Yes, Warren Buffett thinks GM is dead meat!

My favorite quote from the story, "We don’t want to compete with Elon in a lot of things,”.

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway dumped all of its GM stock

The Buffett-led conglomerate shed all 22 million shares of General Motors

By Ananya Bhattacharya, Quarts Media

Nov 16, 2023

A laggard in more ways than one.

Berkshire Hathaway no longer owns any General Motors stock.

In the last five to six quarters, the Warren Buffet-led conglomerate has been gradually been dumping the GM stock in troves. Now, it has shed its entire holding in the legacy automaker’s stock.

While the thinking behind the decision has not been disclosed, perhaps one or more of these developments were a factor:

🚃 In June, GM CEO Mary Barra said the company was having trouble getting hundreds of thousands of ready, new vehicles to dealerships owing to a national rail car crunch.

✊ Disruptions from the United Auto Workers (UAW) 46-day strike did not aid GM’s case. Although a tentative agreement has been reached, it is yet to be ratified. Some unions are already voting against it.

⚡ Buffett doesn’t want to take on Elon Musk. At a shareholder meeting earlier this year, the Oracle of Omaha said, “We don’t want to compete with Elon in a lot of things,” referring to the world’s richest man’s dedication to innovation. Musk’s EV company, Tesla, is the clear market leader in the emerging market for electrics and a viable threat for GM—especially since the Detroit carmaker has seen its own EV rollout crippled by slow battery production.

Berkshire Hathaway and the GM stock, by the digits

• 22 million: GM shares Berkshire held in August after nearly halving its shareholding in the stock from 40 million

• 0.2%: Share of Berkshire’s stock portfolio GM accounted for, prior to the total exit

• $7 billion: Worth of stock Berkshire sold in the third quarter, a majority of which came from liquidating stakes in GM and Proctor & Gamble.

• $1.7 billion: Worth of stock Berkshire sold in the third quarter. One of the new companies it bought a stake in is Atlanta Braves Holdings, which indirectly controls the MLB team.

• 16%: How much GM’s shares have dropped so far this year

• 10 million: How much Berkshire bought GM shares for back in 2012 at $25 a pop. The current share price is around $28.