Tema: Warren Buffet

Berkshire Hathaway takes $3.7 billion stake in Exxon Mobil


Warren Buffett's conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway owned a new stake of about 40 million shares in oil major Exxon Mobil as of the end of September, according to an SEC filing on Thursday.

Based on the most recently available holdings data, that would be enough to make Berkshire the 6th-biggest holder of Exxon shares, with about one percent of the shares outstanding.

The stake was worth $3.74 billion at Thursday's closing prices.

Berkshire hasn't held any ExxonMobil since the end of 2011, when it sold a relatively small stake of 421,800 shares.

The large size of this new holding indicates Buffett himself made the decision to buy, not one of Berkshire's two portfolio managers who typically handle smaller amounts of stock.

It's something of a surprise. In May 2012, Buffett told CNBC he had made a mistake buying shares of ConocoPhillips for Berkshire, saying he has no special insight into the future movements of oil prices.

He does, however, like to buy stocks when the price goes down and that certainly happened during the third quarter.

Exxon shares hit their 52-week high of $95.49 on July 23. They fell about 10 percent to end September at a close of $86.04.

Since then, Exxon has rallied back into the $90s, to close Thursday at $93.22, a gain of more than 8 percent.

While we don't know exactly when Berkshire bought its shares, it's likely it picked them up at the lower end of the quarter's range and has already made a paper profit.

In the new filing, Berkshire also revealed it has sold more of that Conoco stake that had Buffett apologizing to shareholders, reducing its holdings by 44 percent to 13.53 million shares. They're worth just under $1 billion at Thursday's close.

Berkshire held almost 84 million shares as of the end of September, 2008, at the height of the credit crisis.

In another large percentage move, Berkshire slashed its GlaxoSmithKline holdings by 77 percent to 345,819 shares during this year's third quarter.

That cut, however, represents only around $59 million worth of stock, relatively small by Berkshire standards.


Berkshire Hathaway takes major stake in Exxon Mobil