Berkshire Hathaway’s new investment in Kroger sent shares soaring Friday (Feb. 14), CNN reported.
Billionaire investor Warren Buffett is chairman and CEO of Berkshire.
Shares of the country’s biggest grocery store chain went up 6 percent on the news of Buffett’s purchase of 19 million shares during the fourth quarter. Berkshire Hathaway is now among the 10 biggest shareholders of Kroger’s stock, according to its 13F filings.
Berkshire also owns a small stake in Amazon, which has disrupted the grocery business, and other food-related investments, including Kraft Heinz, Coca-Cola and Mondelez. Berkshire is also the parent company of See’s Candies, Dairy Queen and the Pampered Chef cookware.
Buffett’s investing arm also recently upped its investment by 41 percent in the high-end furniture company RH, formerly known as Restoration Hardware, according to Investors.com. It also purchased a new stake — 648,447 shares — in the biotech firm Biogen, TheStreet reported.
Berkshire shed shares of Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs but added to its stake in General Motors, according to CNN. The company also sold most of its shares in Phillips 66 and Travelers, according to a regulatory filing Friday, TheStreet reported.
Investors.com said investors look to regulatory data to decide where the “smart money” is hedging its bets. The 13F filings show holdings at the end of each quarter, enabling institutions and hedge funds to weigh stock buying and selling positions.
Berkshire’s 19 million shares purchase was worth around $549 million. Its shares of Biogen are worth $192 million. Berkshire also grew Occidental Petroleum by 153 percent. It invested $10 billion in Occidental to help secure funding for its $38 billion acquisition of Anadarko Petroleum.
The firm announced in May that it started buying shares in Amazon, an investment that was at a high-end price. Similarly, the firm bought Apple shares in 2016 when prices were also high. Now, its Apple holdings are worth over $50 billion.
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