Finance

Berkshire Hathaway BRK earnings Q3 2024

Published

7 months ago

November 2, 2024

Business Finance News

Warren Buffett speaks during the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Shareholders Meeting in Omaha, Nebraska, on May 4, 2024.

CNBC

Warren Buffett sold another big chuck of his Apple stake, downsizing Berkshire Hathaway‘s biggest equity holding for four quarters in a row.

The Omaha-based conglomerate held $69.9 billion worth of Apple shares at the end of September, according to its third-quarter earnings report released Saturday morning. That implied Buffett offloaded approximately a quarter of his stake with about 300 million shares remaining in the holding. In total, the stake is down 67.2% from the end of the third quarter last year.

The Oracle of Omaha started trimming his stake in the iPhone maker in the fourth quarter of 2023 and ramped up selling in the second quarter when he surprisingly dumped nearly half of the bet.

Apple, YTD

It’s unclear what exactly motivated the continuous selling in the stock Berkshire first bought more than eight years ago. Analysts and shareholders had speculated it was due to high valuations as well as portfolio management to reduce concentration. Berkshire’s Apple holding was once so big that it took up half of its equity portfolio.

In May at the Berkshire annual meeting, Buffett hinted that the selling was for tax reasons as he speculated that the tax on capital gains could be raised in the future by a U.S. government wanting to plug a climbing fiscal deficit. However, the magnitude of the sales made many believe it could be more than just a tax-saving move.

Amid the big selling spree, Berkshire’s cash hoard reached $325.2 billion in the third quarter, an all-time high for the conglomerate.

Class A shares of Berkshire have gained 25% this year, outpacing the S&P 500’s 20.1% year-to-date return. The conglomerate crossed a $1 trillion market cap milestone in the third quarter when it hit an all-time high.

Apple shares are up 16% on the year, trailing the S&P 500’s 20% gain.

This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.

Finance

Stocks making the biggest moves midday: UNH, TSLA, BABA

Published

1 hour ago

May 19, 2025

Business Finance News

Finance

Klarna doubles losses in first quarter as IPO remains on hold

Published

5 hours ago

May 19, 2025

Business Finance News

Sebastian Siemiatkowski, CEO of Klarna, speaking at a fintech event in London on Monday, April 4, 2022.

Chris Ratcliffe | Bloomberg via Getty Images

Klarna saw its losses jump in the first quarter as the popular buy now, pay later firm applies the brakes on a hotly anticipated U.S. initial public offering.

The Swedish payments startup said its net loss for the first three months of 2025 totaled $99 million — significantly worse than the $47 million loss it reported a year ago. Klarna said this was due to several one-off costs related to depreciation, share-based payments and restructuring.

Revenues at the firm increased 13% year-over-year to $701 million. Klarna said it now has 100 million active users and 724,00 merchant partners globally.

It comes as Klarna remains in pause mode regarding a highly anticipated U.S. IPO that was at one stage set to value the SoftBank-backed company at over $15 billion.

Klarna put its IPO plans on hold last month due to market turbulence caused by President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariff plans. Online ticketing platform StubHub also put its IPO plans on ice.

Prior to the IPO delay, Klarna had been on a marketing blitz touting itself as an artificial intelligence-powered fintech. The company partnered up with ChatGPT maker OpenAI in 2023. A year later, Klarna used OpenAI technology to create an AI customer service assistant.

Last week, Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski said the company was able to shrink its headcount by about 40%, in part due to investments in AI.