Berkshire Hathaway $BRK.B ( ▼ 0.86% ) made a rare move back into media, purchasing 5.1 million shares of The New York Times $NYT worth about $352 million, according to its latest filing. The investment is tiny relative to Berkshire’s massive portfolio but marks its first newspaper-related buy since exiting the industry in 2020.
Shares of the Times jumped following the disclosure, briefly hitting a 52 week high.
Buffett shifts from Big Tech toward “old economy” bets
At the same time, Berkshire dramatically reduced its position in Amazon $AMZN ( ▲ 1.81% ) by about 77 percent and trimmed its Apple $AAPL ( ▲ 0.18% ) stake by roughly 4 percent, though Apple remains its largest holding by far. The changes suggest a subtle rotation away from high growth tech toward more traditional businesses.
Energy and insurance positions quietly grew instead, with Chevron $CVX ( ▲ 1.84% ) and Chubb $CB ( ▼ 0.78% ) seeing notable increases, reinforcing Berkshire’s long standing preference for durable cash flow industries.
A tiny bet with symbolic weight
Despite the headlines, the Times investment barely moves the needle financially. It accounts for just 0.12 percent of Berkshire’s public equity portfolio and an even smaller slice of its overall market value.
Still, the purchase signals confidence in the newspaper’s digital transformation into a subscription powerhouse spanning news, games, cooking, and lifestyle content, an evolution that has helped it amass nearly 13 million subscribers worldwide.