Berkshire Hathaway Inc doubles down on Alphabet and reopens the airlines play

The most striking statement this quarter is the elevation of Alphabet from a mid-sized line item to a core pillar of the equity book. Berkshire increased its Alphabet class A stake by +204.0% to $15.6B and added a new $1.03B position in the class C shares, lifting technology to 29.15% of the portfolio from 25.08%. Strong gains versus cost on both lines (up 46.7% and 31.0%) suggest they are adding into strength, not rescuing a mistake.

This is classic Berkshire: when a business demonstrates durable economics and moat expansion, size it like it matters. Alphabet now sits just below the legacy behemoths and gives Berkshire a second large-scale participation in the cloud/AI and digital advertising stack alongside Apple, but without abandoning its price discipline.

On the consumer side, rising conviction shows up in a few specific angles rather than a broad retail grab:

• New York Times nearly tripled (+199.0%) to $1.27B, indicating belief in subscription media economics and a structurally advantaged brand even in a choppy ad environment.
• Lennar (plus the LEN.B class) saw a combined stake increase north of 40% in the main line, pushing total homebuilding exposure higher despite current mark-to-cost losses (Lennar positions sit 15–23% below average buy price). That looks like a cycle-timing bet on U.S. housing demand normalizing rather than a trade on near-term prints.
• Delta Air Lines appears as a new $2.65B position at 1.01% of the book, reopening airline exposure but in a single, scaled carrier. With the stake only modestly above cost (+3.4%), this is being sized as an option on traffic and pricing power rather than an all-in macro call.

Macy’s shows up as a small new toe-hold at $54.9M, even though it is slightly underwater versus cost. That, along with Delta and Lennar, rounds out a theme: Berkshire is selectively re-engaging with U.S. discretionary and cyclical exposure where balance sheets and assets are tangible, but where market sentiment still embeds a heavy discount.

Funding for the Alphabet build-out and new cyclicals clearly came from the energy complex and a misfiring staples bet. The signature move is Chevron: Berkshire cut the position by -35.2%, freeing roughly $9.47B of capital. Even after the sale Chevron still sits at 6.64% of the portfolio, but this is now a deliberately smaller macro swing rather than a co-headliner with Apple and American Express.

The second decisive trim is Constellation Brands, slashed by -95.1% to a token 0.04% weight. With the position still about 33.7% below Berkshire’s average cost, this looks less like profit-taking and more like an admission that the thesis hasn’t kept pace with opportunity cost elsewhere; the capital is being redeployed into higher-confidence growth and optionality.

Smaller but telling reductions show up across more cyclical and capital-intensive names:

• Nucor was cut -39.0%, shrinking industrial metals exposure from a portfolio level of 0.42% to 0.25% and signaling less appetite for steel-cycle volatility.
• DaVita was trimmed by -5.2% despite a hefty 277.2% gain versus cost, which looks like a routine scale-back in a long-held, idiosyncratic health-care name to support higher-conviction ideas.
• Bank of America saw a marginal -0.7% reduction, effectively a rounding-error rebalance rather than a view change on U.S. money-center banks.
• Liberty Live’s LLYVK line was reduced by -3.0%, a modest de-risking in a more complex media/entertainment structure while the sister LLYVA line stayed intact.

Taken together, the trims say more about capital recycling than macro panic. Berkshire is letting commodity and alcoholic-beverage exposure contract materially, and shaving some cyclicals, to underwrite software platforms and specific consumer assets where it sees better long-term unit economics.

At the sector level, the rotation is subtle in dollars but sharp in message. Finance remains the largest bucket at 36.22% (slightly down from 36.72%), anchored by American Express, Bank of America, Chubb, Moody’s, and the smaller bank and broker names. Berkshire clearly still wants its core identity as a financials-and-cash-flow compounder intact.

The real motion is the upgrade of technology from 25.08% to 29.15%. That shift is almost entirely an Alphabet story layered on top of the massive, unchanged Apple stake and the quietly spectacular Verisign holding (up 780.6% versus cost). The book is tilting toward businesses where incremental margins are high and network effects deepen with scale, not toward speculative early-stage tech.

Energy, by contrast, steps down meaningfully from 16.98% to 13.18%. A large Chevron sale alongside a flat Occidental stake leaves Berkshire with significant exposure to hydrocarbons but clearly less desire to make oil prices a primary driver of portfolio outcomes.

Consumer staples ticks down from 16.66% to 15.76%, almost entirely due to the Constellation Brands exit, while big legacy bets in Coca-Cola, Kraft Heinz, and Kroger stay locked. Consumer discretionary creeps up from 2.11% to 3.52% as Delta, New York Times, Lennar, Liberty Live, and Macy’s collectively grow. Industrials fall from 0.42% to 0.25%, and basic materials and health care remain tiny satellites.

The pattern is a rotation from "defensive yield plus energy beta" toward "platform tech plus selective consumer cyclicality" — without disturbing the financials-heavy spine that has driven multi-year performance.

Look through the 13F, and Berkshire Hathaway Inc increasingly resembles a barbell: on one side, massive, untouched stakes in Apple, American Express, Coca-Cola, Moody’s, Chubb, and Bank of America; on the other, a growing cluster of tech and discretionary names that will determine incremental returns. The top holdings are not being traded — they are being used as ballast to fund sharper views at the margin.

The aggressive Alphabet build effectively crowns it as Berkshire’s chosen way to participate in AI infrastructure, digital advertising, and cloud while avoiding early-stage risk. If this thesis proves right, incremental earnings growth from Alphabet can offset the more sluggish trajectories of mature consumer staples like Kraft Heinz, which remains a 2.78% position but still sits 67.5% below Berkshire’s cost.

On the macro-sensitive side, the fresh bets in Delta, Lennar, and Macy’s hint at a belief that U.S. consumers and housing will muddle through higher rates rather than crack. These are not huge in portfolio terms, but they will amplify cycle dynamics around an otherwise very steady earnings base. The sizable step-down in Chevron and Nucor suggests Berkshire is less interested in leaning into commodity volatility as its primary cyclical lever.

Going forward, expect incremental capital to keep drifting toward large, high-return software and data franchises and a small stable of scale consumer names with pricing power. Unless valuations or fundamentals in the core pillars break decisively, Berkshire’s playbook appears set: hold the fortress, use cash flows and trims from lagging or lower-conviction assets to buy more of a few compounding platforms, and keep cyclical exposure narrow enough that it enhances, rather than dictates, the portfolio’s long-term trajectory.