Andrew Bary

Berkshire Hathaway eliminated its equity stake in Citigroup and reduced its large holding in Bank of America while adding to its investment in Constellation Brands, according to a 13-F report with the Securities and Exchange Commission late Thursday.

Berkshire sold 14.6 million shares of Citigroup and cut its holding in Bank of America by 48.6 million shares to 631 million shares, while roughly doubling its stake on Constellation Brands to 12 million shares.

Berkshire also requested confidentiality with the Securities and Exchange Commission for one or more equity holdings that it omitted from the 13-F report. This likely reflected a desire by CEO Warren Buffett, who oversees Berkshire's equity portfolio, to continue accumulating one or more holdings without tipping off investors and potentially driving up the stock price.

Berkshire requested confidentiality when it was accumulating its stake in Chubb, disclosing that holding in 2024.

The new confidential holding, assuming it is one stock, is relatively small at between $1 billion and $2 billion, Barron's estimates based on information in the Berkshire 10-Q for the first quarter, released earlier in May. That new investment is likely in what Berkshire calls its commercial and industrial group of equity holdings.

Berkshire's position in Apple, the largest holding in its total equity portfolio of nearly $300 billion, was unchanged in the quarter at 300 million shares, a stake now worth $63 billion.

Berkshire eliminated its investment in Nu Holdings, which operates the Brazilian digital bank Nubank, selling 40 million shares, in the first quarter.

Berkshire reduced its investment in Liberty Formula One by about 50% to 3.5 million shares. It boosted its stake in Pool by about 865,000 shares to 1.5 million shares in the period. And it trimmed its holding in Capital One Financial by 300,000 shares to 7.15 million shares.

Barron's reported Wednesday that information in Berkshire's 10-Q filing for the first quarter indicated that Berkshire had been a seller of financial stocks in the period. We wrote that Citigroup, Bank of America, and Capital One were prime candidates for sales by Berkshire in the period.

That projection turned out to be accurate.

Overall, it was a light period of equity buys and sells by Buffett and two investment managers, Todd Combs and Ted Weschler, who together run about 10% of the equity portfolio. Buffett handles the rest.

Many of Berkshire's smaller equity holdings -- those under $2 billion to $3 billion -- are managed by either Combs or Weschler. They both generally operate independently of each other and Buffett.

Berkshire was a buyer of $3.2 billion of stocks in the first quarter and a seller of $4.7 billion, according to the 10-Q. The 13-F details changes to individual equity holdings among U.S.-listed stocks.

Write to Andrew Bary at andrew.bary@barrons.com

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May 15, 2025 17:16 ET (21:16 GMT)

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