Here’s how much Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has made on Apple.
John Ballard for The Motley Fool:
If you’re looking for great stock investment ideas, the holdings of Berkshire Hathaway are a good place to look. Warren Buffett’s investing prowess has returned Berkshire shareholders 20.5% in compound annual returns since 1965. At that rate, one dollar turns into nearly $25,000 after 53 years.
Apple is currently the largest stock holding of Berkshire Hathaway, and it is also the largest stock investment Buffett has ever made. But how much has the world’s greatest investor made on Apple stock?
At the end of 2018, Berkshire Hathaway’s cost basis in Apple stock was $36.044 billion. Berkshire owned 254.5 million shares at the end of the third quarter, which would be worth $66.9 billion at Apple’s current stock price of $262 per share. Based on the company’s most recently reported cost basis in the stock, Berkshire has an unrealized gain of about $30 billion so far.
Berkshire Hathaway is also earning $784 million in annual dividend income at Apple’s current quarterly payout of $0.77 per share.
MacDailyNews Take: $784 million in annual dividend income alone!
Doesn’t BH have over $70B in cash? And over $30B at the start of the year? They could have loaded up at $158, and had double the shares today. Oh well.
Berkshire Hathaway’s cash position is $122B. That’s 22.7% of its $536.84B market cap.
Remember when you couldn’t analyze Apple’s value fairly without first subtracting out its cash position? Back in the early 2000s, the company had an “ex-cash P/E” of about 8.
That’s quite a turnaround for Buffett and Co. considering how he used to say how he wouldn’t invest in something (in this case, tech) he didn’t quite understand. I guess he finally understands what he needs to know about tech… that it makes money for him. (IBM stock wasn’t as favorable to him)
Carl Icahn ONLY made $2B when he sold all his Apple stock back in 2016. He must be kicking himself about now. Sometimes hasty greed doesn’t always pay off as well. I think it’s doubtful what he replaced his Apple stock with paid off as well.
I was also wondering about Carl Icahn. He dumped it and never got it back? Foolish. I don’t like Tim Cook’s lazy approach towards running hardware sku’s life-cycles; but I still hold the stock, because it’s still a solid company. I just know the company could thrive faster and better with a more aggressive/focused CEO.
Icahn would have made $10 Billion in AAPL profits (instead of 2) if he still held the shares he sold in 2016.