Mike Wuerthele
In a surprise move, in the second quarter of 2024, Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway made the biggest sale of Apple in years, unloading around 400 million shares and missing the post-WWDC stock peak.
In December 2023, Berkshire Hathaway held about $174.3 billion in Apple stock. As of the Saturday report, the company now holds about $84.2 billion in Apple stock, barring more sales in the last month.
The most it could have sold the shares for is $192.35 on May 21. Apple stock's best price of the year was just a few weeks after the quarter closed, post-WWDC, with it hitting $234.82 on July 16.
Apple stock closed at $219.86 on Friday, following earnings that beat Wall Street's expectations.
Following the sale, the firm owns about 2.6% of Apple. That stake is worth about $88 billion.
The sale is just the latest in a series of stake-trims. Berkshire Hathaway unloaded about 12.5% of its Apple holdings in the first quarter of 2024, before the second quarter's sale. And the firm ended 2023 with a sale of Apple as well.
Despite all the moves, Apple is still Berkshire Hathaway's largest holding value-wise.
A similar percentage of Apple shares that the firm held were unloaded in 2020 and 2021. After the fact, Warren Buffett called that round of sales "probably a mistake."
William Gallagher
Charles Martin
Christine McKee
Malcolm Owen
14 Comments
Not surprising at all!
The position had to be trimmed, because it was overweighted.
The real story here is, that today’s stock price is higher and bought a crazy amount of stocks back, during last fiscal quarter.
It is rarely possible to sell at the best possible high, and buy at the best possible low.
Back some years ago, Berkshire Hathaway unloaded investments in GE and IBM. Both continued to go down for a few years. Both are higher now.
When an investment is up by a large amount, many will sell part of the investment, usually part or all of the cost basis of the investment. If the company is still solid, and the price drops, you may be able to buy it back at a lower share price in a few months or years. I've been successful in past years swing trading Shell, IBM, Intel and a few others. Due to multiple wars, Shell has not cooperated lately (as far as falling enough to make it worth while). I missed selling Intel when it was in the fifties the most recent time (late Dec, 2023), but in the last six years, sold several times around 50 and bought in the 20-30 range. Intel may be a falling knife for the short to intermediate term.
Based on Berkshire's 10-Q, Warren Buffett cut Berkshire's remaining AAPL stake by 50% last quarter. The stake now valued at $84B (30% o portfolio). At its peak, the stake was about 50% of the portfolio.
Source: Neil Cybart & @neilcybart
Warren Buffett may be one of the greatest investors of all time, but he's also made his share of bad moves over the decades. At one time, for example, Berkshire Hathaway had a huge stake in McDonald's, but Warren dumped it all in 1998. Since then, McDonald's has outperformed him, returning 2031% while Berkshire Hathaway has returned 1300%.
So stock still ramped higher even with Berkshire selling so much. Agreed they had to unload shares. Even brka cant have half portfolio in one stock lol.