Bill Gates owns about 700 million shares of Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) — 713.1 million to be exact. His cache of Microsoft stock is worth a tidy $18.7 billion. Every time the price of Microsoft moves up a penny, Gates’ wealth grows by $7.1 million.
Well, big surprise there, right? You knew Bill had a pile of MSFT shares. So did I.
But Gates holds huge positions in other companies. Forbes, which recently pegged Gates’ wealth at $50 billion, alluded to some of these other holdings. I’m not going to gloss over the details. I’m going to tell you exactly what the richest man in the world owns.
By poring through SEC records for Gates — as well as his personal holding company, which manages his investments — I’ve come up with a list of 19 holdings in addition to Microsoft.
Some of them, like ethanol and coal companies, may interest you. The losers might surprise you. Some holdings, such as a $350 million stake in his close friend Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, you might have been able to guess.
Let’s take a look:
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The largest non-Microsoft holding is Canadian Railway (NYSE: CNI). The railroad’s tracks span Canada and Middle America, connecting the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf coasts. Its customer base is geographically diverse and so are the products it moves, including petroleum, grain, fertilizer and coal. CNI made three recent acquisitions, operates at about a 22% margin and has seen its shares rise +41% this year.
Three other securities offer Gates a measure of international exposure. Two of them, Fomento Economico Mexicano (NYSE: FMX) and Coca-Cola FEMSA (NYSE: KOF), are beverage-related and overlap a little, as brewer Fomento (up nearly +50% this year) also owns part of Coca-Cola FEMSA, the company that sells Coke in Central and South American markets. The third internationally oriented position is Grupo Televisa (NYSE: TV), which is the leading Mexican broadcaster.
The most interesting data the SEC filings shows is what Bill Gates is buying.
Here are the four:
Republic Service (NYSE: RSG) is a trash company that collects garbage for residential, commercial, industrial and municipal customers in 21 states. The company has a market cap of 10.4 billion and trades at 33.5 times earnings, so the market evidently thinks its business is picking up.
The shares are up about +11% so far this year, but Gates added tons of shares to his portfolio in late February and early March when the market was at its ebb. The week of Feb. 23 he bought 500,000 shares a day, capping off the week with a 1.1 million share purchase and continuing his shopping spree March 2 and 3. The best price he got in that flurry of buys was $18.80 for a 731,700 share stake on March 2, which, at today’s price, is good for a nice +46% gain.
Gates’ current stake: 55.4 million shares.
Gates bought 500,000 shares of Grupo Televiso on the last day of 2008 at $14.94, about $10 a share lower than what he had been paying for the company. Those shares were a good buy, but even the richest man in the world can’t always time the market perfectly, and most of his shares are still in the red, bought for somewhere between $21.26 and $29.80. The stock closed at $19.30 Thursday.
Gates’ current stake: 20.7 million shares.
AutoNation (NYSE: AN) is one of the nation’s leading car dealers, and Gates (tidily) added 50,000 shares to his position in early January as the price hovered at $10. He should have bought more: AutoNation has gained +97% since he bought.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation also owns 10 million shares, and uberinvestor Eddie Lampert holds a major stake in the company, too.
Shares are up +98.6% year to date and are within inches of the 52-week high.
Gates’ current stake: 11.4 million shares.
Gates’ last move has been to protect some of his shekels from inflation, and he added 425,130 shares of the Western Asset/Claymore Inflation-Linked Opportunities & Income Fund (NYSE: WIW). Eighty percent of this exchanged-traded fund’s assets are in inflation-protected instruments. The fact that Gates owns this fund, which is up a modest +12.8% for the year, is evidence of the fact that no matter how much jack you got, it’s all worth protecting.
Gates’ current stake: 5.1 million shares.
— Andy Obermeuller
Chief Investment Strategist
Government-Driven Investing