Warren Buffett’s insurance conglomerate earned Apple nearly $ 100 billion, making the iPhone maker one of the 90-year-old billionaire investor’s best investments of all time.
Buffett announced the twelve-digit profit this past weekend in its annual letter to shareholders of its Berkshire Hathaway, conglomerate Buffett walked long distance from its office in Omaha, Nebraska. The company has a large investment portfolio that includes dozens of well-known businesses, from Geico Insurance to the fast food chain Dairy Queen to the lingerie manufacturer Fruit of the Loom.
Buffett, who for a long time did not want to avoid investing in technology stocks, bought 10 million shares of Apple for the first time in 2016. He, meanwhile, added the stake and eventually invested more than $ 36 billion in the technology company. The stake, including the $ 11 billion worth of shares it paid in last year and the more than $ 3 billion Berkshire raised in dividends, was worth about $ 134 billion at the end of last year. Apple’s shares slipped slightly in 2021, but have continued to rise by about 400% over the past five years. The company’s share price rose more than 5% on Monday to nearly $ 128 per share.
Buffett’s Berkshire now owns just over 5% of Apple, which has a total market value of more than $ 2 billionwhich makes Buffett’s largest investment in another listed company. At $ 120 billion, Berkshire’s stake in Apple is about 42% of its total investment portfolio. All Apple shares are owned by Berkshire, and not directly by Buffett.
Buffett said the investment in Apple in the shareholders’ letter he announced over the weekend was not much bigger than Berkshire’s investment. In early February, in an interview with Bloomberg, Buffett praised Tim Cook’s CEO. “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 their iPhone was strong enough that most people would pay much more for the device than they do now.
‘I focus on the … hundreds, hundreds, hundreds of millions of people who live their lives practically [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 used the iPhone like all my friends, I would rather give up the plane. ‘