Annual Report and 13F differ on number of Apple shares?

[manuelbean]

Hi guys, any idea why the number of Apple shares differs from the Annual Report (907,6M) and the 13F (887,1M)?

 

Thanks,

Cheers

[aws]

The balance are reported under New England Asset Management's 13-F.

[gfp]

Berkshire also filed a 13G on the same day as the 13F that shows the accurate ownership of AAPL shares -

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/320193/000119312521044816/d107461dsc13ga.htm

 

As mentioned above, the Berk 13F doesn't always capture all of the shares.  Gen Re NEAM 13F shows the rest.

[manuelbean]

Thanks for your answers.

 

Could you please explain it as if I were 3?

 

thanks

[Munger_Disciple]

Page K-85 of the 10-K also shows the Apple position was worth $120.4B on Dec 31, 2020.

[gfp]

Could you please explain it as if I were 3?

 

Berkshire Hathaway files two different 13-Fs, which means the holdings reported by CNBC, dataroma and others are often incomplete because many sites only pull data from one of Berkshire's 13Fs.  General Re New England Asset Management also files a 13F and some of the holdings on that 13F are owned by Berkshire.  Others are not.  The Berkshire positions on Gen Re NEAM's 13F are noted with an ownership code corresponding to Berkshire.

 

Berkshire's 10Qs, 10Ks and 13G filings list the correct share ownership / closing value for the date of the report.  Further complicating things, some 13Gs would also include pension fund holdings, which are not owned by Berkshire shareholders and not included in 10Qs, 10Ks or 13-Fs.

 

Usually the pension fund stuff only comes up with smaller positions taken by Ted or Todd.  Apple was a rare case of overlap between one of the Ts and Warren.  The Ted/Todd position has been sold and the remaining position is presumably all Warren.  Warren has also sold some Apple from his stash recently.

 

These are the NEAM 13F filings:

https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?CIK=1004244

 

On the NEAM filings linked above, when "01 02" appears in Column 7, that is a position owned by Berkshire Hathaway shareholders.  All others are not owned by Berkshire shareholders directly (they are probably part of an investment product marketed to customers of NEAM).

 

There are Berkshire holdings of AAPL, BK, BAC, DEO and USB on the most recent NEAM 13-F.

[Dynamic]

Exactly what gfp said. For both the Berkshire and NEAM 13F filings the front page includes important detail and is ignored by almost every site that scrapes their 13F.

 

The Berkshire 13F-HR filing refers you to New England Asset Management and the NEAM filing describes the owner code in column 7. This changed one quarter in about 2019 where it was 1 2 instead of 01 02 so it's worth reading the cover page to make sure nothing changed since last quarter.