Berkshire Hathaway’s 2024 meeting will be held on Saturday.Here’s how to watch | Wilnesh News
Devoted Warren Buffett watchers will hear the investing guru speak at this weekend’s Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting, where the 93-year-old icon is likely to explain his massive stock portfolio as of late some changes. This year’s Capitalist Woodstock Music Festival in Omaha, Nebraska will be exclusively broadcast and live broadcast by CNBC. Our special coverage will begin Saturday at 9:30 a.m. ET. In a surprising move to pare Apple, the group sold about 10 million Apple shares in the fourth quarter (just 1% of its massive stake). As of the end of 2023, Berkshire Hathaway held 90,556 shares of the iPhone maker, worth more than $174 billion, accounting for more than 40% of the investment portfolio. The move surprised many, as Apple has been Buffett’s favorite stock for years, and he even called the tech giant his second most important business, behind Berkshire’s insurance cluster. Buffett last trimmed his Apple holdings slightly in the fourth quarter of 2020, and the Oracle of Omaha admitted at the time that it “might have been a mistake.” While only Buffett can tell us what prompted this move, here are some possible explanations: First, Apple stock became too expensive. The stock is up 48% in 2023 as Big Tech stocks lead the market’s rally. At its peak, Apple’s share of Berkshire’s stock portfolio surged to 50%. Second, Buffett’s investing lieutenants Todd Combs and Ted Weschler may have cut their stakes to fund other acquisitions. A regulatory filing disclosed a similar move in late 2018, with Buffett aide Debbie Bosanek explaining that “a manager other than Warren had a position at Apple and sold some of the position in order to Making unrelated purchases. Influenced by a manager, Berkshire Hathaway began buying Apple stock in 2016. Secret bank stock? Buffett may reveal Berkshire Hathaway’s purchases in two consecutive quarters at the annual meeting. The identity of the mysterious bank stock. In the third and fourth quarter of 2023, Berkshire asked the SEC to keep the details of one or more of its holdings secret. Many speculated that the secret purchases may have been bank stocks. , as the cost basis of the group’s “banking, insurance and finance” equity holdings jumped by about $2.37 billion. There are relatively few instances where Berkshire has requested such treatment. The last time an acquisition was kept secret was in 2020 when it acquired Chevron and Verizon. . The Omaha-based conglomerate has been building up its stake for months amid possible merger arbitrage activity. Recently, a filing showed that Berkshire bought more of these stocks this week – 311,637 shares of LSXMK at an average price of $25.47 per share. Berkshire now owns more than 70 million shares of Liberty Media Corp. Series C stock. In December, Liberty Media said it would simplify its ownership structure by merging the two tracking stocks with other shares of the broadcaster, with the new combination trading under the symbol SIRI. Under the terms of the deal, which is expected to close early in the third quarter, each Liberty Media Sirius tracking share will be exchanged for 8.4 “new” SIRI shares, while “old” SIRI shareholders will receive the new shares in exchange on a one-for-one basis. Paramount It could also be a concern that Berkshire could lose its bet on Paramount at the party, given the recent drama at Paramount. On April 29, Paramount Worldwide announced that CEO Bob Bakish had resigned and would be replaced by three executives from the company’s so-called “Office of the CEO.” Bakish’s exit comes as Paramount remains in merger talks with Skydance. Even if a takeover bid is made, Berkshire’s bet still may not turn out to be profitable. The group had already trimmed its stake by about a third in the fourth quarter. Buffett expressed pessimism about the streaming media industry, saying that there are too many players seeking audience revenue, which has triggered a fierce price war. “You need higher prices or it’s not going to work,” Buffett said at Berkshire’s 2023 annual meeting. “There are a lot of companies that don’t want to exit. Who knows what’s going to happen with pricing in that situation. But anyone who tells you they Anyone who knows what will happen with pricing in the future is kidding themselves.”