While oil prices were tumbling in the fourth quarter, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway was dumping most of its energy holdings, according to recent regulatory filings.
Morningstar reports that Berkshire’s 13-F equity holdings, which don’t include foreign investments held abroad, were valued at $110 billion at the end of 2014. Not among those holdings: ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips, which Berkshire sold out of completely in the fourth quarter. The firm also sold a fifth of its holdings in National Oilwell Varco. Other reduced positions included Bank of New York Mellon and Express Scripts (the latter of which was eliminated).
Morningstar says Berkshire used most of the proceeds from all those sales to increase its stakes in Deere and IBM. It also made “fairly meaningful additions” to its holdings in Precision Castparts, Charter Communications, Suncor Energy, Visa, MasterCard, and Viacom. And it made smaller additions to its Phillips 66, Directv, Liberty Global, DaVita, and General Motors stakes.