The Oracle of Omaha is bullish on Bank of America (NYSE: BAC). That much is clear.
Days after revealing that he had invested another $813 million in one of the country's largest banks, Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A) wheeled around and invested almost $400 million more in it.
Buffett bought that earlier Bank of America stake between July 20 and July 22 at share prices ranging from $23.50 to $24.20. He added the next batch between July 23 and July 27 at share prices ranging from roughly $24.10 to roughly $24.30.
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Those recent buys bring Berkshire Hathaway's total ownership stake in Bank of America to about $24.2 billion and more than 998 million shares -- roughly 11.4% of its shares outstanding.
Many market observers have wondered if Buffett was being too conservative in the wake of the sharp decrease in equities that occurred this spring as a result of the coronavirus pandemic -- especially given that Berkshire Hathaway had in prior years built up a cash hoard of $128 billion.
Berkshire began to deploy some of that capital earlier this month when it purchased the natural gas assets of Dominion Energy (NYSE: D) for $9.7 billion.
Bank of America delivered its second-quarter earnings results on July 16, reporting a profit of roughly $3.5 billion. That was down from $4 billion in the first quarter of the year, and well off the $7.3 billion it earned in Q2 2019, declines largely driven by its moves to bolster its loan-loss provisioning in light of the U.S. recession.
Buffett and Berkshire have taken a somewhat mixed approach to bank stocks this year. The conglomerate decreased its position in Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC), and dumped most of its stake in Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS), but increased its stake in PNC Financial Services Group (NYSE: PNC) and now Bank of America.
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