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Warren Buffett’s Berkshire held an $860 million stake in Amazon

Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-A, BRK-B) has just revealed the size of its position in Amazon (AMZN), a bet CEO Warren Buffett initially made mention of earlier this month during Berkshire’s annual shareholders meeting.

According to a 13-F regulatory filing on Wednesday, Berkshire Hathaway held 483,300 shares of the e-commerce giant as of March 31. At that time, the position was worth $860 million. These filings come out 45 days after the end of each quarter and it’s possible they could have changed in size.

Assuming the position hasn’t changed, though, it’s valued north of $913.4 million.

Elsewhere in the filing, Berkshire reported that it added 9.3 million more shares of JPMorgan (JPM) to last hold more than 59 million shares, a position valued at north of $6 billion. Berkshire also boosted its stake in Delta (DAL) by 5.3 million shares to last hold 70.9 million shares, a position valued at $3.7 billion at the end of the quarter.

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Meanwhile, Berkshire trimmed its Wells Fargo (WFC) position by 16.9 million shares, or 3%. Wells Fargo remained the third largest equity holding for Berkshire with 409.8 million shares, a stake valued at around $19.8 billion at the end of the quarter.

Ahead of the annual meeting, Buffett confirmed that Berkshire Hathaway had amassed a new position in Amazon during the first quarter.

The move follows years of Buffett acknowledging that missing Amazon was a mistake.

"Yeah, I've been a fan, and I've been an idiot for not buying," Buffett told CNBC’s Becky Quick at the time. He added that the decision was made by one of his top investment deputies, Todd Combs or Ted Weschler.

Buffett told Yahoo Finance’s Andy Serwer earlier that he’s made bigger mistakes than missing out on investing in Amazon.

"I always admired Jeff [Bezos]. I met him 20 years ago or so. And I thought he was something special, but I didn't realize you could go from books to what's happened there," Buffett said in the wide-ranging interview. "He had a vision and executed it in an incredible way.”

Warren Buffett, Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, speaks to reporters before presiding over the annual shareholders meeting in Omaha, Neb., Saturday, May 4, 2019. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik)
Warren Buffett, Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, speaks to reporters before presiding over the annual shareholders meeting in Omaha, Neb., Saturday, May 4, 2019. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik)

During the Q&A portion of the annual meeting, a shareholder question if Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway were straying from their value investing roots with the Amazon investment.

"It's interesting that the term ‘value investing’ came up because I can assure you both managers — and one of them bought some Amazon stock in the last quarter — he is a value investor,” Buffett said, adding that all investing is “value investing.”

Over the past decade, Buffett has been slowly taking a step back from his responsibilities at his company Berkshire Hathaway. Specifically, he hired two younger money managers, Combs in 2010 and Weschler in 2011, to eventually run Berkshire’s massive investment portfolio.

Combs and Weschler each manage $13 billion of Berkshire’s approximately $173 billion portfolio.

"The two people that, one of whom made the investment in Amazon, they are looking at hundreds of securities," Buffett said at the meeting. "Because they are managing less money in their universe, they are looking for things that they feel they understand what will be developed by that business between now and judgment day."

Julia La Roche is a finance reporter at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter.