having had a chance to sift through the changes in widemoat berkshire hathaway’s brka brkb firstquarter 13f filing now that the company has segregated its holdings at new england asset management a wholly owned subsidiary of the firm’s general re insurance subsidiary from those that will continue to be managed as separate client holdings amounting to 645 million at the end of march 2023 we are updating our comments about the company’s equity investment portfolio for the most recent quarter the neam portfolio consists of separatelymanaged assets for nonberkshire clients we’ve questioned the insurer on a few occasions about how much of the holdings at neam which amounted to 54 billion in that firm’s 13f at the end of 2022 were berkshire’s and how much was being managed for nonberkshire subsidiaries or clients and we were pleased to see that issue finally clear up berkshire noted that its 13f filing now includes holdings owned by general re but formerly reported by neam apple aapl 204 million shares bank of america bac 228 million shares chevron cvx 21 million shares citigroup c 89000 shares diageo dgeaf 227750 shares hp hpq 165 million shares and markel mkl 4050 shares that said we suspect that larger holdings in bank of new york mellon bk and us bancorp usb both of which were eliminated from berkshire’s portfolio before the end of the first quarter reported by neam in past periods should also be ascribed to the insurer with that in mind we would note that berkshire still reported a relatively busy quarter for its insurance company equity investment portfolio with net sales exclusive of purchases coming in at an estimated 104 billion comprising sales of 133 billion and stock purchases of 29 billion based on the company’s 10q filing for the march quarter this was 35 billion more in net sales than was reported in the company’s 13f filing with berkshire’s sale of additional shares in chinese electric car maker byd byddy during the quarter likely accounting for most of the difference