Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A) (NYSE: BRK.B), the conglomerate led by CEO Warren Buffett, has just bought another 34 million shares of Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) values.
Buffett and his team bought the shares for an average price of just under $ 24 earlier this week, which translates to more than $ 800 million invested. This brings Berkshire’s stake in Buffett’s largest bank stake to 11.3% of the company. Bank of America is Berkshire’s second largest equity position, with a total market value of $ 23.9 billion.
Warren Buffett. Image source: The Motley Fool.
Buffett is buying other bank stocks right now?
An important thing to know is that the only reason we know about recent Bank of America purchases is that Berkshire’s stake is greater than 10% of the company, a ownership threshold that comes with increased reporting requirements.
Berkshire owns shares in several other large banks, but most are well below the 10% threshold. The company owns only 1.9% of JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM)8.4% of Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC)and 2.2% of PNC Financial (NYSE: PNC). And we won’t get a comprehensive view of the Berkshire stock portfolio for some time. We’ll get a snapshot of what Buffett and his stock pickers did in the second quarter in mid-August, but for any investment made in July, we’ll have to wait for SEC filings in the third quarter, which won No It will launch until November.
Still, this week’s Bank of America investment is likely to be taken as a positive sign by investors at the bank, as well as by Berkshire. In the case of Bank of America, it appears to be still Buffett’s favorite banking stock. And for Berkshire, investors have been patiently waiting for Buffett to start rolling out the $ 137 billion on his balance sheet, and between this and the recent Domain (NYSE: D) acquisition of natural gas assets, it looks like it could finally be happening.
