What Warren Buffett is buying and selling now

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. sold stakes in Home Depot Inc. and CarMax Inc. and cut its holding of Nike Inc. as the billionaire replaced a retiring investment manager and built the company’s cash holdings. Buffett’s firm lowered its stake in Nike, the world’s largest sporting-goods provider, by 52 percent in the third quarter to 3.6 million shares, Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire said yesterday in a regulatory filing that listed U.S. equity holdings as of Sept. 30. Berkshire had 2.8 million shares of Home Depot, the largest U.S. home improvement retailer, and 7.7 million shares of auto seller CarMax on June 30. Buffett’s firm also eliminated stakes in trash hauler Republic Services Inc., NRG Energy Inc. and Iron Mountain Inc., a provider of records management. Berkshire divested or reduced holdings in 12 companies and boosted stakes in San Francisco- based Wells Fargo & Co. and Johnson & Johnson. Berkshire disclosed a new investment in Bank of New York Mellon Corp., the world’s largest custody bank. Buffett has trimmed Berkshire’s portfolio since the 2008 financial crisis and instead focused on buying whole companies. The 80-year-old chairman, renowned for multibillion dollar stock bets, is reshuffling his holdings as he welcomes hedge-fund manager Todd Combs, hired by Berkshire in October. Lou Simpson, 73, once identified by Buffett as his emergency stand in, is scheduled to depart at yearend from Berkshire’s Geico unit. “It looks to me like he’s selling out of the Lou Simpson holdings,” said Gerald Martin, a finance professor at American University’s Kogod School of Business in Washington. Buffett may be amassing funds for Combs to invest “or he may have something up his sleeves, a potential acquisition somewhere and he’s building the cash for that,” Martin said. ‘Pot Gets Bigger’ Berkshire’s equity sales exceeded purchases by about $1.2 billion in the third quarter, according to a Nov. 5 regulatory filing. It was the sixth period out of eight in which the company was a net seller of equity securities. Berkshire held $57.6 billion in stocks on Sept. 30. “The equity investments have been a great driver of value for the company, but as the pot gets bigger it’s harder to put it to work,” said Paul Howard, director of research at Solstice Investment Research in Glastonbury, Connecticut. “He’d rather put the money into acquisitions of businesses and make it easier on the new investment managers” by leaving them with a smaller portfolio to oversee, Howard said. Buffett acquired Burlington Northern Santa Fe in February for $26.5 billion to add a railroad to Berkshire’s collection of more than 70 subsidiaries in industries spanning insurance, energy and ice cream. In the last two years, the firm has cut its stockholding of Moody’s Corp. by more than a third and divested a stake in SunTrust Banks Inc. Procter & Gamble Berkshire trimmed its stake in Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble Co., the world’s largest consumer-products company, by 1.7 percent to 76.8 million shares in the third quarter. Holdings of Comcast Corp., the largest U.S. cable-television company, dropped about 98 percent. Stephen Burke, a Berkshire director, is chief operating officer at Philadelphia-based Comcast. Berkshire cut its stakes in Naperville, Illinois-based Nalco Holding Co., the provider of industrial water-treatment services; Ingersoll-Rand Plc, the Swords, Ireland-based maker of air conditioners, and Fiserv Inc., the Brookfield, Wisconsin- based provider of electronic commerce systems and services. “Investment decisions are made for any number of reasons, not all of which reflect the underlying strengths of a business,” Dan O’Neill, spokesman for Iron Mountain, said in an e-mail. “We’re not privy to how or why those decisions are made, but our business is strong and performing well.” BNY Mellon John Demming, a spokesman for Comcast, and Atlanta-based Home Depot’s Ron DeFeo declined to comment. Buffett didn’t respond to a message left with an assistant. Representatives of Nike and CarMax didn’t immediately respond to messages. Buffett’s firm had 1.99 million shares of BNY Mellon at the end of the third quarter. The stake in Wells Fargo rose to 336.4 million shares from 320.1 million at the end of June. Berkshire has increased its Wells Fargo stake in four quarters since the beginning of 2009 as reductions in short-term interest rates and financial industry rescue programs helped revive banks’ profits. BNY Mellon advanced 37 cents to $28.10 in late trading yesterday. “That is very much a vote of confidence not only in Wells Fargo, but in the commercial banks and the banking sector,” said David Kass, a professor at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business. “Warren Buffett is perhaps more confident now in the economic outlook that our recovery, however slow, will continue.” Johnson & Johnson Buffett, who also is chief executive officer, has said Berkshire will divide his roles as head of investments and operations among more than one successor. Combs, who has specialized in financial-services investments, may initially manage $2 billion to $3 billion, Fortune magazine reported. Berkshire increased its stake by 3.2 percent in New Brunswick, New Jersey-based Johnson & Johnson, the world’s largest maker of health-care products, according to the filing. The stake was 42.6 million shares as of Sept. 30. Buffett has said he built his equity portfolio by buying and holding stocks of companies that he believes have durable competitive advantages. Berkshire is the top shareholder in Coca-Cola Co., the world’s largest soft-drink maker, and American Express Co., the biggest credit-card issuer by purchases. Berkshire increased its stake in Munich Re, the world’s biggest reinsurer, to more than 10 percent in October. Buffett’s firm disclosed a 3 percent stake in the German company in January. Yesterday’s filing by Berkshire includes only U.S. holdings. Equity investments abroad are reported to local regulators. Bloomberg