Legendary investor Warren Buffett purchased shares of the Taiwanese chip manufacturer during the third quarter TSMC and the report of this, which was published this week, sent the stock on the Taiwan Stock Exchange up by 8% on Tuesday, and before trading on the New York Stock Exchange, the stock rose by about 10%.
However, since the beginning of the year, TSMC’s stock is still recording a negative return of 24%, and is trading at a market value of $378 billion. According to the quarterly report on the company’s holdings Berkshire Hathaway Controlled by Buffett, it purchased 60 million TSMC shares during the quarter, worth about $4.1 billion – Berkshire’s largest new investment this quarter.
TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor) is the largest and most advanced chip manufacturer in the world, and like the entire chip industry, it has recently been adversely affected by the macroeconomic environment and also by the American-Chinese struggle for industry leadership (especially as a Taiwanese company, a territory that China considers Chinese).
TSMC becomes another technology company in the portfolio of Buffett, who in recent years has been investing more and more in the fields of technology. Among the companies that Berkshire Hathaway currently owns are Dark , HP and-Snowflake . Apple is the company’s largest public holding, valued at approximately $126 billion, significantly higher than other large holdings, such as Bank of America ($31.2 billion), misfortune ($24.4 billion), Coca-Cola ($22.4 billion) fAmerican Express ($20.5 billion).
In the past, Buffett has said that he regrets not investing in Google and Amazon shares earlier. Analyst Jim Shanhan of Edward Jones addressed the issue in an article in the Financial Times (FT), and estimated that the technology and communication businesses currently make up about half of Berkshire’s portfolio, which he says is a balancing factor, because the companies in the portfolio tend to be “old economy” companies.
From the data on the changes in holdings as published in the FT, it appears that Berkshire Hathaway did not make many notable changes in the portfolio in the third quarter of this year. They mention, among other things, the purchase of additional shares in the oil companies Chevron andOccidental and in the media company Paramount as well as a small purchase of shares in the bank Jeffries . On the other hand, holdings in the banks US Bancorp and BNY Mellon and the car manufacturer General Motors were reduced.
Control, full ownership and minority holdings
Warren Buffett is one of the most famous investors in the world, and is also known as the “Oracle of Omaha”. He purchased Berkshire Hathaway, which was a failed company, in 1965, and over the years turned it into a large investment company that invests in industrial, financial, insurance and other companies. The company has full ownership or control over a large number of companies that are considered its subsidiaries – for example, Israel’s Ishkar, which it previously acquired from the Wertheimer family.
Ishkar is one of the leading companies in the world in the production of hard metal cutting tools. Its shares were sold in two stages to Berkshire Hathaway, in 2006 80% of the company for 4 billion dollars, and seven years later Berkshire Hathaway purchased the remaining 20% for about 2 billion dollars – that is, according to a double value, of 10 billion dollars.
At the same time, Berkshire Hathaway also makes investments in which it purchases individual percentages (minority holdings) in traded companies. In the past, Berkshire Hathaway invested in the shares of the Israeli pharmaceutical company Teva, but after several years that this holding produced losses “on paper”, it sold it at an estimated loss of approximately 365 million dollars at the beginning of this year.
The stock traded for more than half a million dollars this year
Berkshire Hathaway shares are traded on the New York Stock Exchange, and the share price is over $466,000, which reflects the company’s market value of approximately $680 billion. Berkshire Hathaway’s stock recorded a positive return of 8.7% in the past year, and rose by 3.5% since the beginning of 2022. However, it has already traded at a higher price this year, which was a record for the stock; It surpassed the half million dollar mark per share, and traded over $539,000 at the end of last March, and since then has lost 13.5%.
In his annual letter to investors at the beginning of the year, Buffett praised Apple, noting that thanks to the company’s CEO Tim Cook, Apple is the second most important holding in Berkshire Hathaway, after its holdings in the insurance sector.
Berkshire Hathaway first entered into an investment in Apple in 2016, and at the end of 2021 owned 5.55% of Apple shares, an increase from 5.39% at the end of 2020, when the increase did not come from the purchase of shares but thanks to the own purchase made by Apple.”