Investing
5 Stocks That Warren Buffett Should Sell -- or Add to the Stake
June 2, 2015 10:45 am
Last Updated: June 2, 2015 10:49 am
Johnson & Johnson has a market cap that is $275 billion, which would allow Buffett to own as much as he would want to own without disrupting the share price here. It is time for Buffett to either re-engage J&J for a much larger stake or to jettison this tiny tail of what used to me a very large stake.
United Parcel Service
The position in UPS was the same tiny 59,400 shares, but this is way down from 2012. In 2011, Buffett’s stake in UPS was 1.429 million shares. While this larger stake would represent over $140 million today, had it not been sold, the reality is that the new stake represents only about $6 million.
UPS is one of those companies that enjoys close to a duopoly with FedEx in competing with the U.S. Postal Service. This stake would fit in with being a Buffett stock now, and the company’s $89 billion in market cap would allow Buffett to park enough capital here without greatly disrupting the share price.
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Lee Enterprises
This stake was the same size at only 88,863 shares, but it may just be a token strategic stake after Buffett bought much of Lee’s debt. Buffett originally tried to keep the stake confidential, but that effort was denied by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Lee fits in with Buffett’s ownership of local media for news and advertising. At the time, Lee had over 50 daily papers and more than 300 weekly newspapers and niche publications, with a $59.5 million valuation. This feels too small for the likes of Buffett and his team, and it was a 1.655 million share stake in Lee worth a paltry $2 million at the time. Even if Buffett wanted to own Lee entirely, its market cap is a mere $180 million in mid-2015.
If Buffett wants to own more local media, why not just acquire the rest of Lee? Maybe he just doesn’t need to. Buffett is no stranger to owning media at the local and national level.
Kraft Foods
Kraft Foods Group has been the same small stake of only 192,666 shares, but this used to be much higher. The selling history was that Buffett already was lowering the Kraft Foods stake in 2010, after having been as high as over 138 million shares.
Buffett had been critical of the Kraft-Cadbury deal, and he sold off his shares through time while still ending up with a small Mondelez stake as well. This now ties in with the Kraft-Heinz deal, so it will be interesting to see how this stake will pan out ahead. Buffett was always interested if food mergers.
Mondelez
Mondelez has remained the same small position again at 578,000 shares, but it remains far lower than in the past. As a reminder, this was the “other Kraft” after Kraft decided to break into two companies, which got it booted off of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
If one of the two Kraft stakes does get sold here, it would seem almost certain that it would be the Mondelez stake, now that Buffett is involved in the Kraft-Heinz deal.
ALSO READ: 10 Stocks to Own for the Next Decade
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