting previous, his admiration for Berkshire shareholders, the numerous pals he has made over time in Omaha, and his full confidence in Abel’s potential to run the corporate.

He additionally revealed that whereas hospitalized as a baby, he obtained a fingerprint equipment and proceeded to take prints from the nuns caring for him, as a result of “sometime a nun would go unhealthy, and the FBI would discover that they’d uncared for to fingerprint nuns.”

(CNBC.com has this abstract)

The newsiest bit was his plan to “step up the tempo of lifetime presents” to the three foundations run by his kids, who, like Buffett, are getting older. (They’re 72,70, and 67.)

He desires to “enhance the likelihood that they may dispose of what’s going to basically be my complete property earlier than alternate trustees change them.”

However he additionally “desires to maintain a big quantity of ‘A’ shares till Berkshire shareholders develop the consolation with Greg that Charlie and I lengthy loved.”

The consequence, no less than for this 12 months, is a rise within the Class B shares (transformed from Class A) going to every basis to 400,000 shares from 300,000 shares final 12 months.

Together with a fourth unchanged donation to a basis named after his late spouse, the full as of the date of the presents elevated 17% to $1.3 billion.

Enjoying a extra minor function: Class B shares are up 4% since final 12 months’s presents.

Some hyperlinks might require a subscription:

Berkshire’s prime holdings of disclosed publicly traded shares within the U.S., Japan, and Hong Kong, by market worth, primarily based on at the moment’s closing costs.

Holdings are as of September 30, 2025 as reported in Berkshire Hathaway’s 13F submitting on November 14, 2025, apart from:

The complete record of holdings and present market values is accessible from CNBC.com’s Berkshire Hathaway Portfolio Tracker.

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.)

If you happen to aren’t already subscribed to this article, you’ll be able to join right here.

Additionally, Buffett’s annual letters to shareholders are extremely really helpful studying. There are collected right here on Berkshire’s web site.

— Alex Crippen, Editor, Warren Buffett Watch