Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Invested $860 Million In Amazon Shares

May 16, 2019

Jaz Harrison

Jaz is a Staff Writer for Rask. She is a keen investor who loves to thoroughly poke holes in an investment idea before it has a chance of making it into her portfolio. Jaz invests for the long-term and doesn't sweat the small stuff. She strongly believes that empowering people with knowledge is the best way for them to take charge of their finances, which is exactly the approach she takes with her own money and investments.

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Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A) (NYSE: BRK.B) has just revealed it has invested US$860 million in Amazon.Com Inc (NASDAQ: AMZN) shares.

Berkshire Hathaway has been one of the best-performing businesses in the world over the past 50 years by investing in other businesses, both listed and unlisted. Legendary investor Warren Buffett has grown it to be one of the biggest companies in the world.

Why Did Warren Buffett Buy Amazon Shares?

Well, he didn’t buy Amazon shares. It was actually one of his investment lieutenants, Todd Combs and Ted Weschler.

Warren Buffett is famous for sticking to what he calls his ‘circle of competence’, in other words he only invests in what he can understand. That’s why he has avoided investing in nearly all technology businesses until recently. He personally instigated the purchase of a large amount of Apple shares.

It has been revealed that Berkshire Hathaway has invested US$860.6 million into Amazon shares at the end of March.

You may seen a couple of weeks ago that the eCommerce giant reported a net profit of US$3.6 billion in the first quarter of 2019 with operating cashflow growing by 89% to US$34.4 billion.

Amazon seems to be finally delivering consistently profitable numbers even though it is still heavily investing for growth in places like Australia and in initiatives such as its own aeroplane fleet of delivery planes.

Is Berkshire Hathaway Or Amazon A Buy Today?

I am no expert on either company, though I appreciate the vision and focus that both Jeff Bezos and Warren Buffett (with Charlie Munger) had to create their businesses of today. I think both businesses will continue to be huge and grow even bigger over time.

The great thing about both Amazon and Berkshire Hathaway is that they continue to expand in their existing specialities whilst thinking of new sectors to go into. I’m very interested to see what the healthcare initiative between them and Jamie Dimon from JPMorgan turns into in reality in the US.

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