Highlights From Berkshire Hathaway's 13-F Filing

With wide-moat-rated Berkshire Hathaway BRK.B BRK.A already giving us a decent glimpse of its buying activity during the first quarter, there were only a few things in its recent 13-F filing that we would consider new information. When Berkshire reported earnings earlier this month, it noted it had purchased $51.1 billion and sold $9.7 billion of equity securities during the March quarter. Through the company's 10-Q filing and comments around the annual meeting, we noted that Berkshire had purchased 136.4 million shares of Occidental Petroleum for $6.9 billion, an additional 120.9 million shares of Chevron for what we estimated was $18.2 billion, and another 49.7 million shares of Activision Blizzard for $3.8 billion. On top of that, we had assumed that some of the 109.8 million HP shares that Berkshire reported holding at the start of April were acquired in the March quarter, and we were mainly right, as the insurer reported 104.5 million shares (purchased for an estimated $3.7 billion) in its 13-F filing. This amounts to $32.5 billion worth of purchases, leaving around $18.6 billion in stock purchases unaccounted for. There were some transactions that will prove more difficult to pin down, like Berkshire's shoring up of its positions in the five Japanese trading houses--Itochu, Marubeni, Mitsubishi, Mitsui, and Sumitomo--by bringing the insurer's ownership stake in each firm up to 5.85% during the first quarter, as well as the purchase of "several different German securities." What we do know from the 13-F filing is that the insurer acquired more shares of Apple, Floor & Decor, Liberty Formula One, RH, and General Motors during the March quarter for an estimated $1.7 billion. Berkshire also committed an estimated $8.5 billion to new-money purchases of Citigroup, Paramount Global, Celanese, McKesson, Markel, and Ally Financial during the period.