Warren Buffett’s insurance conglomerate has earned nearly $ 100 billion from Apple, making the iPhone maker one of the best investments of all time for 90-year-old billionaire investors.
Buffett revealed the 12-figure gain this past weekend in its annual letter to shareholders at its Berkshire Hathaway, Buffett conglomerate has long since left its office in Omaha, Nebraska. The company has a broad investment portfolio that includes dozens of well-known businesses, from Geico Insurance to the fast food chain Dairy Queen and lingerie maker Fruit of the Loom.
Buffett, who had long avoided investing in technology stocks, first bought 10 million shares of Apple in 2016. Since then, he has added to that stake and eventually invested more than $ 36 billion. of dollars in shares of the technology company. That stake, including the $ 11 billion in shares it entered last year and the more than $ 3 billion Berkshire has received in dividends, was worth about $ 134 billion at the end of last year. Apple shares have shrunk slightly in 2021, but are still up about 400% in the last five years. The company’s stock price rose more than 5% on Monday, to about $ 128 a share.
Buffett’s Berkshire now owns just over 5% of Apple, which has a total market value in excess of $ 2 trillion, making it Buffett’s largest investment in another listed company. At $ 120 billion, Berkshire’s stake in Apple equates to just over 42% of its overall investment portfolio. All Apple shares are owned by Berkshire and not by Buffett directly.
Buffett said just beyond the size of Berkshire’s investment in Apple in the shareholder letter he released over the weekend. In early February, in an interview with Bloomberg, Buffett praised Apple CEO Tim Cook. “Tim understands the world to such an extent that very, very few CEOs I’ve met in the last 60 years could match,” Buffett told Bloomberg.
Three years ago, Buffett told CNBC that he believed the average person’s connection to his or her iPhone was strong enough for most people to pay much more for the device than they do now.
“I focus on the … hundreds, hundreds, hundreds of millions of people who practically live their lives [the iPhone]”Buffett said at that moment.” I have a plane that costs me a lot, a million dollars a year or something. If I used the iPhone like all my friends do, I’d rather give up the plane. “