After complaining for years that high valuations were thwarting his stock-buying efforts, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway is back hoovering up other companies’ shares.

The conglomerate made roughly $41bn (€38.8bn) of net purchases in the first quarter, including a boost to its Chevron stake that vaulted the investment into Berkshire’s top four common stock holdings. Mr Buffett also disclosed that the company now holds an expanded 9.5pc stake in Activision Blizzard stock – an arbitrage bet on the video- game maker in the midst of being acquired by Microsoft.

Berkshire hasn’t been this significant of a net buyer of common stocks in any quarter in data going back to 2008. Mr Buffett’s flurry of activity in recent months fuelled a number of questions from shareholders on Saturday at its first in-person annual meeting since 2019.

The gathering, held in Mr Buffett’s hometown of Omaha, Nebraska, lasted hours as the CEO and his business partner Charlie Munger fielded questions about markets, nuclear weapons and even Bitcoin.

Mr Buffett (91) and his deputies have struggled in recent years to find ways to put Berkshire’s cash to work in higher-returning assets, due in part to stiff competition from buyers including private equity firms as well as high valuations.

But the Berkshire executives were back in action during the first three months of the year, adding more Occidental Petroleum shares and striking a deal to buy Alleghany for $11.6bn in cash.

Berkshire’s massive common equity holding in Occidental was one of its biggest disclosed purchases in the first quarter, and came on top of the $10bn Berkshire had previously invested in the oil producer. Mr Buffett noted that the investment came together quickly after he spent a weekend reading a presentation from its CEO, Vicki Hollub.

“What Vicki Hollub was saying made nothing but sense and I decided it was a good place to put Berkshire’s money,” Mr Buffett said.

“And two weeks later we had 14pc of the company.”

Berkshire’s substantial investment in Chevron during the quarter combined with its $10bn investment in Occidental’s preferred shares add up to a $40bn bet on the oil sector, said Jim Shanahan, an analyst at Edward Jones.

The purchases helped chip away at Berkshire’s cash pile, which ended the first quarter at $106bn, the lowest since the third quarter of 2018. The hoard had been trending at near-record levels in recent quarters.

As Berkshire revved up its stock-buying engine, the company slowed its roll on share repurchases during the quarter with just $3.2bn of stock buybacks, the lowest since the same period in 2020 and down from the $6.9bn repurchased during the last three months of 2021.

Mr Buffett had increasingly leaned on repurchases as one way to put money to work in a competitive deal-making environment. Berkshire’s Class A shares were more expensive during the period, with a gain of more than 17pc during the first quarter.

The conglomerate eked out a profit gain of just 0.3pc to $7.04bn in the first quarter compared to the same period a year earlier.