Warren Buffett’s insurance concern has made nearly $ 100 billion from Apple, making the iPhone maker one of the 90-year-old billionaire investor’s greatest investments of all time.
Buffett disclosed 12-figure earnings last weekend in his annual letter to shareholders of his Berkshire Hathaway, the Buffett conglomerate, which has long been running away from its Omaha, Nebraska office. The company has a large investment portfolio with dozens of well-known companies, from Geico insurance to fast food chain Dairy Queen to underwear manufacturer Fruit of the Loom.
Buffett, who had long avoided investing in tech stocks, first bought 10 million shares from Apple in 2016. He has since expanded that stake, eventually investing more than $ 36 billion in the technology company’s stock. That stake, including the $ 11 billion in stock he cashed in last year and the more than $ 3 billion that Berkshire collected in dividends, was worth about $ 134 billion at the end of last year. Apple’s shares have fallen slightly in 2021, but are still up about 400% in the past five years. The company’s stock price rose more than 5% on Monday to nearly $ 128 a share.
Buffett’s Berkshire now owns just over 5% of Apple, with a total market value of more than $ 2 trillion, making it by far Buffett’s largest investment in any other publicly traded company. At $ 120 billion, Berkshire’s stake in Apple equates to just over 42% of the total investment portfolio. All Apple stock is owned by Berkshire and not directly Buffett.
Buffett said little beyond the magnitude of Berkshire’s investment in Apple in the shareholder letter he published this weekend. In early February, Buffett praised Apple CEO Tim Cook in an interview with Bloomberg. “Tim understands the world so much that very few CEOs I’ve met over the past 60 years can match,” Buffett told Bloomberg.
Three years ago, Buffett told CNBC that he believes the average person’s connection to their iPhone was strong enough that most people would pay a lot more for the device than they do now.
“I’m focusing on the … hundreds, hundreds, hundreds of millions of people practically living their lives [the iPhone]Buffett said at the time. I have a plane that costs me a lot, a million dollars a year or something. If I were to use the iPhone like all my friends do, I would rather give up on the plane. “