The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust’s investment portfolio was worth $45.9 billion at the end of the first quarter, up 8.5% from the $42.3 billion recorded at year-end, according to the trust’s latest 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on May 15.
In addition to making lucrative gains, Microsoft Corp. (ticker: MSFT) co-founder Bill Gates’ trust also made some interesting tweaks to his mainstay investment portfolio in the first quarter of 2024, though the lineup mostly stayed the same.
The portfolio is overweight in four stocks: MSFT, Waste Management Inc. (WM), Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK.B) and Canadian National Railway Co. (CNI), which combined make up 81.5% of the trust’s portfolio. Although the Gates trust trimmed two of its top positions in Q1, MSFT and BRK.B, 96.6% of the portfolio’s assets remain concentrated in the top 10 holdings. That shows the portfolio managers are sticking to the script and, aside from two “sell” positions at the top end of the portfolio, there were no other changes made in the first three months of the year.
The Gates Foundation Trust employs a buy-and-hold strategy with a high concentration in public equities. “Since Q2 2009, its top 10 investments have consistently represented over 80% of the portfolio, a figure that increased to over 90% by Q3 2014,” says Drayton D’Silva, chief executive officer at Tower Hills Capital, an investment firm in New York.
