Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-A, BRK-B) has dropped its holdings in Bank of America (BAC) down below a 10% threshold, capping three months of selling that netted the conglomerate roughly $10 billion.
Berkshire said Thursday it further trimmed its stake in Bank of America by another 9.5 million shares, making approximately $382 million in profits from those sales between Tuesday and Thursday.
With its latest sale, Berkshire’s Bank of America stake is down to 9.99%. Falling below the 10% threshold means the conglomerate is no longer obligated by federal securities laws to update its holdings of the nation's second-largest bank to the Securities and Exchange Commission within days.
Unless Buffett or Berkshire choose to address their Bank of America position publicly, investors will have to wait for Berkshire’s quarterly 13F filing.
Buffett and Berkshire haven’t yet said anything about the motivation for selling. And Berkshire remains the bank’s largest stockholder, with over 775 million shares worth roughly $31 billion.
Berkshire began selling its BofA position three months ago. Its unloaded a total of 257 million shares over the past 13 weeks, earning $9.98 billion on those sales.
The price of Bank of America’s stock has fallen more than 9% since Buffett began selling his firm's longest-held bank stock position.
BofA is still up over 18% so far this year but trailing rivals Goldman Sachs (GS), JPMorgan Chase (JPM), and Citigroup (C).
Bank of America reports third quarter results Tuesday morning. Its profits are expected by analysts to fall both from a year ago and the previous quarter.
But its major lending revenue stream, net interest income, is expected to have hit its bottom in the second quarter and grow from there through the end of the year, according to recent comments from CFO Alastair Borthwick.
The recent moves by Berkshire are notable given Buffett’s long history with the bank. He injected $5 billion into Bank of America in 2011 as the lender struggled to overcome the wreckage of the subprime housing meltdown that caused the 2008-2009 financial crisis.
And Berkshire's investment into the Charlotte, N.C. based bank more than a decade ago wasn't only a bet on its recovery. It was also throwing heft behind the new leadership of CEO Brian Moynihan, who took over the top job in 2009.
"I don't know what exactly he's doing because, frankly, we can't ask, and we wouldn't," Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan said at a Barclays conference last month.
By June of this year, Bank of America accounted for 15% of Berkshire’s portfolio as the firm slashed its stake in Apple (AAPL).
Now it is the company’s third-biggest position behind Apple and American Express (AXP).
“We're buying the stock, a portion of the stock, and so life will go on. But he's been a great investor for our company and stabilized our company when we needed it at the time,” Moynihan added.
David Hollerith is a senior reporter for Yahoo Finance covering banking, crypto, and other areas in finance.
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