Billionaires: Warren Buffett offloads five million HP shares

In our fortnightly round-up of the world’s super wealthy, Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin expects a split on space station partnership and Israel Englander buys the late Paul Allen’s French Riviera villa

Berkshire Hathaway chairman Warren Buffett is offloading the company's shares in HP. Reuters

Warren Buffett

Investors soon will not be able to follow Warren Buffett's every move in Hewlett-Packard's stock if the billionaire's company keeps selling off shares of the printer and computer maker.

Berkshire Hathaway’s ownership of HP is about to drop below 10 per cent after it sold about five million shares, according to a recent regulatory filing by Mr Buffett’s company.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission requires investors who own less than 10 per cent of a company to report their holdings only on a quarterly basis rather than big investors who must disclose their actions closer to the time of a “triggering” event, which can mean buying or selling shares.

Many investors watch Mr Buffett's moves closely because of his successful track record over the years.

Not that long ago, Berkshire owned more than 12 per cent of California-based HP's stock before it started to trim its stake last month. Now, it is down to 10.2 per cent after several stock sales.

In the past 30 days, HP's shares have tumbled by about 14 per cent but there has been a fairly broad sell-off across the technology sector.

In the same period, shares of Apple have fallen 9 per cent. But HP is still one of the biggest decliners among peers.

Mr Buffett may be doing more than just trimming the investment, but he doesn't comment on stock sales more than what he is required to disclose because he does not want to tip his hand while Berkshire might still be selling.

Berkshire amassed its HP stake early last year. Even after the latest sell-off, Mr Buffett's conglomerate still held more than 100.9 million shares in HP. In total, Berkshire has sold slightly more than 20 million shares in the past month.

Throughout his investment career, Mr Buffett has famously resisted investing in technology companies because he said he could not confidently pick out the long-term winners.

But in recent years, Berkshire has bought a massive stake in Apple that ranks as the largest investment in its $350 billion portfolio.

Mr Buffett has said he considers Apple a consumer products company with extremely loyal customers, and he can understand that kind of business.

Jeff Bezos

Blue Origin, the aerospace company founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, expects to break up a corporate partnership formed years ago to build a commercial space station, reassigning staff and changing leadership as it adapts to more urgent priorities, sources said.

Earlier this year, the company reassigned a majority of its employees working on Orbital Reef, a commercial space station it had planned to build with Sierra Space, according to three sources.

The staff went to other programmes such as Blue Origin's new moon lander contract with Nasa and a closely held in-space mobility project.

A Blue Origin representative said Sierra would remain a partner on Orbital Reef but declined to say in what capacity.

The shake-up of the Orbital Reef team shows the rocky state of industry plans to build a private replacement to the two decade-old International Space Station, the work of several government space agencies that has cost more than $100 billion.

Watch: The billionaire space race

Mr Bezos, the founder of Amazon, started Blue Origin in 2000 and has been looking to inject a sense of urgency into the company as some important programmes face steep hurdles.

The company's suborbital tourist rocket, New Shepard, has been grounded for more than a year after a 2022 accident.

In 2021, Blue Origin announced its partnership to build what it envisions as a “business park in space” with Sierra Space, a spin-off from defence contractor Sierra Nevada.

In low-Earth orbit, Orbital Reef would function as a microgravity science laboratory for companies and government agencies, and a destination for tourists, among other uses.

A month after the announcement, Sierra announced a series A funding round worth $1.4 billion. It said a third of that total would fund its contributions to Orbital Reef – an inflatable habitat that formed the liveable core of the space station's design.

Recently the partnership has soured, with feuding and disagreement between the companies' managements, the three sources said.

A Sierra Space representative declined to comment.

Blue Origin, which leads the partnership, is expected to keep working on its own version of a space station without Sierra, two sources said, but it was unclear what those plans look like.

Israel Englander

Late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s French Riviera villa has been bought by Millennium Management founder Israel Englander, filings seen by Bloomberg show.

The property, called Villa Maryland, is set in the Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat peninsula in the South of France, the country’s most expensive postcode. The selling price is not listed in public documents.

But local brokers say the property is worth at least €100 million ($105 million).

Overlooking the sea and surrounded by four hectares of Roman-style terraced gardens, the 18-bedroom villa measures 2,500 square metres (27,000 square feet) and features a cloister supported by red marble pillars, according to the city’s website.

It was built in 1904 at the request of Arthur Wilson, a British friend of King Edward VII, and hosted receptions attended by Winston Churchill. After its purchase, Allen famously visited the villa during summers from his superyacht called Octopus.

Before the technology billionaire died in 2018, he pledged that proceeds from the sale of his estate assets would go to philanthropy.

Last year, the executors of Allen’s estate sold 60 artworks from his collection for a record-breaking $1.5 billion.

Mr Englander has a net worth of $11.4 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

The American is a keen investor in property. He reportedly invested in a Paris flat last year and is expanding the French presence of his hedge fund with new offices. His representatives did not respond to a request for comment.

The sale is set to be one of the largest in real estate this year by a private individual.

Ryan Cohen

Billionaire Ryan Cohen’s appointment to lead GameStop drew cheers across the social media platforms that made him a meme-stock star. But investors may want to hold the applause based on his spotty record of making money for them.

Mr Cohen, who helped to spark a more than 2,000 per cent surge in the video-game seller’s shares in early 2021, was named the company's chief executive last Thursday.

He takes his post just as the movie Dumb Money, based on the GameStop trading frenzy that burnt hedge funds and enriched small investors at the time, hits theatres nationwide.

The company’s shares are now 80 per cent below their January 2021 peak. And Wall Street is sceptical that Mr Cohen will be able to engineer a turnaround, regardless of the retail crowd’s euphoria and forgiveness of the poor performance of other companies in which he has taken large stakes.

“Cohen’s appointment ensures GameStop’s demise,” said Wedbush’s Michael Pachter, one of three analysts tracking the stock.

Retailers Bed Bath & Beyond and Nordstrom have also delivered losses to the people who bought and held after reports Mr Cohen had taken a stake.

Alibaba Group’s stock has also slumped since the January report that Mr Cohen had built a holding.

Mr Cohen became an idol to individual investors after gaining a seat on GameStop’s board in January 2021 as shares rocketed.

His appeal was cemented by his tweets hitting back at critics, as investors flocked to create memes praising the Chewy founder, who made an initial fortune selling the pet supply retailer to PetSmart in 2017.

Mr Cohen’s push to reshape GameStop in the mould of Amazon has not worked out as planned. The company has gone through four chief executives in less than six years.

His investment firm, RC Ventures, has been among the largest shareholders since 2020.

While investors who bought in August 2020, when he disclosed his first stake, are up some 1,100 per cent, the company has shed $19 billion in value from a 2021 peak, with earnings stagnating.