Berkshire Hathaway’s Surprising New Technology Stock

As Warren Buffett approaches his retirement as CEO at the end of next month, he has told shareholders that he intends to be “silent” but that it will only be “sort of”.

More about his Thanksgiving letter, which is likely to become a virtual annual tradition, below.

beginning:

There was a notable surprise in Berkshire Hathaway’s end-of-third quarter snapshot of its stock portfolio, released after the closing bell on Friday.

Someone in Omaha bought more than 17.8 million shares of Class A stock in Google’s parent company. alphabet.

Its current valuation is $4.9 billion, the largest addition in the third quarter in dollar terms.

The stock price rose 3.5% in after-hours trading on the news.

At this time, we do not know who is calling.

Buffett has typically bought stocks of this size, but this doesn’t seem like his kind of stock.

Year-to-date, it’s up 51.3%, including a 37% increase in the third quarter.

He has also traditionally avoided tech stocks. (He thinks of Apple as a consumer products company.)

At the 2019 Berkshire meeting, Buffett and Charlie Munger lamented that they “made a mistake” by not buying Alphabet sooner. That’s because “we could see in our own operations how well Google’s ads were working, and we were just sitting there sucking our thumbs.”

The stock was trading at around $59 that day, but the company showed no sign it was prepared to correct its mistake.

Incoming CEO Greg Abel is untroubled by that background, and Buffett has handed over many of his duties to him.

Or it could be one or both of portfolio managers Ted Weschler and Todd Combs.

stay tuned.

Alphabet had by far the largest addition in the third quarter, at $4.3 billion, based on Sept. 30 prices, far outpacing Alphabet’s $1.2 billion increase. Chub.

The biggest decrease was apple and bank of americawas heralded by Berkshire’s 10-Q tip nearly two weeks ago.

( verisign The reduction was announced in early August).

Berkshire’s Apple stock fell by about 15%, or $10.6 billion, to about 238 million shares.

Berkshire has fallen 74% since it began selling two years ago.

But Apple remains Berkshire’s largest stock position, at $64.9 billion, or 21% of the portfolio’s current value.

Bank of America’s cut was smaller at just 6.1%, or about $1.9 billion.

The remaining 568 million shares are now valued at $29.9 billion, making it Berkshire’s third-largest position and accounting for nearly 10% of the portfolio’s current value.

This is a 43% reduction since the beginning of last year.

Below is a complete list of Berkshire’s Q3 13Fs.

Many of the headlines on Monday’s news stories about Warren Buffett’s Thanksgiving letter included the quote, “I’m ‘keeping quiet.'”

However, there was another phrase after that line near the beginning of the letter, creating a separate paragraph: “Sort of.”

Starting next year, Greg Abel, an “excellent manager, tireless worker and honest communicator”, will write the AGM for shareholders and answer questions at the AGM. Buffett will sit on the arena floor with other board members.

But he wrote, “I will continue to tell you and my children about the Berkshires through my annual Thanksgiving message.”

This year’s letter, which was just over seven pages long compared to last year’s about three, was similar to the annual letters he has written over the decades, with stories about the importance of luck, aging, his admiration for Berkshire’s stockholders, the many friends he has made over the years in Omaha, and his full confidence in Abel’s ability to run the company.

He also revealed that he received a fingerprint kit when he was hospitalized as a child, and that the nuns who cared for him continued to collect fingerprints. Because “one day the nun will get sick and we’ll find out that the FBI failed to take her fingerprints.”

(CNBC.com has this overview)

Most newsworthy was his plan to “accelerate the pace of inter vivos gifts” to three foundations run by Buffett’s aging children. (They are 72, 70, and 67 years old.)

“I want to increase the likelihood that a replacement trustee will dispose of essentially all of my assets before they are replaced,” he said.

But he also wants to “hold on to a significant amount of ‘A’ stock until Berkshire shareholders develop the comfort with Greg that Charlie and I have enjoyed for many years.”

As a result, at least this year, the number of Class B shares (convertible from Class A) going to foundations has increased to 400,000 from 300,000 last year.

Including a fourth, unchanged gift to a foundation named after his late wife, the total rose 17% to $1.3 billion as of the date of the gift.

Plays a smaller role: Class B shares are up 4% since last year’s gift.

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Berkshire’s top public holdings by market value in the U.S., Japan, and Hong Kong, based on today’s closing prices.

Holdings are as of September 30, 2025, as reported in Berkshire Hathaway’s November 14, 2025 13F filing. However, the following cases are excluded.

A complete list of holdings and current market value is available on CNBC.com’s Berkshire Hathaway Portfolio Tracker.

If you have any questions or comments about the newsletter, please send them to alex.crippen@nbcuni.com. (Sorry, we do not forward questions or comments to Mr. Buffett himself.)

If you haven’t subscribed to this newsletter yet, you can sign up here.

I also highly recommend Buffett’s annual letter to shareholders. It’s collected here on Berkshire’s website.

— Alex Crippen, Warren Buffett Watch Editor