Gates Foundation Trust 13F Portfolio · Bill Gates

The only real “swing” this quarter is the new Home Depot position at 1.02% of the book, bought around an average $338.1. That is not a token line; for this ultra-concentrated portfolio, Home Depot is a top‑10 name from day one, signaling a clear view that US home-improvement spend is a durable profit pool, not a late‑cycle trap.

The Home Depot buy slots neatly into the existing playbook. It ties into Caterpillar’s construction exposure, Deere’s equipment franchise, and Paccar’s trucking footprint, extending the bet that physical economic activity, not just software margins, will drive long-run earnings.

Just as importantly, conviction is expressed through what didn’t move. Core industrials like Caterpillar (19.65%), Canadian National (17.95%), and Deere (6.56%) were left untouched, as were waste platforms Waste Connections and the high‑ROIC chemicals and services play Ecolab. The message: the trust believes it already owns the right oligopolies and doesn’t need to chase anything flashier.

Consumer exposure is being refined, not rebuilt. Walmart, Coca-Cola Femsa, and Anheuser-Busch remain steady anchors, while smaller, more volatile names like Coupang, On Holding, and Madison Square Garden Sports see no averaging down or up, implying a wait‑and‑see stance rather than fresh conviction.

The key funding source this quarter is Berkshire Hathaway. A -13.8% cut frees roughly $1.18B, but Berkshire still sits at 21.35% of the book, so this is a calibration, not a repudiation. The trust is effectively saying: Berkshire remains a core, but we no longer need quite as much exposure to a conglomerate when we can target the underlying themes ourselves.

Two other trims are classic profit-taking in mature, stable compounds:

• Waste Management: a -3.3% trim after the stake has more than doubled vs a roughly $91.2 cost basis and now sits at 17.3% of the portfolio. That looks like risk management around position size and valuation.
• FedEx: a sharp -19.4% reduction, despite being up 66.4% vs its $200.6 cost basis. At 2.17% of the book post-cut, FedEx is no longer a major conviction name, suggesting the trust sees better risk/reward elsewhere in logistics and industrial activity.

Notice what is not being sold. Deep drawdowns in Coupang (down 55.4% vs cost), Schrodinger (down 64.0%), Kraft Heinz, and Hormel are simply tolerated. This is a portfolio that would rather prune rich winners than double down on losers or admit defeat by exiting them from the visible top‑50.

Sector data confirms what the position moves imply: this is an industrial-and-infrastructure fund wearing a charitable wrapper. Industrials ticked up to 44.63% from an estimated 43.11%, anchored by Caterpillar, Canadian National, and Deere. Those are all asset-heavy, cash‑rich businesses with pricing power and real barriers to entry.

The apparent “Utilities” sleeve is really an environmental-services duopoly: Waste Management and Waste Connections together now sit at 18.38% of the book. That is effectively a regulated‑like, inflation‑pass‑through cash-flow bet, not a generic utility tilt.

Consumer Discretionary climbs to 12.06% from about 11.16%, almost entirely on the back of the new Home Depot stake. But crucially, this consumer exposure is still dominated by scale ecosystems — Walmart, Home Depot, McDonald’s — not fashion cycles. Consumer Staples are a modest 2.66%, and Health Care remains a small, idiosyncratic sleeve at 0.8%, more about specific tools (West Pharmaceutical, Schrodinger) than a broad defensive stance.

The one real reduction is in the “Unclassified” bucket, which is just Berkshire. Its drop from an estimated 24.06% to 21.47% is the structural story: less top‑down conglomerate risk, more bottom‑up ownership of the same types of businesses Berkshire likes.

Put together, the quarter says the trust wants direct access to the cash flows that underpin long-term philanthropy: industrials, waste, rails, and now a bit more home improvement. They are willing to accept volatility in smaller, growthy names, but they are not willing to let a single conglomerate dictate the fate of the endowment.

Expect future shifts to rhyme with this playbook. If valuations stay stretched in the biggest winners (Waste Management, Caterpillar, FedEx), more modest trims could continue to fund incremental adds in underrepresented but thematically aligned areas like building products, logistics, or industrial tools — effectively extending the hard‑asset ecosystem they already own.

On the flip side, the trust’s refusal to average down in misfiring bets like Coupang and Schrodinger suggests they will be patient to a point, but not eager to concentrate further in unproven stories. Any eventual exits from those names are more likely to fund safer, scale‑advantaged franchises rather than a pivot into high‑beta growth.

The endgame looks clear: a barbell of a still‑sizable Berkshire stake on one side and a hand‑picked roster of industrial, waste, and blue‑chip consumer moats on the other, all calibrated to throw off reliable returns over decades rather than quarters.