By Dr. David Kass. Originally published at ValueWalk.
In an SEC 13F filing after the market closed on August 14, Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE:BRK.A) (NYSE:BRK.B) revealed several changes to its portfolio during the quarter ending on June 30, 2015. The largest changes were:
(1) An increase of about $450 million in its stake in Charter Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ:CHTR). This represents a 42% increase in Charter to $1.5 billion, which is currently in the process of acquiring Time Warner Inc (NYSE:TWX) Cable Inc (NYSE:TWC). This is an investment of Ted Weschler and/or Todd Combs.
(2) Berkshire eliminated its $600 million investment in Phillips 66 (Ted Weschler and/or Todd Combs) and its $80 million stake in National Oilwell Varco (Todd Combs).
(3) Berkshire reduced its stake in Viacom by 32 percent or $100 million (Todd Combs).
This 13F filling also noted that one or more of Berkshire’s investments received confidential treatment. The identity of these new investments will likely be revealed in Berkshire’s 13F filing for the third quarter which will be released on or about November 16. Berkshire’s 10-Q for the second quarter indicated that it made additional equity investments of about $3 billion in the quarter ending June 30, 2015.
Finally, on July 24, 2015, AT&T completed its $49 billion acquisition of DirecTV. Under the terms of the merger, DirecTV shareholders received 1.892 shares of AT&T common stock and $28.50 in cash, per share of DirecTV. Berkshire Hathaway’s 13-F revealed that it owned 31.4 million shares of DirecTV (Todd Combs and Ted Weschler) as of June 30, 2015. That holding likely converted into 59.4 million shares of AT&T valued at approximately $2 billion at AT&T’s closing price of $34.29 on July 24. In addition, Berkshire Hathaway likely received approximately $900 million in cash.
Berkshire Hathaway’s 13-F filing is available at:
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