News hit ahead of the S&P 500 index addition that the US Treasury is selling another 30 million GM shares, and wire reports showed after the close that the sale was at a price of $34.41 per share. Another 20 million shares are said to be sold by a UAW retiree health care trust fund as well. We are not so interested in the exact number of shares being sold by the Treasury because they still hold many more shares, but it seems very possible that Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK-B) might be taking advantage of a way to buy shares here without having to go out on the open market.
Berkshire Hathaway’s latest full equity holdings showed that the conglomerate owned some 25 million shares of GM stock. This was the same stake as at the end of 2012, but Berkshire Hathaway was busy growing this stake in 2012. One reason we cannot help but wonder if GM is being acquired is that we just featured GM as one of the 11 Best Warren Buffett Stocks to Buy because it still has so much upside to the analyst fair value model from Wall Street.
Another reason that Team Buffett may have bought more stock is the “bet on America” stance it has taken. Buffett is a supporter of most things that the Obama administration has done, and the administration was largely behind the bailout of GM during the financial crisis. This would give Mr. Buffett yet another chance to vocalize that support for the administration and for America without having to make any formal political statements at all.
GM shares closed up 1.2% at $34.44 against a 52-week trading range of $18.72 to $35.49. Thomson Reuters has a consensus price target of $39.82 for the stock one-year out and GM’s market cap is over $47 billion according to Yahoo! Finance. You can see the strong GM stock performance from the Stockcharts.com image below.
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