Warren Buffett’s screaming success with Berkshire Hathaway’s massive Apple investment is spurring comparisons with the legend’s greatest investment of all time: Coca-Cola.
Berkshire Hathaway began buying Apple’s stock in 2016 and amassed a 5% ownership of the iPhone maker by mid-2018 with a cost of $36 billion. As the tech giant’s share price skyrocketed, the value of Buffett’s bet has ballooned to more than $160 billion, bringing his return well over $100 billion on paper in just six years.
The highly lucrative investment reminded some Buffett watchers of Coca-Cola, the Oracle of Omaha’s oldest and longest stock position. The consumer juggernaut’s stock has soared over 2,000% since Buffett started buying in 1988, and it’s still Berkshire’s fourth largest equity position with 400 million shares.
“Buffett is having his Coca-Cola moment on Apple,” said Bill Smead, chief investment officer at Smead Capital Management and a Berkshire shareholder. “They both went way up the first five to seven years he’s owned them.”
The 91-year-old investor has become such a big fan of Apple that he now considers the tech giant as one of the “four giants” driving his conglomerate of mostly old-economy businesses he’s assembled over the last five decades.
MacDailyNews Take: Berkshire’s Apple ownership increased from 5.27% at the end of 2020 to 5.43% at the end of last year and averages about $775 million from Apple dividends annually.
Please help support MacDailyNews. Click or tap here to support our independent tech blog. Thank you!
Shop The Apple Store at Amazon.