Berkshire Hathaway Inc.'s cash swelled in the second quarter to its highest level in a year as Chairman Warren Buffett pared bets on consumer-products stocks.

Cash advanced 7.5 percent to $40.7 billion in the three months ended June 30, the Omaha-based company said in a regulatory filing. Berkshire was a net seller of equities in the quarter as it cut its allocation to companies that make and distribute consumer goods while boosting holdings of financial firms and a group called “commercial, industrial and other.” Individual stocks weren't listed in the filing.

“Why keep his old names that served a purpose for a while and have gone up,” Tom Russo, a partner at Berkshire investor Gardner Russo & Gardner, said in a phone interview. Some of the consumer stocks “have various forms of blemishes.”

Buffett, 81, has cited challenges at consumer-products firms in Berkshire's $86.2 billion stock portfolio, including Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble Co.