Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-A, BRK-B) sold more of its holdings in Bank of America (BAC), raising its total haul to nearly $9 billion over the last several months.
Late Tuesday, the conglomerate said it further trimmed its stake in the country’s second-largest bank by 21.6 million shares, making approximately $862.7 million in profits from the sales.
Berkshire has sold BofA stock in 10 of the past 11 weeks starting in mid-July, unloading a total of 218.5 million shares and earning $8.9 billion on those sales.
Berkshire still holds a 10.5% stake in the country's largest bank and the price of Bank of America’s stock has fallen roughly just as much since Buffet began selling his firm's longest held bank stock position.
BofA is still up 16% so far this year, trailing rivals Goldman Sachs (GS), JPMorgan Chase (JPM), and Citigroup (C). Its stock was down slightly Wednesday morning.
Buffett and Berkshire haven’t yet said anything about the motivation for selling. And Berkshire remains the bank’s largest stockholder, with over 800 million shares worth more than $32 billion.
"I don't know what exactly he's doing because, frankly, we can't ask and we wouldn't," Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan said earlier this month at a Barclays conference.
The recent moves are notable given Buffett’s long history with the bank. He injected $5 billion into Bank of America in 2011 as the lender struggled to overcome the wreckage of the subprime housing meltdown that caused the 2008-2009 financial crisis.
That investment back then wasn't just a bet on Bank of America's recovery but also on the new leadership of CEO Brian Moynihan, who took over the top job in 2009.
“We're buying the stock, a portion of the stock, and so life will go on. But he's been a great investor for our company and stabilized our company when we needed it at the time,” Moynihan added.
Bank of America's financial performance isn't expected to dim over the near term, according to the latest guidance from Chief Financial Officer Alastair Borthwick offered a a conference on Wednesday.
Rate cuts from the Federal Reserve may help the bank as deposit costs drop and a big securities portfolio recovers.
Bank of America’s major lending revenue stream, net interest income, is expected to have hit its bottom in the second quarter and grow from there through the end of the year, according to the CFO.
“We still feel like that's the case,” Borthwick said Wednesday at a London conference hosted by Bank of America.
“We're back now to something more akin to a low growth, low inflation and potentially a reasonable rate structure that should make it a pretty good environment for American banks,” Borthwick added.
David Hollerith is a senior reporter for Yahoo Finance covering banking, crypto, and other areas in finance.
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