Sirius XM tracking stock buys top $1 billion for the year

Sirius XM tracking stock buys top $1 billion for the year

Berkshire Hathaway’s purchases of Liberty Media’s Sirius XM tracking stocks have topped one billion dollars since they began in early January, with the company revealing three more days of buying late last month.

On one of those days, March 26, Berkshire spent $283 million, the largest one-day total so far, eclipsing the $236 million it paid on March 12 for LSXMA and LSXMK.

The most recent buys were detailed in filings late in the evening of March 28, after the market closed ahead of Good Friday (and after last week’s edition of this newsletter.)

As of that filing, Berkshire held 32.8 million LSXMA shares and 65.5 million LSXMK shares with a total market value of almost $2.7 billion.

More than one-third of the total holdings have been purchased this year.

Berkshire appears to be buying the tracking stocks to take advantage of a reorganization later this year.

Each satellite radio tracking stock share will be exchanged for 8.4 shares of Sirius XM Holdings (SIRI).

Based on the share prices at the beginning of this year, that would have generated a profit of more than 50% for holders of the tracking stocks.

SIRI shares, however, are down 36% YTD, narrowing the potential gain to 7.4% now, which would be a bit less than $200 million for Berkshire.

Buffett’s wealth has never been larger, but he slipped on Forbes list

Warren Buffett’s estimated net worth increased by more than 25% ($27 billion) over the past year, according to the newly released Forbes “World’s Billionaires List.”

But his $133 billion as of the early March date used to create the list, which is an all-time high for him, wasn’t enough to keep him from sliding one notch to sixth place in the annual ranking. (His “Real-Time” estimated wealth, according to Forbes, is $138 billion.)

He’s behind Bernard Arnault & family ($233 billion), Elon Musk ($195 billion), Jeff Bezos ($194 billion), Mark Zuckerberg ($177 billion), and Larry Ellison ($141 billion).

Warren Buffett appeared on the Forbes 100th anniversary issue in 2017,

which featured a very rudimentary artificial intelligence Q&A with Buffett. (Forbes.com)

Like last year, he appears just above his friend Bill Gates, who is seventh with $128 billion, followed by Steve Ballmer ($121 billion), Mukesh Ambani ($116 billion, and Larry Page ($114 billion).

(In Bloomberg’s ranking, Gates is two slots ahead of Buffett, $153 billion to $138 billion.)

Even though Buffett has given away almost 379 million Class B Berkshire shares to the Gates Foundation and foundations run by family members over nearly two decades, the company’s stock gains have kept him in Forbes’s top ten.

If he had held on to those shares instead, his net wealth would be approximately $292 billion, putting him $59 billion ahead of the current #1.

BUFFETT AROUND THE INTERNET

Some links may require a subscription

• Barron’s (subscription): A 20% Job Cut at Berkshire’s Geico Highlights Challenge for Car Insurer

Berkshire Hathaway’s Valuation Hits 6-Year High. Why That’s a Bad Sign.

• South China Morning Post: Tesla knocks BYD off its perch as world’s largest pure EV makers struggle to win new customers in China’s shrinking market

HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE ARCHIVE

Buffett’s American family farm parable (2005)

Warren Buffett uses the allegory of a rich family who owns a farm to critique how Americans consume more than they produce.

BERKSHIRE STOCK WATCH

Four weeks

Twelve months

BERKSHIRE’S TOP U.S. STOCK HOLDINGS – Apr. 5, 2024

Berkshire’s top holdings of disclosed publicly traded stocks in the U.S., Japan, and Hong Kong, by market value, based on today’s closing prices.

Holdings are as of December 31, 2023 as reported in Berkshire Hathaway’s 13F filing on February 14, 2024, except for:

• Mitsubishi and Mitsui, which are as of June 12, 2023. Tokyo Stock Exchange prices are converted to U.S. dollars from Japanese yen.

• Occidental Petroleum, which is as of February 5, 2024.

The full list of holdings and current market values is available from CNBC.com’s Berkshire Hathaway Portfolio Tracker.

QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS

Please send any questions or comments about the newsletter to me at [email protected]?subject=Buffett newsletter feedback”>[email protected]. (Sorry, but we don’t forward questions or comments to Buffett himself.)

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Also, Buffett’s annual letters to shareholders are highly-recommended reading. There are collected here on Berkshire’s website.