Warren Buffett’s insurance conglomerate made nearly $ 100 billion with Apple, making the iPhone maker one of the best investments by billionaire investors of all time.
Buffett revealed the 12-digit gain last weekend in his annual letter to shareholders of his Berkshire Hathaway, the conglomerate that Buffett has long run from his office in Omaha, Nebraska. The company has a large investment portfolio that includes dozens of well-known businesses, from insurance company Geico to fast-food chain Dairy Queen and underwear 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 increased that stake, eventually investing more than $ 36 billion in shares in the technology company. That stake, including the $ 11 billion in shares he made last year and the more than $ 3 billion that Berkshire raised in dividends, was worth about $ 134 billion at the end of last year. Apple’s shares fell slightly in 2021, but are still up about 400% over the past five years. The company’s stock price rose by more than 5% on Monday, to almost $ 128 each.
Buffett’s Berkshire now owns just over 5% of Apple, which has a total market value of more than $ 2 trillion, making by far Buffett’s biggest investment in another publicly traded company. At $ 120 billion, Berkshire’s stake in Apple is just over 42% of its overall investment portfolio. All Apple shares are owned by Berkshire, not directly by Buffett.
Buffett said just beyond the size of Berkshire’s investment in Apple in the letter to shareholders he released over the weekend. In early February, in an interview with Bloomberg, Buffett praised Apple CEO Tim Cook. “Tim understands the world to a degree that very few CEOs I have known in the past 60 years could match,” Buffett told Bloomberg.
Three years ago, Buffett told CNBC that he believes the average person’s connection to his iPhone was strong enough that most people would pay a lot more for the device than they do now.
“I focus on … hundreds, hundreds, hundreds of millions of people who practically live their lives for [the iPhone]”Said Buffett at the time.” 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 on the plane. “