Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust’s top 5 shares

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust, which hit a record share portfolio value of $35 billion, has reduced its stake in Warren Buffett-owned Berkshire Hathaway and added Danaher and Hormel Foods to its portfolio.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and his former wife, Melinda Gates, started the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in 2000.

In 2006, the foundation’s trustees established a two-entity structure that separated the program work from the investment of the foundation’s assets.

The two entities are the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which distributes money to grantees, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust, which manages the endowment assets and funds the foundation.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Trust currently holds 23 stocks.

Warren Buffett-owned Berkshire Hathaway has been the trust’s top holding since 2007, but recently dropped to second place.

In the third quarter of 2022, the foundation reduced its stake in Berkshire Hathaway by 14.41% and added 4,056.66% to its Microsoft shares. It bumped the technology giant to the top spot. 

In the fourth quarter of 2022, the trust reduced its Berkshire Hathaway shareholding by a further 16.84%. Despite this reduction, Berkshire Hathaway still makes up 21.35% of the foundation’s portfolio, just behind Microsoft’s 26.36%.

The foundation’s new acquisitions in the fourth quarter were the Danaher Corporation and Hormel Foods Corporation – both making up 0.28% of the foundation’s portfolio. 

Danaher is a US-based conglomerate company with a market cap of $186.62 billion.

Hormel Foods is a 100-year-old food processing company based in the US with a market cap of $24,58 billion. 

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust’s top 5 holdings