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Berkshire’s cash pile could top $200 billion as Buffett sells stock

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Warren Buffett walks the floor and meets with Berkshire Hathaway shareholders ahead of their annual meeting in Omaha, Nebraska on May 3rd, 2024. 

David A. Grogan

Berkshire Hathaway‘s highly scrutinized cash pile could top $200 billion — more than the entire annual gross domestic product of Hungary — amid CEO Warren Buffett’s rare sale of some of his favorite stocks.

The Omaha-based conglomerate is likely to say its cash hoard topped the previous record of $189 billion, set in the first quarter, when it reports second-quarter earnings Saturday morning. Berkshire’s results come at a time when Buffett has been offloading winning investments in Apple, Bank of America and BYD, leading some to believe the Oracle of Omaha has grown concerned that the bull market is overheated.

“It does look like he wants to de-risk the portfolio a little bit,” Bill Stone, chief investment officer at Glenview Trust Company and a Berkshire shareholder, said early in the week. “He’s trimming two top holdings and you don’t get anything more economically sensitive than the banks. The market seems so sure right now of a soft landing, and maybe he’s taking more of a contrarian view.”

Berkshire has been a net seller of stocks for six straight quarters. Notably, Buffett trimmed his massive Apple bet by 13% in the first quarter for tax reasons after reaping enormous gains. The selling could have resumed in the second quarter as shares of the iPhone maker jumped 23% in the period.

Meanwhile, in a surprising move, the conglomerate recently started dumping Bank of America shares — its second-biggest holding after Apple. Over the past 12 trading sessions, Berkshire has sold $3.8 billion of the Charlotte-based bank’s shares. (The BofA sales began in July and won’t be reflected in the second-quarter report.)

Buffett’s gigantic war chest has been earning sizeable returns thanks to the jump in Treasury yields over the past two years, but with interest rates set to decline from multiyear highs, his mounting cash pile could once again draw questions. If invested in three-month Treasury bills at about 5%, $200 billion in cash would generate about $10 billion a year, or $2.5 billion a quarter, but those returns are set to decline once the Federal Resewrve starts lowering interest rates.

“It’s just a question of how long they are going to sit on it,” Andrew Kligerman, TD Cowen’s Berkshire analyst, said in an interview, referring to Berkshire’s enormous cash pile.

‘Things aren’t attractive’

Buffett, who turns 94 at the end of the month, confessed at Berkshire’s annual meeting in May that he’s open to putting more capital to work, but high prices give him pause.

“I think it’s a fair assumption that [cash holdings] will probably be about $200 billion at the end of this quarter,” the investment icon said at the time. “We’d love to spend it, but we won’t spend it unless we think [a business is] doing something that has very little risk and can make us a lot of money… it isn’t like I’ve got a hunger strike or something like that going on. It’s just that…things aren’t attractive.”

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Berkshire Hathaway

Weakness in non-insurance

Investors will also closely study the quarterly results for Berkshire’s BNSF Railway and Berkshire Hathway Energy utility business, which recently showed signs of weakness. BNSF is grappling with wage increases and revenue declines, while BHE faces pressure from being held liable for damage caused by wildfires.

“The non-insurance side will weigh on the results, whether it’s the sluggish volumes in railroad coupled with higher labor costs, or utilities, which could put up a good quarter, but nobody’s going to be excited about that just given the liability exposure,” said TD Cowen’s Kligerman, who recently initiated research coverage of Berkshire with a hold rating.

Conversely, Berkshire’s insurance business has been a bright spot, with a 185% year-over-year increase in insurance underwriting earnings in the first quarter.

Shares of Berkshire have rallied more than 21% this year, outperforming the S&P 500’s 14% return, through Thursday. The conglomerate’s market capitalization has ballooned to $956 billion, close to joining the tiny number of U.S. stocks valued at $1 trillion or more.

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Biggest banks planning to sue the Federal Reserve over annual stress tests

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A general view of the Federal Reserve Building in Washington, United States.

Samuel Corum | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

The biggest banks are planning to sue the Federal Reserve over the annual bank stress tests, according to a person familiar with the matter. A lawsuit is expected this week and could come as soon as Tuesday morning, the person said.

The Fed’s stress test is an annual ritual that forces banks to maintain adequate cushions for bad loans and dictates the size of share repurchases and dividends.

After the market close on Monday, the Federal Reserve announced in a statement that it is looking to make changes to the bank stress tests and will be seeking public comment on what it calls “significant changes to improve the transparency of its bank stress tests and to reduce the volatility of resulting capital buffer requirements.”

The Fed said it made the determination to change the tests because of “the evolving legal landscape,” pointing to changes in administrative laws in recent years. It didn’t outline any specific changes to the framework of the annual stress tests.

While the big banks will likely view the changes as a win, it may be too little too late.

Also, the changes may not go far enough to satisfy the banks’ concerns about onerous capital requirements. “These proposed changes are not designed to materially affect overall capital requirements, according to the Fed.

The CEO of BPI (Bank Policy Institute), Greg Baer, which represents big banks like JPMorgan, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, welcomed the Fed announcement, saying in a statement “The Board’s announcement today is a first step towards transparency and accountability.”

However, Baer also hinted at further action: “We are reviewing it closely and considering additional options to ensure timely reforms that are both good law and good policy.”

Groups like the BPI and the American Bankers Association have raised concerns about the stress test process in the past, claiming that it is opaque, and has resulted in higher capital rules that hurt bank lending and economic growth.

In July, the groups accused the Fed of being in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, because it didn’t seek public comment on its stress scenarios and kept supervisory models secret.

CNBC’s Hugh Son contributed to this report.

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