Billionaire Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. bought nearly $268.8 million in discount retailer Target Corp. stock, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday are the first to mention Berkshire’s holdings in Target, although Berkshire has long held stock in Target’s main competitor, Wal-Mart.
The documents also revealed an even bigger stake in Johnson & Johnson than Berkshire had previously disclosed.
Buffett’s company often asks the Securities and Exchange Commission for the ability to not disclose information that could hurt its trading strategy because the market likes to follow what the “Oracle of Omaha’s” company does. The joint filings do not reveal whether Buffett alone, Berkshire itself or one of the company’s more than 60 subsidiaries bought the stock.
Berkshire Hathaway spokeswoman Debbie Bosanek said Monday evening that no one with the company was available to comment.
At the end of June, Berkshire owned 5.5 million shares of Minneapolis-based Target, the nation’s No. 2 discount retailer, the documents showed.
That’s significantly less than the 19.9 million shares of Wal-Mart stock Berkshire owned on that day.
In August, Berkshire revealed that it had bought 1.97 million shares of Johnson & Johnson stock during the first quarter of this year. Monday’s filing reveals that Berkshire added to that investment in the second quarter.
By the end of June, Berkshire held 24.6 million shares of New Jersey-based Johnson & Johnson, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of health care products. Berkshire estimates that it’s Johnson & Johnson stake was worth about $1.5 billion.
Berkshire owns furniture, insurance, jewelry and candy companies, restaurants, natural gas and corporate jet firms and has major investments in such companies as Coca-Cola, Anheuser-Busch and Wells Fargo & Co.
