Investors looking for big changes to the holdings of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust portfolio may generally have been disappointed in its report from the third quarter, as it mostly stood pat on its top lineup. However, there was some significant trimming and rebalancing, notably a 65% reduction in its stake in tech giant Microsoft Corp. (ticker: MSFT), the software company Bill Gates co-founded.
The Gates trust reported $36.6 billion in 13F securities as of Sept. 30 (down from $47.8 billion in the previous quarter). It didn’t add any new stocks, but the portfolio was in “sell” mode on some big names, paring back assets in 10 holdings and selling out of two smaller positions: Crown Castle Inc. (CCI) and United Parcel Service Inc. (UPS). The trust remains top-heavy, with 95.7% of its holdings concentrated in 10 stocks, and offers few surprises, save for the portfolio’s decline in assets.
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“The Gates trust’s shape still makes sense,” says Robert Cannon, a financial advisor for Experity Wealth in Riverside, Connecticut. “It’s heavily tilted towards essential services and long-duration growth, and that fits a foundation that needs reliable cash flow for grants but also wants its capital working in sectors with real social value.”
Cannon said big portfolio mainstays like Waste Management Inc. (WM), Canadian National Railway Co. (CNI) and Caterpillar Inc. (CAT) all fall in that space where commercial performance overlaps with environmental or infrastructure benefits. “Yet Microsoft is still the cornerstone because cloud and AI are the long-term drivers with strong governance credentials,” Cannon says.
How does the latest portfolio of the Gates Foundation Trust break down? Here’s an inside look:
| Gates Stock | % of Portfolio | Market Value of Shares |
| Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK.B) | 29.9% | $10.9 billion |
| Waste Management Inc. (WM) | 17.5% | $6.4 billion |
| Canadian National Railway Co. (CNI) | 13.4% | $4.9 billion |
| Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) | 13.0% | $4.8 billion |
| Caterpillar Inc. (CAT) | 8.3% | $3.0 billion |
| Deere & Co. (DE) | 4.5% | $1.6 billion |
| Ecolab Inc. (ECL) | 3.9% | $1.4 billion |
Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK.B)
The Gates team continues to pare its position in Berkshire Hathaway, lopping off 2.4 million shares of BRK.B. Legendary investor Warren Buffett’s Berkshire is still a whopping 29.9% of the portfolio, with an estimated market value of $10.9 billion. Even with the haircut, that’s five percentage points more than the 24.5% it represented in the previous quarter. It bears noting that Berkshire’s largest stock holding is Apple Inc. (AAPL), at 22.7% of its portfolio.
BRK.B stock isn’t skyrocketing in 2025, with shares up only 11.3% year to date and 6.8% over the past calendar year as of Nov. 18. As with the Gates trust, Berkshire portfolio managers were primarily sellers in the third quarter of 2025, shedding $12.5 billion from their stock lineup (mostly AAPL and Bank of America Corp. (BAC) shares) while buying $6.4 billion (including a new $4.3 billion position in Alphabet Inc. (GOOG, GOOGL).
Speculation continues to grow that prominent investors are sidestepping Berkshire shares due to founder Buffett’s imminent departure at the end of 2025. Buffett himself has promised not to sell any of his BRK.B shares until new chief Greg Abel finds a solid footing.
As for the Gates trust, it’s likely the third-quarter BRK.B share sale had more to do with textbook portfolio care and feeding than any ill sentiment toward the stock. It’s still the portfolio’s largest position (by a long shot). Pruning some of the massive gains the Gates trust has accumulated with BRK.B shares over the past few years is likely just maintenance, balancing portfolio risk.
Portfolio weight: 29.9% Market value of shares: $10.9 billion
Waste Management Inc. (WM)
The Gates trust was also a big seller of WM shares in Q3, cutting 3.3 million shares from the portfolio (about a 10% slash) and leaving a market value of about $6.4 billion. Even so, WM remains the second-largest volume play in the portfolio, at 17.5%.
The stock has returned a paltry 5.9% year to date and is down 5.4% in the past three months as of Nov. 18. That’s well below the benchmark S&P 500 index’s 12.5% year-to-date return. On the upside, the stock offers a solid 1.6% forward dividend yield (Waste Management has paid a dividend for 22 consecutive years).
While trash management is a mundane business, it’s also a highly reliable cash machine, and Waste Management happens to sit atop the industry now and has done so for years. The company recently released financial estimates that include 9% compound annual revenue growth, with a big chunk coming from WM’s recent acquisition of medical waste management company Stericycle.
Analysts continue to back the stock, with Wells Fargo’s Jerry Revich recently launching coverage with a “buy” rating and a $238 price target — WM currently trades around $214 per share.
Portfolio weight: 17.5% Market value of shares: $6.4 billion
Canadian National Railway Co. (CNI)
The Gates trust continued its Q3 sell cycle with Canadian National, another long-term Gates favorite. The trust sold 3 million shares of CNI stock, leaving a market value of $4.9 billion. At a 13.4% portfolio weighting, CNI is the third-largest stock in the Gates portfolio as of the end of the third quarter. While the stock is down 5.6% year to date, it offers a reliable 2.6% dividend yield and has top Wall Street analysts like Citi and Bernstein issuing “buy” ratings.
Just like with Waste Management, the Gates team loves this industry chart topper. It’s far and away the largest rail transport in Canada, and controls highly valuable toll booth-style rights-of-way that other railway companies can only dream about. CNI is a shining example of a Gates portfolio pick that has durable, heavy cash flow, immense pricing power, and a long track record of dominating industries and consolidating market share.
Portfolio weight: 13.4% Market value of shares: $4.9 billion
Microsoft Corp. (MSFT)
In the second quarter of 2025, Microsoft made up 27.3% of the Gates portfolio, but a 17-million-share Q3 sell-off pulled that percentage back to 13%. That puts Microsoft in fourth place in overall positioning. The stock, however, is still a portfolio cornerstone, with a market value of $4.8 billion.
The stock is up a solid 17.7% year to date, and the Gates team doesn’t trade stocks on short-term performance anyway; instead, it opts for a few favorites and holds them for the long haul.
The Gates trust is known for risk management, which is a top priority in such a concentrated portfolio. Here, any significant shift in the top five could shake up the fund in ways the portfolio’s management team historically doesn’t like to see. So, it’s also possible that Gates needed the cash for one of his philanthropic endeavors.
Still, Big Tech investors may wonder whether management had some angst over rising technology industry valuations, given the massive investments in artificial intelligence in 2025. But more likely, the Q3 cut is about the trust rebalancing the fund or seeking to maximize liquidity than it is about financial fundamentals.
Portfolio weight: 13% Market value of shares: $4.8 billion
Caterpillar Inc. (CAT)
Caterpillar, the Irving, Texas-based farm and agricultural construction machinery titan, composed 8.3% of the Gates portfolio at the end of Q3, up from 6% in the prior quarter. The trust shaved 1 million CAT shares in the third quarter.
Unlike some other top-weighted stocks in the Gates portfolio, CAT shares have soared in 2025, delivering a 52.4% gain for investors year to date and rising 32.9% in just the past three months. CAT also offers a modest 1.1% dividend yield.
CAT is branching out in 2025, in a recent deal with Vertiv Holdings Co. (VRT), in a data center solutions partnership, and strong year-over-year revenue growth of 10% in the past quarter, with heavy equipment sales exceptionally robust. The company’s $17.6 billion in Q3 revenues represents a historical high for Caterpillar. At the same time, product backlog skyrocketed to $39.8 billion, a firm record.
With ample assets and a multi-year uptrend in the lucrative industrial equipment sector, cash-flush CAT is a natural for the Gates portfolio, likely for years to come.
Portfolio weight: 8.3% Market value of shares: $3 billion
Deere & Co. (DE)
The Gates trust’s Deere position remained relatively unchanged in the third quarter of 2025, as it has all year, with DE shares making up 4.5% of the portfolio. The stock’s portfolio market value stood at about $1.6 billion at the end of Q3.
Trading around $473 per share, Deere shares are up 13% for the year and down 3.2% over the past 90 days. Market watchers see Deere’s financials moderating in 2026, with UBS analyst Steven Fisher calling 2026 earnings per share at $17.90 but raising that figure to $23.20 for 2027, representing a 30% growth rate, thanks to more robust business ties to China (with rising soybean demand) and Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan (industrial machinery pacts).
Other Wall Street analysts generally back the stock, with Wells Fargo recently initiating coverage with an “overweight” rating and a one-year price target of $543 per share. RBC Capital’s Sabahat Khan also launched coverage of DE with an “outperform” rating and a price target of $542.
Deere has a unique trick up its sleeve that any billionaire businessman could appreciate: It maximizes its boom revenue periods and minimizes damage in its difficult periods, allowing the company to bring costs and expenses down during slumps. Over the past two decades, Deere has experienced periods of rapid growth followed by only temporary slowdowns, lending the company an air of stability.
Deere’s 1.4% dividend yield will also help attract income-minded investors.
Portfolio weight: 4.5% Market value of shares: $1.6 billion
Ecolab Inc. (ECL)
Ecolab ranks seventh in the list of Gates holdings, with no shares traded by the trust in Q3. The company represents 3.9% of the portfolio, with a market value of $1.4 billion.
Specializing in sustainable water, hygiene, and energy technology and services, which are all areas of keen interest to public policy makers and clean energy-minded investors, the St. Paul, Minnesota-based green energy company appeals to the civic-minded Gates.
Ecolab is in expansion mode, with the rollout of its integrated cooling platform for increasingly lucrative AI data centers. Company financials are looking healthy, and analysts are lining up in support of ECL shares. In early November, Evercore ISI held its “buy” rating on Ecolab, with a price target of $300. A few weeks earlier, Barclays issued the same call on ECL, also with a $300 price target. ECL shares have been trading around $259.
It’s no surprise that Ecolab is a Gates favorite. A growth stock that outperforms its peers quarter after quarter and is on a mission to help make Earth a cleaner planet is more likely to find a home in the Gates portfolio.
Portfolio weight: 3.9% Market value of shares: $1.4 billion
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Bill Gates Portfolio: 7 Best Stocks to Buy for 2026 originally appeared on usnews.com
Update 11/19/25: This story was published at an earlier date and has been updated with new information.
