“Warren Buffett’s conglomerate has increased its stake in Apple — and gotten rid of almost its entire IBM stake — a big move for a legendary investor who rarely bets on tech,” Anita Balakrishnan reports for CNBC.
“Berkshire Hathaway revealed Wednesday that it increased its Apple holdings by 23.3 percent to 165.3 million shares, according to SEC filings, and dumped about 94.5 percent of its IBM holdings, leaving just 2.05 million shares,” Balakrishnan reports. “Last year, Buffett told CNBC that he was more sure about Apple’s future than IBM’s, and that he has continued to put his money where his mouth is (even if he still carries a flip phone).”
Balakrishnan reports, “Before Wednesday’s revelation, Berkshire was already the fourth-largest Apple shareholder, according to FactSet.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: A welcome vote of confidence for Apple shareholders (even though it would be better for the company’s buyback plan to have the shares artificially depressed due to the usual fomenters who misrepresent YOY iPhone unit shares by pitting a 13-week quarter against a 14-week quarter while neglecting to mention that salient fact).
Profit from the painfully gullible. — MacDailyNews, December 26, 2017
Warren certainly is.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dan K.” for the heads up.]
What is important to understand about Buffett, is that he has a huge Apple kiosk inside his Nebraska Furniture Mart, of which he owns four (HUGE, stores that sell everything). So he knows every week what is selling, quantities, growth, etc. He clearly is not worried about any Apple iphone weakness. Great vote of confidence for Apple!
Very interesting. I did not know that. Thanks for the insight, Rick!
Buffett also famously tracks EGG trajectories (+-BUN) rather than simple BACN curves, unlike so many other analysts.
Hats off to the oracle!
And Tim
Hes only done this because Apple is going to be doing stock buybacks and cash dividends with the $163 Billion cash its bringing back to the US.
So the more shares he has the more money these will make him, think $10 a share in divedend that $1.6 billion on those shares.
Once this has been done he will cash out and sell
What you do not appear to understand, Dan27, is that dividends are theoretically value-neutral in terms of stock value, as are buybacks. Why would someone put money into a stock just to grab a quick dividend, which is subject to taxes, and then quickly get out? Buffett is a buy-and-hold kind of investor. Old school. Fundamental value investor. He is also a contrarian by nature – sell when other people are screaming “buy” and start buying when others are running scared.
Instead, I suggest that Buffett sees long-term upside in AAPL (exemplified by his large stake prior to the new tax laws) and saw even more potential upside after the law was passed. Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway have reputations for consistently making strong returns and smart calls.
Dividends are not ‘value-neutral’. Buyback are. Buybacks simply trade cash for stock that stays within the corporate value. Dividends lower the value of the company and put it into the hands of the shareholders.
As you correctly stated, the shareholder receives the dividend and their ownership stake in the company declines commensurately. For an investor, that dividend transaction *is* indeed value-neutral (with the exception of taxes on the dividends). I was responding to Dan27 in that context, refuting the idea that Buffet would “buy into” dividends to somehow “make” $1.6B. But the wording of my statement was poor and technically inaccurate, I admit, and I will endeavor to be more accurate in the future.
I should have added that it doesn’t diminish your point in the least.
Once again the nay-sayers and short-sellers were…….were……were……WRONG….LOL!!!!
Boy it’s really gonnnnna SUCK to be short AAPL tomorrow!!!!
I figured he’d be pouring all of his money into Amazon as it’s already blown past Microsoft in market cap. Every big investor on the planet is buying Amazon which will likely overtake Apple in market cap before the end of the year. Jeff Bezos has the Midas Touch. If Tim Cook only had 10% of Jeff Bezos’ management skills, Apple would have passed $1T a long time ago. Tim is really playing it safe with Apple which is OK but there are simply no significant share gains on the horizon for Apple shareholders.
I sure hope Warren Buffett sticks with Apple for a long time to come. It’s good to see some big investor who thinks Apple has some worthwhile value.
Then you know nothing of Warren Buffet. Fundamentals matter to him. “Be Fearful When Others Are Greedy (Amazon) and Greedy When Others Are Fearful (Apple)”.
“If Tim Cook only had 10% of Jeff Bezos’ management skills”
Amazon just made huge profit like 1 Billion!! Jeff Bezos is the business genius number one!!
On the other news… Apple made 60 Billion profit and Tim Cook is a looser.
Thank Jobs that Tim Cooks skills are superior than Jeff Bezos. Jefff Bezos is like 1/60 of Tim Cook.
That means BH owns 3% of Apple.
You go for it, Warren.
Wake up people the real reason is because
The monetary path the US is on is out of control, and the unwillingness of government officials to reduce the deficit and stop spending money will cause major problems in the very near future.
Years of socialist policies and reckless spending will eventually end in a complete collapse.
More and more countries are dumping US Treasuries and not using the petro dollar, as they know the USA will never be able to pay them the money it owes this is going to end in a collapse.
The US is the most in Debt country in the world with $21 trillion in Debt but only makes $3 Trillion in tax revenue. By the time it has paud for education, defence, healthcare, interest on money borrowed $500 billion it has to borrow more to balance the books. Think $28 Trillion by 2027 in Debt, think Greece on a large scale
This Debt has to be paid back as its been sold to other countries, pension funds and Banks
While I agree the fiscally conservative Republicans have been replaced by the spending New Republicans who only really care about doing something the Democrats don’t want, I radically disagree with your “Years of socialist policies and reckless spending…” statement. This past year has been the worst with regard to fiscal responsibility, and that’s with the New Republicans holding control of both all three houses.
You do realize that the last time the U.S. national debt went down was under a Democrat President who was willing to actually work with old school Republicans in congress don’t you?
Further, you don’t seem to understand how the national debt works. The only thing the government has to guarantee is to pay the interest on those loans. The principle continuously rolls over. (And is, unfortunately almost continuously growing.)
Greece’s problem was they could not properly service the debt. The issue was not that they could not pay off the debt. If they could have properly serviced the debt they could have rolled over the principle of the debt and carried on.
If the market thought that, interest rates on our Treasuries would be skyhigh. They’re not, so the market has voted that your theory is just that, a theory.
Buffet is also famous for picking stocks of compankes with “inelastic demand” (recession proof). Dairy Queen was/is an example. There are a 10,000 small towns pit there with 1 franchise restaurant — Dairy Queen. Again something “city folk” would know.
Of course I invested in Apple AFTER his binge..