12 Best Fortune 500 Stocks To Buy According to Hedge Funds

6. Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE:BRK-B)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 131

Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE:BRK-B) is a holding company that owns subsidiaries engaged in a number of diverse business activities. The most important of these is the property and casualty insurance business conducted on both a direct and reinsurance basis through a number of subsidiaries.

Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE:BRK-B) had a strong Q4 2024 as its operating profit – which encompasses earnings from the company’s wholly owned businesses – skyrocketed 71% to over $14.52 billion, bolstered by improved underwriting and higher investment income in its insurance businesses.  However, for the full year 2024, net income totaled $89 billion, down 7.5% from 2023. More notably though, the Warren Buffett-led conglomerate ended the year sitting on a record cash pile of $334.2 billion, twice as much as the year before. The massive cash inflow came from Berkshire’s sale of 62% of its holdings in Apple and one-third of its stake in Bank of America. In his annual letter to shareholders, the Oracle of Omaha assured investors that the company would prefer investing in businesses to holding cash. Berkshire repurchased $2.9 billion worth of shares in 2024 but hasn’t conducted any share buybacks since last May.

Warren Buffett highlighted that Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE:BRK-B) paid $26.8 billion in taxes to the US government in 2024, the largest sum the IRS has ever received from a single company and equal to 5% of all corporate tax revenue collected in the country.