“Berkshire Hathaway Inc, the conglomerate run by billionaire Warren Buffett, on Saturday said its quarterly operating profit doubled as its insurance business dodged hurricanes and benefited from lower taxes,” Trevor Hunnicutt reports for Reuters. “The strong result gives Buffett more cash to deploy even as the well-known bargain-hunting ‘value’ investor has admitted struggling to find a place to put those earnings to work and resorted to buying back $928 million in his own company’s stock in the latest quarter.”
“Berkshire’s effective tax rate for the third quarter was 19.2 percent compared to 25.3 percent in the year-ago period following a reduction of the corporate tax rate that President Donald Trump signed into law in December. Many U.S. companies’ reported results have been skewed by the law’s impact,” Hunnicutt reports. “Among his favorite investments, Buffett has gobbled up shares of Apple Inc. Berkshire’s stake in Apple was worth $57.6 billion at the end of the most recent quarter, up from $47.2 billion at the end of June.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Expect even more now that AAPL’s on sale at a deep discount.
SEE ALSO:
Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway confirms purchase of 12 million more Apple shares; now owns 5% of Apple Inc. – August 15, 2018
Nice to take advantage of a sale, I wonder how long it will take Apple to get back to those all time highs. Probably not until next year but that’s just speculation.
Doesnt matter what Buffett is doing. AAPL is being absolutely shredded by the market today, down another 3% in very heavy selling. There is relentless, total liquidation of institutional positions in Apple going on now. Massive selling with buyers staying totally on the sidelines as they are far too afraid to lose money on AAPL now.
As I’m a long-term shareholder (14 years) this is just a small blip to me and nothing to really panic over. I see that other tech stocks have been beaten down over the last few weeks and they don’t all give dividends as Apple does. I know Apple’s stock price isn’t always going to do well all the time as history tells me that much. It’s not going to ruin my holiday season as long as I receive my dividends. I have some faith that there will be Apple stock buyers in the next few weeks once the market settles down.
“… there will be Apple stock buyers …”
yeah, Apple for instance!
Starting tomorrow, when the no-buyback-period end.
Watching institutional shareholders in the short run doesn’t necessarily tell you anything significant if you are a long term investor. AAPL is still up quite a bit, and traders may be selling to lock in gains to offset other positions with losses. I assume there is also pressure to liquidate positions if funds are being pushed by redemptions. AAPL may be down quite a bit, but it a highly liquid stock where a fund can unload billions in a day if they need to boost their cash position quickly
This is good news for Apple, because like all smart people Apple bought a bucket load of its own shares at a discount. So less dividend for Apple to pay in the near future.
What did resident complainer Von Tink do, well he complained. It was a buyers market and instead of buying, Von Tink let himself have a miserable day, crying about his superficial losses. Looser
As usual, blank eyed, slack jowled mouth breathers like Snoop Dogg have no idea what they are talking about. Apple has a black out period where they cease buying shares. Apple bought NO shares during this massive drop in price.
And if it is a buyers market, WHERE ARE THE BUYERS? AAPL is getting absolutely destroyed by the market, down almost 15% in the past week. No buyers, only sellers. No bounce of any kind in price. No oversold positions.
Cretinous ape, just stop embarrassing yourself.
Doesn’t Apple’s black out period last for just the 14 days prior to publishing it’s results? The recent price crash happened after the results were published and I know of no reason why Apple cannot take advantage of that low price after the results were published, just like anybody else can.
The blackout period should end by the close of this week. Apple will be able to eventually take advantage of this crushed share price (now down -3.5% for today so far in extremely heavy selling volume).
But Apple alone will not be able to save the stock price. Buyers are going to be needed and NONE have stepped up during this disaster of an earnings release. The market clearly does not support either Tim Cook or Phil “iPhone names have no meaning” Shiller.
It ends tomorrow dumb ass.
Wrong again, feckless moron.
Stop the bs fake news droping..
This earnings period was anything but disaster.
They broke all records.. intune of 20% and 40% revenue and earnings yoy growth.
So get your facts right and stop reading bogus Bloomburg reports and misinform everyone.
Exerpt from apple esrnings announcment direct from Apple :
CUPERTINO, California — November 1, 2018 — Apple today announced financial results for its fiscal 2018 fourth quarter ended September 29, 2018. The Company posted quarterly revenue of $62.9 billion, an increase of 20 percent from the year-ago quarter, and quarterly earnings per diluted share of $2.91, up 41 percent. International sales accounted for 61 percent of the quarter’s revenue.
Services revenue reached an all-time high of $10 billion. Excluding a one-time favorable adjustment of $640 million recognized in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2017, Services revenue grew from $7.9 billion in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2017 to $10 billion in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2018, an increase of 27 percent.
For a transaction to occur there has to be a buyer. Rather than None, I think it’s more likely the number of sellers have increased suddenly overwhelming those willing to buy and pushing the price down. A sudden selloff probably also encourages buyers to pull back and bid lower prices which the market quickly tries to meet till a balance is struck.
There seems to be some confusion about the extent of the “blackout period” but nobody has supported their claims.
I have found an article which explicitly explains one of Apple’s previous “blackout periods”. Seeking Alpha describes the blackout as starting five weeks before every earnings announcement and ending the day after Apple announces it’s earnings.
https://seekingalpha.com/article/3327885-the-impact-of-apples-share-buyback-program
If anybody disputes that definition, kindly provide an authoritative link to support such a claim.
If what that article states is still valid, Apple will have been free to resume buying back it’s shares from Monday 5th Nov.
Great,,, becouse It dropped more today..they are only restricted for 48 hours after earnings announcment…’so Tuesday is back up the truck day.
Lets see what happens .
Now do any of you believe that if Apple reports a knockout holiday earnings season,… this ‘unit nuber ‘ issue is going to matter at all ?
Wallstreet is a panic oriented institution…. they hate change ..but this hump shall pass too.
‘Cretinous ape, just stop embarrassing yourself.’
Are u refering to yourself?
Apple cant buy their shares for 2 days after earnings.
That two day ends today.
Tomorrow they can back up the truck.
Get your facts right before u insult someone and make a fool of yourself. .
AAPL now only 30 cents away from dropping under $200/share. That’s a $33.xx drop in share price in just a few days! A staggering wipeout to those who are holding AAPL.
Well done Pipeline, well done! Keep patting yourself on the back.
You seemed to have forgotten AAPL’s earlier drop this year down into the $150s. It’s a simple correction (punishment if you will) by the market on the stocks value. It’ll continue to head north for many years. If you were in in Jan. you’ve still got a nice profit on your hands, with more time this year to go.
Unlike hardware (butterfly key boards) and software, Tim Cook has no control over the value of share prices, these are determined by idiots known as wall street analcysts. You should let go of apple shares and invest in another company
AAPL of the large cap tech stocks is No.1 when it comes to individual investors holding the largest proportion of the shares. You’ll have to blame the investors panicking from what they hear rather than wall street actually affecting shares traded through institutional investments.
Big investors are dumping much faster than Buffett is buying up stock. Apple stock is in freefall I didn’t think was going to happen. Sometimes I just never see these things coming. However, I’m not concerned about it. Nothing has changed for me as to how I view Apple as a company.
By definition, unless you are a strategic short seller, nobody sees these things coming or everyone would have been out before (of course, causing the drop that much sooner, catching the same people unaware and saying they didn’t see it coming). Judging yourself with hindsight is a useless exercise
Y’all panic if you want, but first look at a 10yr chart of AAPL and you’ll see this is just a blip on the screen. If Buffet sells, I may worry some, but as long as he’s buy’in, Im still smilin!
Good for you. Though if more people also are looking to Warren Buffet’s moves on AAPL to influence their own decisions, I shudder at the day Warren Buffet decides to sell a significant amount of AAPL.