Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has steadily been buying up more shares of Amazon. Berkshire recently increased its stake in the e-commerce tech giant by 11%, the company revealed in a recent government filing.
As of the second quarter, Berkshire’s holdings of Amazon were worth $947 million. Buffet originally announced his first Amazon investment in May.
The recent purchases are speculated to have been incurred by one of Buffet’s lieutenants, either Todd Combs or Ted Weschler, who both manage equities portfolios of $13 billion or more for Berkshire.
“One of the fellows in the office that manages money bought shares of Amazon on behalf of Berkshire,” Buffett said to CNBC’s Becky Quick.
The investment in Amazon comes as a radical shift in Buffets and Berkshire’s investment philosophy. They’ve historically been known to avoid major technology bets, having ended a subpar foray into International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) last year.
IBM was their notable exception. Having put a $10 billion investment in the computer giant back in 2011, Berkshire was testing the waters for tech investment.
After sustaining heavy losses, Buffet finally sold most of the IBM stock by 2018.
Changing times
But Amazon is different, apparently.
Buffet stated to CNBC back in 2018 that the company has “far surpassed anything I would have dreamt could have been done. Because if I really felt it could have been done, I should have bought it. I had no idea that it had the potential. I blew it.”
Investment managers Todd Combs and Ted Weschler seemed to have gained influence at the company. Buffet’s longtime business partner, Charles Munger, has praised the two of them saying they gave the company “younger eyes.”
Increased holdings Amazon and Apple seems to indicate that Berkshire Hathaway is becoming more interested and confident about investing in technology.
Berkshire announced in the first quarter of 2018 that it added 75 million shares of Apple and that they were “buying them to hold.”
