Greg Abel used his first quarter overseeing Berkshire Hathaway's stock portfolio to cut the conglomerate's Chevron stake by 35% and more than triple its position in Alphabet. The moves, which followed Warren Buffett's retirement as CEO, made Alphabet Berkshire's new No. 5 holding while raising questions about how Abel views Chevron's rally-driven valuation.
Greg Abel opened his first quarter running Berkshire Hathaway's investment portfolio by cutting the conglomerate's Chevron stake 35% and tripling its bet on Alphabet, moves that followed Warren Buffett's retirement as Berkshire's CEO on Dec. 31.
Abel cuts Chevron stake 35%
Berkshire sold 45,780,506 shares of Chevron during the first quarter, the largest single-quarter reduction since Buffett opened the position in 2020. Abel also sent 16 other stocks to the chopping block and reduced six positions overall, including Chevron.
Chevron's shares had rallied from $152 to $207 between the start of 2026 and the end of the first quarter, a move that may explain some of the selling as simple profit-taking. But profit-taking may not be the whole story: Chevron, like other drillers, benefited from surging crude prices tied to the Iran war and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, and because energy-supply disruptions are historically short-lived, Abel may have viewed the rally as a chance to lock in gains.
Its forward price-to-earnings ratio was approaching 18 by the end of the first quarter, up from 11 and 10 at the close of 2023 and 2024. Abel is a stickler for value, and Chevron's value proposition has faded a bit.
Alphabet becomes Berkshire's new No. 5 holding
Abel bought 36,403,656 Class A shares of Alphabet and opened a new stake in the Class C shares with a purchase of 3,585,215 shares, more than tripling Berkshire's position in Google's parent. After Alphabet announced an $84.75 billion equity offering on June 1, Berkshire agreed to buy $10 billion of it in a private placement, split evenly between the two share classes. By the end of July, the stake was worth nearly $30.8 billion, making Alphabet Berkshire's new No. 5 holding.
The appeal centers on Alphabet's moat: Google's search engine accounted for over 91% of internet search traffic in July, and YouTube ranks as the second-most-visited social site behind Google itself. Cloud computing adds a second growth engine, too — sales in that segment have accelerated sharply since Alphabet built generative AI and large-language-model tools into Google Cloud, the world's No. 3 cloud-infrastructure platform by spend.
Alphabet is to Abel what Apple was to Buffett.
Source: The Motley Fool
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