(This is the Warren Buffett Watch newsletter, news and analysis on all things Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway. You can sign up here to receive it every Friday evening in your inbox.)<\/p>\n
Google parent\u00a0Alphabet\u00a0is now the third largest holding in\u00a0Berkshire Hathaway's equity portfolio.<\/p>\n
The company's\u00a0Q2 portfolio snapshot\u00a0filed with the SEC after today's closing bell reveals Berkshire owns almost 106 million of Alphabet's Class A and Class C shares, currently worth around $36.6 billion.<\/p>\n
That puts it about $1.5 billion ahead of\u00a0Coca-Cola's\u00a0$35.1 billion but well behind\u00a0Apple's\u00a0$69.7 billion and\u00a0American Express'\u00a0$51.9 billion in the portfolio.<\/p>\n
Roughly 60% of the 48.1 million shares added during the quarter were purchased by Berkshire directly from Alphabet in a $10 billion private placement sale\u00a0announced by the companies in early June.<\/p>\n
That suggests Berkshire bought around $7 billion of Alphabet shares on the open market.<\/p>\n
Alphabet is, by far, the biggest addition of the quarter but Berkshire also made a significant addition to its bet on\u00a0Delta Air Lines, increasing that position by 44%, or roughly $1.6 billion.<\/p>\n
Its 57.3 million shares are currently valued at $5.1 billion.<\/p>\n
Delta first returned to Berkshire's portfolio in the first quarter. It, and three other airline stocks, were sold by Warren Buffett at a loss in the first quarter of 2020 amid a\u00a0massive reduction in air travel as the COVID-19 pandemic was gaining steam.<\/p>\n
Over the years, Buffett's investment in airlines haven't worked out well, prompting him to suggest in his\u00a02007 letter to shareholders\u00a0that if a "farsighted capitalist had been present at Kitty Hawk, he would have done his successors a huge favor by shooting Orville down."<\/p>\n
In other additions, Berkshire's\u00a0Macy's\u00a0holdings jumped by 142%, but that works out to an increase of just around $100 million due to its relatively small size.<\/p>\n
And in the same quarter Berkshire announced its $6.8 acquisition of\u00a0Taylor Morrison Home, it added around $280 million to its stake in homebuilder\u00a0Lennar.<\/p>\n
Berkshire has been selling down its financial holdings in recent quarters and that trend continues.<\/p>\n
It trimmed its\u00a0Ally Financial\u00a0stake by 7% and cut its\u00a0Capital One\u00a0holding by 58%.<\/p>\n
Bank of America\u00a0was reduced by a modest 5.9%, but due to the large size of the holding, that reduced the value of the stake by around $1.7 billion, the biggest dollar cut of the quarter.<\/p>\n