How Warren Buffett's Latest Deals Reflect His Evolving Investment Strategy

Warren Buffett made his mark on Berkshire Hathaway’s portfolio before stepping down as CEO at the beginning of 2026, deploying $6.4 billion into six new U.S. equities during the third quarter of 2025. This collection of stock picks tells an interesting story about how even legendary investors are adapting to today’s challenging market landscape, where finding genuine value has become increasingly elusive. According to Berkshire’s 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the deals reveal a mix of sectors and company profiles that showcase Buffett’s pragmatic approach to capital allocation.

The broader context matters here: Berkshire Hathaway has sold more stocks than it bought for twelve consecutive quarters, reflecting the difficulty in identifying attractive entry points in the current environment. Yet despite this cautious stance, Buffett’s investment team identified six opportunities worth pursuing. Understanding each of these positions and the reasoning behind them provides valuable insight into how institutional investors are thinking about value in 2025 and beyond.

The Six New Positions: A Closer Look at Warren Buffett’s Stock Selections

Berkshire made meaningful additions to its portfolio during the third quarter, including some unexpected moves that deviated from the conglomerate’s traditional playbook. The deals ranged from fresh positions to increased stakes in existing holdings:

New Entries and Expanded Stakes:

• Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG/GOOGL): 17.8 million shares acquired as a new position
• Chubb Limited (NYSE: CB): Additional 4.3 million shares added to existing stake
• Domino’s Pizza (NASDAQ: DPZ): 348,000 shares purchased
• Lamar Advertising: 32,603 shares acquired
• Lennar Corporation: 2,007 additional shares (Class A and Class B combined)
• Sirius XM Holdings (NASDAQ: SIRI): 5 million shares added

Two of these picks stand out for their consistency: Domino’s and Sirius XM have been receiving steady capital injections from Berkshire for years. This quarter marked the fifth consecutive period of increased Domino’s ownership, signaling confidence in the pizza chain’s competitive positioning. During Q3 2025, same-store sales growth of 5.2% demonstrated why Buffett keeps coming back to this name—peers in the restaurant industry struggle to generate comparable growth rates.

Sirius XM presents a different narrative. The satellite radio service faces stiff competition from streaming platforms, yet it maintains a loyal subscriber base bolstered by its integration with new vehicle sales. With the majority of revenue derived from subscriptions rather than advertising, the business generates predictable cash flows—a characteristic Buffett values highly. The stock’s forward price-to-earnings ratio below 7 explains the team’s continued accumulation.

Chubb represents a return to Berkshire’s insurance heritage. The international property and casualty insurer possesses the scale and market position to underwrite complex global commercial risks that smaller competitors cannot handle—a classic competitive moat that Buffett has long appreciated in insurance businesses.

Why Alphabet Emerges as Warren Buffett’s Most Intriguing Recent Deal

Among this quartet of deals, Alphabet deserves special attention, particularly because it represents an atypical Warren Buffett investment. The Oracle of Omaha has historically maintained skepticism toward technology companies, leading many analysts to speculate that one of Berkshire’s investment managers orchestrated this particular purchase. However, Buffett has repeatedly expressed admiration for Google’s business model, and the Alphabet position demonstrates why.

The Enduring Strength of Google’s Core Business:

Google’s search engine functions as a reliable revenue engine, generating consistent, high-margin profits. When artificial intelligence chatbots emerged as a potential threat to this business, many worried that AI-powered alternatives could disrupt search advertising. Management’s response proved skillful: they incorporated AI capabilities directly into search itself, enhancing user engagement while maintaining ad monetization effectiveness. Google’s AI Overviews feature exemplifies this strategy—providing richer search results without cannibilizing the advertising model.

The financial results speak clearly. Google ad revenue growth accelerated to 15% in the most recent quarter of 2025, demonstrating that concerns about AI disruption were overblown. This performance contributed to Alphabet generating $73.5 billion in free cash flow over the trailing twelve months, achieved despite substantial capital expenditures supporting the Google Cloud division.

The Cloud Opportunity and Operating Leverage:

Google Cloud represents a secondary growth engine with revenue expanding in the low 30% range each quarter. The backlog of committed spending is growing even faster than current revenue, indicating sustained demand for AI infrastructure services. As the division scales, operating margins are compressing—a healthy sign that fixed costs are spreading across a growing revenue base. Last quarter’s 24% operating margin in the cloud segment reveals improving unit economics.

Capital Return and Valuation:

The combination of steady, high-margin search revenues and accelerating cloud growth has enabled Alphabet to return capital to shareholders through both share repurchases and dividend payments—hallmarks of a capital-efficient business. While the stock’s forward price-to-earnings multiple of 29 sits above levels Berkshire likely paid, it remains reasonable compensation for a business demonstrating both stability and growth potential.

Evaluating the Investment Case: Why These Deals Matter Today

The pattern emerging from these deals suggests an investment approach grounded in scarcity and selectivity. Berkshire’s twelve-quarter stretch of net selling reflects a high bar for new investments—when the company does deploy capital, those decisions carry weight. The 2025 purchases highlight three investment themes:

Value Persistence: Even in allegedly overvalued markets, companies with strong competitive positions, predictable cash generation, and secular tailwinds remain available to disciplined investors.

Diversification Within Quality: These deals span insurance, pizza franchising, satellite radio, digital advertising, and homebuilding—suggesting that Buffett’s team is seeking quality in underappreciated pockets rather than concentrating in obvious growth areas.

Willingness to Adapt: The Alphabet position, despite deviation from Buffett’s traditional tech skepticism, demonstrates intellectual flexibility. The investment reflects recognition that dominant technology businesses with pricing power deserve inclusion in any well-constructed portfolio.

Investors considering whether to follow Warren Buffett’s recent deals should recognize that these selections required conviction in an environment that has tested patience. The purchases represent Buffett’s final major moves as CEO—a fitting capstone that showcases both the discipline to avoid mediocre opportunities and the wisdom to recognize genuine value when it surfaces. Whether these deals deliver the outsized returns that made Buffett’s career remains to be seen, but the reasoning supporting each position reflects investment acumen refined across decades of capital allocation decisions.