Charlie Munger, investment company Berkshire Hathaway’s vice chairman, laid out high praise for Apple during an interview with Yahoo! Finance on Thursday. He called the Cupertino juggernaut “ungodly well-managed.”
He also described Apple as “one of the strong companies” and said he expects it to remain so.
Warren Buffett is one of the greatest financial masterminds of our time. But he’s not infallible. Sometimes even Warren makes mistakes — and one of those recent mistakes was called Apple.
Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway firm has long invested in Apple, with Buffett once saying that, “I don’t think of Apple as a stock. I think of it as our third business. It’s probably the best business I know in the world. And that is a bigger commitment than we have in any business except insurance and the railroad.”
Apple has done extremely well for Buffett. The company’s stake in Apple has tripled in value in the past three years. On Wednesday, as Apple closed at a new all-time high, it was worth $128 billion. It accounts for more than 40% of Berkshire’s US portfolio, while Berkshire is Apple’s second larger shareholder (after index fund giant Vanguard.) However, Buffett has also been pruning his Apple stake. And it’s cost him.
Berkshire Hathaway — the investment firm belonging to Warren Buffett, one of Apple’s biggest cheerleaders in recent years — reduced its stake in the Cupertino tech giant last quarter.
According to a regulatory filing made this week, in Q4 2020, Berkshire Hathaway cut 6% of its Apple shares. By contrast it kept its Amazon shares steady, while growing its stake in T-Mobile by a massive 117%.
A decade ago, Berkshire Hathaway founder Warren Buffett said he just didn’t get Apple. Today, Apple shares make up some 43% of Berkshire Hathaway’s entire stock portfolio, according to a report from Motley Fool.
The firm’s 245 million Apple shares have increased in value by more than $55 billion since the start of 2019 to be worth upward of $91 billion. Still, from an investor’s perspective, it makes you wonder whether you’d be better off simply investing in AAPL itself, rather than paying a fund manager!
Warren Buffett may be one of the shrewdest financial minds of our time, but don’t expect him to be able to use an iPhone. Despite receiving a personal lesson from Apple CEO Tim Cook.
“I went out to California, and Tim Cook very patiently spent hours trying to move me up to the level of the average two-year-old,” Buffett told Yahoo Finance editor-in-chief Andy Serwer. “And didn’t quite make it.”
Warren Buffett’s investment firm Berkshire Hathaway sold more than $800 million of Apple stock in the last quarter of 2019.
Buffett is probably Apple’s most famous investor and cheerleader. Berkshire Hathaway is the Cupertino tech giant’s biggest shareholder, with an estimated 5.4% stake in the company.
Apple has made it clear it sees health monitoring as an important part of its business. And now analysts from Morgan Stanley are urging the company combine its efforts with Haven, a partnership of Amazon and others hoping to improve health care while also making it more affordable.
But it’s not clear how Apple would benefit from any such collaboration.
In good times, the “Warren Buffett effect” has caused Apple shares to soar — by showing everyone that the world’s most famous investor believes in Apple. However, the opposite is also true: An apparent second thought on the part of Buffett’s firm Berkshire Hathaway can cause shares to fall.
That’s what happened this week, when Berkshire Hathaway was revealed to have slightly reduced its Apple holdings. Responding to the news, Apple shares fell 0.5 percent in pre-market trading.
If a company made you $2.6 billion in a single day, you’d probably want to continue investing in it. That’s what Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway firm has done with Apple, according to its latest regulatory filing.
In the second quarter of 2018, Berkshire Hathaway boosted its stock in Apple by 5 percent, upping its holding from 239.6 million shares to 252 million. According to current valuation that means the firm’s Apple investment is worth around $47 billion.
For a person who famously said he doesn’t like to invest in tech stocks, Warren Buffett has done pretty well with Apple.
Following the company’s amazing quarterly earnings this week, Buffett’s shares in Apple have proven to be an insanely smart bet. How smart? Thanks to the 6 percent spike in Apple stock yesterday, Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway firm likely made upward of $2.6 billion in a single day.
