Shares in the world’s top chipmaker TSMC jumped 6% after Berkshire Hathaway revealed it has bought more than $4-billion of the Taiwanese company’s stock.
Berkshire Hathaway made the disclosure in a regulatory notice on Monday, saying it bought more than $4.1 billion of stock in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.
The move – a rare significant foray into the technology sector by billionaire Warren Buffett’s conglomerate – boosted investor sentiment for the world’s largest contract chipmaker, which saw its shares hit a two-year low last month due to a sharp slowdown in global chip demand.
In its filing on Monday of US-listed equity investments as of September 30, Berkshire said it owned about 60.1 million American depositary shares of TSMC.
Berkshire also disclosed new stakes of $297 million in building materials company Louisiana-Pacific Corp and $13 million in Jefferies Financial Group. It exited an investment in Store Capital Corp, a real estate company that agreed in September to be taken private.
The filing did not specify whether Buffett or his portfolio managers Todd Combs and Ted Weschler made specific purchases and sales. Investors often try to piggy back on what Berkshire buys. Larger investments are normally Buffett’s.
Berkshire does not normally make big technology bets, as it often prefers companies it perceives to have competitive advantages, often through their size.