Berkshire Hathaway appears to have sold $ 4 billion in Apple shares in third quarter, filings show

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Berkshire Hathaway

(symbol: BRK / A) seems to sell around $ 4 billion

Apple

shares (AAPL) in the third quarter, according to disclosures in the company’s 10-Q report released on Saturday in conjunction with the release of the company’s third quarter results.

Berkshire was also a seller of financial stocks and a buyer of industrial stocks over the period, according to the 10-Q. Berkshire’s stock portfolio, which totaled $ 245 billion as of September 30, is overseen by CEO Warren Buffett.

Wall Street will soon learn more about Berkshire’s third quarter investment activity when the company’s individual holdings on September 30 are released – likely next Friday or Monday.

Berkshire has not explicitly said it has sold Apple shares, but an analysis of its holdings suggests so.

Berkshire held $ 111.7 billion in Apple shares on September 30, or roughly 965 million shares based on Apple’s closing price that day of $ 115.81. As of June 30, he held $ 91.5 billion, or about 1.003 billion shares based on Apple’s split-adjusted share price of $ 91.20 that day. This indicates a sale of around 38 million shares, or roughly $ 4 billion. Berkshire had no immediate comment.

Berkshire’s 10-Q showed Berkshire bought about $ 17.6 billion in shares in the third quarter and sold $ 12.9 billion, for a net purchase of almost $ 5 billion.

Based on a comparison of the cost base of three key groups of stocks in Q3 10-Q with the cost base of those groups in Q2 10-Q, Berkshire was a net buyer of commercial stocks and industries and a net seller of financial stocks. The third group is that of consumer products.

The base cost of industrials rose $ 15 billion in the third quarter, while the base cost of financials fell by about $ 6 billion, adjusted for disclosed purchases of $ 2 billion.

Bank of America

stock (BAC) in the third quarter.

A third quarter sale that was disclosed by Berkshire was worth around $ 2 billion

Wells fargo

(WFC) as it continued to reduce its stake in the bank.

Berkshire owns more than one billion shares of Bank of America and approximately 137 million shares of Wells Fargo. Berkshire also bought less than $ 1 billion

Snowflake

(SNOW) shares as part of the cloud company’s IPO in September.

Buffett could have decided to concentrate Berkshire’s once large and diverse stake in his favorite bank stocks, Bank of America.

Berkshire may have continued to sell its stake in

JPMorgan Chase

(JPM) in the third quarter after reducing it by about 60% in the second quarter to 22 million shares. Berkshire was a large holder of US

Bancorp

(USB) and

PNC Financial Services Group

(PNC) on June 30. Berkshire sold

Goldman Sachs Group

(GS) earlier this year.

It will be interesting to see which industrials stocks were bought by Berkshire in the third quarter. One possibility is the hard-hit energy stocks. Buffett knows the industry well, Berkshire having held a stake in

Exxon Mobil

(XOM) over the past decade.

Write to Andrew Bary at [email protected]