Although there are a lot of successful strategies to make money on Wall Street, riding Warren Buffett's coattails has, arguably, been one of the most profitable for the past 57 years.
Since the Oracle of Omaha, as Buffett has come to be known, became CEO of conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A -0.28%) (BRK.B -0.68%) in 1965, he's overseen the creation of close to $695 billion for his company's shareholders, and has led Berkshire's Class A shares (BRK.A) to an annual average return of 20.1%. Over 57 years, an annualized return of 20.1% equates to a total return of more than 3,600,000%!
In other words, when Warren Buffett buys shares of a publicly traded company, Wall Street and investors rightly take notice.
Berkshire Hathaway CEO, Warren Buffett. Image source: The Motley Fool.
With all three of the major U.S. indexes undergoing their steepest pullbacks in two years, a number of stocks in Berkshire Hathaway's investment portfolio are ripe for the picking. What follows are three Warren Buffett stocks investors can confidently buy hand over fist as we steam ahead into June.
Johnson & Johnson
Though it's one of Berkshire Hathaway's smallest positions, healthcare giant Johnson & Johnson (JNJ -0.69%) looks like one of the smartest buys investors can make in a volatile and uncertain investing environment.
One of the best aspects of healthcare stocks is that they're highly defensive. No matter how well or poorly the U.S. economy and stock market perform, people will always get sick and require prescription drugs, medical devices, and healthcare services. This creates a minimum level of demand for J&J's products in any environment.
What's more, Johnson & Johnson is one of only two publicly traded companies that's been given the highly coveted AAA credit rating from Standard & Poor's (S&P). Bestowing J&J with its highest credit rating -- one notch higher than the AA credit rating given to the U.S. federal government -- implies that S&P has the utmost confidence the company can service and repay its outstanding debt. This means even less chance that Johnson & Johnson's share price will swing wildly if a recession materializes and/or if interest rates soar.
Johnson & Johnson's operating segments provide another reason to be quite optimistic about its future. For instance, pharmaceuticals provide the bulk of J&J's growth potential and operating margins. However, brand-name drugs have a finite span of sales exclusivity. To counter this, J&J can lean on its medical-device segment, which is perfectly positioned to benefit from an aging boomer population domestically, and improving access to medical care and insurance in overseas markets. Even the company's soon-to-be spun-off consumer health segment has played a key role. Despite growing slowly, consumer health products offer strong pricing power and highly predictable cash flow.
If you need one more reason to trust J&J, consider this: The company increased its base annual dividend for a 60th consecutive year in April 2022. And if not for the COVID-19 pandemic, J&J's streak of increasing its annual adjusted operating earnings would likely have been nearing 40 years. It's as rock-solid as they come among healthcare stocks.
Image source: Getty Images.
Bank of America
A second Warren Buffett stock that's begging to be bought by opportunistic investors in June is money-center behemoth Bank of America (BAC -0.13%).
The prevailing concern for bank stocks is the growing likelihood that the U.S. will dip into recession. After all, gross domestic product surprisingly retraced in the first quarter. When recessions strike, it's not uncommon for banks to see their loan delinquency rates and charge-offs rise, which results in more money being set aside to cover losses. The end result being that earnings per share declines.
However, there are two sides to economic cycles. Even though recessions are inevitable, they often last just a couple of months to a few quarters. By comparison, economic expansions are measured in years, and have even gone on for more than a decade. While recessions can be challenging, BofA spends a disproportionately longer amount of time benefiting from loan and deposit growth in an expanding U.S. and global economy. In other words, patience tends to pay off handsomely with big-bank stocks.
What makes Bank of America a particularly intriguing buy right now is the company's interest rate sensitivity. With the Federal Reserve altering its stance on monetary policy and aiming to rapidly increase interest rates to tame inflation, no large bank is set to benefit more than BofA. According to a recent company presentation, a 100-basis-point parallel shift in the interest rate yield curve is expected to translate into an estimated $5.4 billion in added net interest income over 12 months. Bank of America doesn't have to do any extra work to make more money on its variable-rate outstanding loans.
The company's digitization initiatives are paying dividends as well. An additional 5 million BofA customers (42 million in total) are actively banking online or via mobile app than were doing so three years ago. Further, 53% of total sales were completed digitally in the first quarter of 2022, which was up 23 percentage points from the comparable quarter in 2019 (i.e., prior to the pandemic). Shifting transactions online or to mobile is allowing BofA to recognize cost-savings by consolidating some of its physical branches.
Taking into account CEO Brian Moynihan's penchant for returning a lot of capital to his shareholders via buybacks and dividends, and the company's positioning as interest rates rise, Bank of America's sub-10 forward-year price-to-earnings ratio makes it a steal at its current price.
Image source: Amazon.
Amazon
The third and final Warren Buffett stock to buy hand over fist in June is none other than e-commerce kingpin Amazon (AMZN -1.64%).
The echo the concerns stated earlier, Amazon's shares have endured their steepest sell-off in more than a decade on the expectation that the U.S. will enter a recession. Historically high inflation tends to hit lower-income individuals and households the hardest, which will almost certainly impact Amazon's value-based retail model. To boot, inflation is hitting most aspects of Amazon's supply chain and increasing its labor costs. Yet in spite of these headwinds, there are multiple reasons for long-term investors to be excited about scooping up shares of Amazon at a big discount.
As most folks are probably aware, Amazon is the undisputed leader in online retail sales in the United States. In March, eMarketer estimated that Amazon will control just shy of 40% of all U.S. e-commerce sales in 2022. That's more than eight percentage points higher than competitors No. 2 through 15, combined!
However, retail sales are only one part of the Amazon story -- and frankly not even the most-important part anymore. What's far more exciting is the growth from cloud infrastructure service segment, Amazon Web Services (AWS). AWS controls close to a third of all global cloud infrastructure spending, with year over year sales growth coming in at 37% in the first quarter. Cloud infrastructure spending is still, arguably, in its early innings, and the operating margins associated with AWS can run circles around the smaller margins derived from online retail revenue.
To add to this point, all of Amazon's higher-margin segments -- cloud infrastructure, advertising, and subscription services -- have continued to grow at a double-digit pace, even as retail sales have declined. This is a recipe for Amazon's operating cash flow to keep growing, even if online retail sales shrink noticeably in the coming quarters.
Last decade, Wall Street regularly supported a valuation multiple of 23 to 37 times Amazon's year-end operating cash flow. Based on Wall Street's forecast of $232 in cash flow per share for 2024, Amazon is valued at a historically inexpensive multiple (below 10) to its future cash flow. That makes it a screaming bargain.
