Well ahead of Thursday's earnings, the "Oracle of Omaha's" Berkshire Hathaway may have sold a very large quantity of Apple stock, marking the third consecutive quarter of big sales volumes.
Warren Buffett [Berkshire Hathaway]
Apple stock has had an interesting quarter. On April 1, the stock was about $170 per share. It hit a peak of $234.82 in the middle of July.
And, Berkshire Hathaway may have take the opportunity to seize some profit, according to the head of investment firm that has had a stake in Warren Buffett's fund for a long time.
Berkshire Hathaway will release its second quarter 10-Q Saturday morning. I fully expect to see a further MATERIAL reduction in its Apple investment. At 33x 2024 earnings, essentially no revenue growth over the last two years, perhaps 6-7% prospective long-term growth, little pic.twitter.com/FoNywKNdnF
— Christopher Bloomstran (@ChrisBloomstran) August 1, 2024
If accurate, the big sales of Apple stock would be the third consecutive big sale in three quarters. Berkshire Hathaway unloaded about 12.5% of its Apple holdings in the first quarter of 2024.
As of March 31, Berkshire Hathaway held about 789 million shares of Apple. This is about 5% of the company, and is worth about $177 billion.
Regardless, unless it is a truly massive sale, Apple will still likely be the largest holding value-wise, with Barron's claiming it sits at about 40% of a $400 billion portfolio before any sales are realized.
Berkshire Hathaway's second-quarter earnings will be announced on August 3. The required 10-Q form filed with the feds will spell all this out.
To be included in the earnings report, the sale would have to have been made before Thursday's earnings. Apple exceeded Wall Street's expectations, and after a brief gain in the stock price, it bled off those gains overnight with it likely to open Friday at about $218, under pressure from a larger sell-off of tech.
Buffett has cut Apple shares before. Although, in 2021 he said a recent round of selling shares had been "probably a mistake."