VOD - Wall Street Breakfast Podcast: 13F Filings: Berkshire Takes New Stakes In COF DEO

2023-05-16 07:21:59 ET

Listen on the go! Subscribe to Wall Street Breakfast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify Warren Buffett's Berkshire takes new stakes in COF, Diageo, exits RH (01:01). Daniel Loeb's Third Point amasses new stakes in Alphabet, Micron, AMD, Alibaba (01:42). Rumble buys podcasting and live streaming company CallIn (08:02). Learn more about these stocks with Seeking Alpha Premium .

This is an abridged transcript of the podcast.

• A fresh round of 13F filings. Berkshire Hathaway takes new stakes in COF and DEO and exits RH

• What should investors look at to get a gauge on the market? Eric Basmajian is the investing group leader of EPB Macro Research on Seeking Alpha says if he had to pick one it’s the yield curve

• WellsFargo reaches an agreement in a class action lawsuit. The bank is shelling out $1B to shareholders

You can find links to all the stories we talk about on the show in show notes and our daily Seeking Alpha Wall Street Breakfast articles.

OUR TOP STORY

Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.B ) (NYSE: BRK.A ) has taken a new stake in Capital One Financial (NYSE: COF ) with 9.92M shares.

The company also has a new stake in Diageo (NYSE: DEO ) with a ~228K-share holding.

Berkshire Hathaway has divested stakes in long-time holdings Bank of America (NYSE: BAC ) and Bank of New York Mellon (NYSE: BK ), according to the firm's latest 13F filing.

It also exited its position in RH (NYSE: RH ). Premarket RH is down 4.7%.

The company run by Warren Buffett also reduced its holdings in Chevron (NYSE: CVX ), McKesson (NYSE: MCK ), and General Motors (NYSE: GM ), among others.

It increased stakes in Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL ), Occidental Petroleum (NYSE: OXY ), and HP Inc. (NYSE: HPQ ).

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Third Point, the hedge fund founded by Daniel Loeb nearly 30 years ago, took new positions in Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL ) (4.75M shares), Alibaba (NYSE: BABA ) (1.33M shares), Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ: AMD ) (1M shares), Micron (NASDAQ: MU ) (1.20M shares), and Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE: CRM ) (800K shares) during the first quarter of 2023, according to an SEC filing dated Monday.

Meanwhile, the firm exited its positions in SentinelOne, Inc. (NYSE: S ), Fidelity National (NYSE: FIS ) and Disney (NYSE: DIS ).

Stakes were boosted in Dupont De Nemours, Inc. (NYSE: DD ) to 4M shares from 3M, and Hertz (NASDAQ: HTZ ) to 6.35M shares from 5.35M.

NOW MORE ON THE MARKET

U.S. stocks on Monday ended marginally higher.

The Nasdaq ( COMP.IND ) ended up 0.7%. the S & P 500 ( SP500 ) closed higher by 0.30%. The Dow ( DJI ) marginally advanced 0.1% snapping a five-day losing streak.

Of the 11 S&P sectors, six ended trading in the green, led by Materials and Financials. Utilities topped the losers, retreating more than 1%.

With the so-called X-date of June 1 approaching, U.S. lawmakers continue to debate over raising the debt ceiling. Analysts have warned that the implications of a potential default could be big and could even lead to a stock selloff. President Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy are set to meet today.

Ahan Vashi is the investing group leader of The Quantamental Investor on Seeking Alpha. He said, “With the debt ceiling issue evolving into yet another risk for the market, investors should expect stock market volatility to pick back up in upcoming weeks.”

In focus this week will be more economic data along with Fed speakers, including central bank chief Jerome Powell, who is scheduled to give a speech on Friday.

Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic in an interview on CNBC said he did not see interest rate cuts until well into next year, but the markets appear to be convinced that cuts are coming.

Turning to the fixed income markets, yields were mixed. The 10-year yield ( US10Y ) was up 4 basis points to 3.50% while the 2-year yield ( US2Y ) was flat at 4.00%.

A notable development on Monday was the European Union clearing Microsoft's ( MSFT ) proposed $69B purchase of videogame publisher Activision Blizzard ( ATVI ). The former gained marginally, while the latter was up 1.2%.

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Regional bank stocks got some rare love on Monday as traders gave some confidence to a sector that has been under a shadow since March.

PacWest (NASDAQ: PACW ) rose 18% after falling 21% last week, while other regionals like Zions Bancorporation (NASDAQ: ZION ) and Comerica (NYSE: CMA ) were among the biggest gainers in the S&P 500, climbing 8% and 7%, respectively.

On this topic, we’ve got a question for you. It’s our weekly survey that appears in the Wall Street Breakfast newsletter, our daily one page news summary.

Should the Securities and Exchange Commission ban the short-selling of bank stocks given the current crisis? Right now 54.7 % say no which means 45.3 % say yes.

What say you? I’ll leave a link to our weekly poll.

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MORE OF OUR TOP STORIES

Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC ) is shelling out $1B to settle a shareholder lawsuit.

The lawsuit accused the bank of making misleading statements about its compliance with federal orders following an infamous 2016 scandal.

According to the suit, the bank overstated its progress in cleaning up the mess, which involved the opening of 3.5M accounts without customer permission.

It’ll rank as one of the top six largest securities class-action settlements of the past decade, with proceeds going to investors who bought Wells Fargo ( WFC ) stock from February 2, 2018, through March 12, 2020.

A spokesperson for Wells Fargo said, "While we disagree with the allegations in this case, we are pleased to have resolved this matter.”

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Horizon Therapeutics is down more than 17% premarket on a report that the Federal Trade Commission is preparing to file a lawsuit to block the company's $28 billion sale to Amgen (NASDAQ: AMGN ).

According to a Capitol Forum report , that cited sources familiar with the matter, the FTC had a closed door meeting on Friday where the transaction was discussed.

The commissioner's are expected to vote on the deal this week.

Separately, Bloomberg reported that the FTC is expected to file a lawsuit to block the deal on Tuesday , according to a person familiar. The FTC is expected to argue that the combination may hurt innovation and slow the pace of drug development.

Amgen ( AMGN ) agreed to acquire Horizon Therapeutics ( HZNP ) for $116.50 a share in cash in December, valuing the Ireland-based biotech at nearly $27.8 billion.

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Following a downbeat outlook and plans by a new CEO to simplify, Vodafone (NASDAQ: VOD ) is down 3.4% in premarket trading. The company expects to cut 11,000 jobs over the next three years, which will impact more than a tenth of its workforce.

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Video-sharing platform Rumble (NASDAQ: RUM ) has acquired CallIn.

CallIn, which is based in San Francisco, is a podcasting and live streaming platform founded by David Sacks.

As part of the acquisition, Sacks will join Rumble’s board next month.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

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Sports recruiting platform Signing Day has filed to raise around $19M through an initial public offering.

Signing Day said in an SEC filing that it is looking to offer 3.75M shares priced between $4 and $6.

The company hopes to list its shares on NYSE under the symbol SDS.

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(03:59)

Eric Basmajian recently appeared on the Investing Experts podcast to talk about all things macro.

He’s the investing group leader of EPB Macro Research on Seeking Alpha.

Tomorrow here on Wall Street Breakfast for stock of the week Wednesday we’ll hear more from Eric about Real Estate.

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If you want more information about a topic we covered on today’s show. You can find links in show notes and our daily Seeking Alpha Wall Street Breakfast articles.

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Now let’s take a look at the markets as of 6:20 am. Ahead of the opening bell today, Dow, S&P and Nasdaq futures are mixed. The Dow is down 0.3%. The S&P 500 is down 0.1% and the Nasdaq is up 0.1%. Crude oil is down 0.2% at more than $70 a barrel. Bitcoin is down 1.4%.

In the world markets, the FTSE 100 is up 0.1% The DAX is up 0.1%.

On today’s economic calendar, at 830 am retail sales and at 10 am the housing market index.

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