Warren Buffett's Berkshire earns more than 40% from just these 3 stocks; do you have in your portfolio?
Three stocks in Berkshire Hathaway’s portfolio pay it annual dividend yields of 65%, 45% and 41%. They are Coca-Cola, American Express and Moody’s.
Warren Buffett retired as Berkshire’s CEO on Dec. 31. In mid-September, he also stepped down as chairman of the board. It’s the first time in well over half a century that Berkshire is being run without him in charge.
Greg Abel, Buffett’s protege, now has full control. The company he inherits is worth over a trillion dollars. It has a large pool of capital to work with, along with an investment portfolio of $368 billion.
Coca-Cola, American Express and Moody’s sit inside that portfolio. All three pay dividends, which are the share of profits a company sends to its shareholders, usually every quarter. For Berkshire, those payments arrive as regular cash.
Berkshire’s three old favourites: Coca-Cola, Amex and Moody’s still pay rich dividends
Buffett leaned this way for years. He liked businesses with durable advantages over competitors, and he cared about price. He also liked companies that paid their owners. In a typical year, more than half of the companies in Berkshire’s portfolio paid a dividend.
Berkshire Hathaway continues to benefit from Buffett’s long-term strategy
As of October 22, the dividend yields on the market are small. Coca-Cola yields 2.22%, American Express 1.17% and Moody’s 0.84%. Nobody would call these numbers exciting.
The difference lies in what Berkshire paid for these shares. Berkshire has held Coca-Cola since 1988 and American Express since 1991. Moody’s came into its portfolio in 2000, when it split off from Dun & Bradstreet. These are the three longest-held stocks Berkshire owns.
Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway % of portfolio 1. Apple: 22.69%2. American Express: 18.84%3. Bank of America: 10.96%4. Coca Cola: 9.92%5. Chevron: 7.09%6. Occidental Petroleum: 4.68%7. Moody’s: 4.40%8. Chubb Limited: 3.31%9. Kraft Heinz: 3.17%10. Alphabet: 1.62% https://t.co/PPHNTxX5rP
— World of Statistics (@stats_feed) November 15, 2025
Buffett’s 2021 letter to shareholders gave the cost per share. It was $3.2475 for Coca-Cola, $8.489 for American Express and $10.05 for Moody’s. Those prices were paid decades ago, so they are very low compared with today’s share prices. When the dividend is measured against that old price, the yield looks much bigger. The method is called yield on cost.
Coca-Cola has raised its dividend for 64 years in a row. Its global reach and well-known brand help it do that. The company now pays $2.12 per share every year. Divided by Berkshire’s cost of $3.2475, that works out to about 65%.
American Express has not raised its payout as often as Coca-Cola. But it earns fees from merchants and interest and fees from cardholders. It pays $3.80 per share a year, which is roughly 45% of Berkshire’s cost of $8.489.
Moody’s gives credit ratings to companies and governments and also sells business analytics. Demand for both has grown over the years. It pays $4.12 per share a year, which is about 41% of Berkshire’s cost of $10.05.
One of the companies I wanted to write about in Buffett’s Early Investments (pre-order here: https://t.co/13hSzUlxxl) was Merchants’ National Properties. I couldn’t find the right documents so I picked something else. But I did come across this letter from Warren Buffett to an outside director (the document is almost 70 years old, so it’s in bad shape). Buffett is questioning an “outside director” (his quotations clearly indicating his skepticism on the director’s independence) for exchanging MNP stock at a low valuation to management members who owned Retail Properties, enriching themselves at the expense of minority shareholders.Young Buffett was far more confrontational with management and boards in the earliest part of his career than is commonly believed.Buffett sold this stock to Walter Schloss at $14 a share in 1963. Schloss talked about it in this interview (https://t.co/NgYogvyJYD) with Jim Grant, when it was worth $553, about an 11% CAGR at the time (not including the additional return from dividends). Buffett sold MNP and a handful of other stocks to Schloss to repay Schloss for selling him his Dempster Mill stock when Warren was in the midst of taking control of that company in 1960. MNP is still publicly traded today over-the-counter.
— Brett G (@brettgardner_10) September 17, 2024
There is one catch. These high yields belong to Berkshire because it bought early and waited. A person buying the shares today gets the market yields of 2.22%, 1.17% and 0.84%.
Patience is the real story here. Buffett held on to these three businesses for decades, and the dividends kept growing.