Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Cuts Stakes in 3 Drugmakers and GM

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Berkshire Hathaway

pared its stakes in three drug stocks—

AbbVie,

Bristol Myers Squibb,

and

Merck

—and reduced its position in

General Motors

during the second quarter, according to its 13-F filing for the period released after the market close on Monday.

Berkshire (ticker: BRK.A and BRK.B) added to its stake in

Kroger

(KR) and slightly trimmed its holding in

Chevron

(CVX).

Overall, Berkshire CEO Warren Buffett and his investment lieutenants, Todd Combs and Ted Weschler, made few notable changes to Berkshire’s equity portfolio.

Berkshire sold seven million shares of

General Motors (GM),

cutting its stake to 60 million shares, now worth $3.2 billion, while adding 10.7 million shares to its holding in Kroger, which stood at 61.8 million shares at the end of June.

Berkshire accumulated stakes in AbbVie (ABBV), Bristol Myers (BMY), and Merck (MRK) during 2020 and sold them down in the second quarter. The AbbVie holding dropped by 2.4 million shares, to 20.5 million; the Bristol Myers stake declined by 4.7 million shares, to 26.3 million, and the Merck position fell by nearly half, falling 8.7 million shares, to 9.2 million.

Berkshire eliminated a small holding of 643,000 shares of

Biogen

(BIIB) and added slightly to its position in

Aon

(AON), lifting the stake by about 300,000 shares to 4.4 million.

There were no changes in Berkshire’s two largest holdings,

Apple

(AAPL) and

Bank of America

(BAC). The Apple stake held at 887 million shares now worth $134 billion while the Bank of America holding stood at 1.01 billion shares now worth $41 billion.

Berkshire’s holding in Chevron was down about 600,000 shares, to 23.1 million.

Write to Andrew Bary at andrew.bary@barrons.com