Famed investor Warren Buffett sold at least $800 million worth of Apple stock last quarter, BusinessInsider reports citing SEC filings published last Friday.<\/p>\n
The Buffett-led Berkshire Hathaway unloaded 3.7 million shares between October and December last year, when Apple\u2018s share price rose by more than 30% (from $219 to $294).<\/p>\n
Despite selling off 3.7 million shares, Apple persists as a Berkshire Hathaway favorite. It owns around $72 billion worth of Apple shares\u00a0\u2014<\/span>\u00a05.6% of the computing giant.<\/p>\n [READ:\u00a0Apple, Facebook, and Warren Buffett: Here\u2019s the top 25 stocks for millennials]<\/em><\/p>\n As Apple still represents more than 32% of Berkshire Hathaway\u2018s overall portfolio, one simple explanation for the move is diversification.<\/p>\n The firm recently made notable investments in grocery chain Kroger and biotech firm Biogen, both US companies.<\/p>\n Berkshire Hathaway didn\u2019t exactly get into Apple at the ground floor. Typically averse to tech stocks, Berkshire Hathaway only announced it had bought into the Cupertino-based company in 2016, when Buffett spent a cool $1 billion\u00a0on 9.8 million Apple shares in the year\u2019s first quarter. They were valued at around $100 at the time.<\/p>\n In fact, Apple was the second tech stock Berkshire\u00a0Hathaway had ever purchased\u00a0\u2014<\/span> the first was IBM. Buffett explained having shied away from the creator of the iPod in 2012, commenting \u201cthe chances of being way wrong in IBM are probably less, at least for us, than the chances of being way wrong in Google or Apple [\u2026] I just don\u2019t know how to value them.\u201d<\/p>\n Apple CEO Tim Cook later used Buffett\u2018s change of heart to\u00a0posit that Apple had transitioned from a tech company\u00a0to a consumer products company.<\/p>\n By the end of 2018, Berkshire Hathaway had sold all of its IBM stock.\u00a0Buffett would go on to purchase around $35 billion worth of Apple stock between 2016 and 2018, with Berkshire Hathaway sitting on more than 250 million shares in total.\u00a0This represents Buffett\u2018s largest investment in one company.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a position that has undoubtedly paid off, with Apple\u2018s share price rising more than 300% since 2016 to reach $324 at pixel time.<\/p>\n Holding Apple stock generates dividends; it\u2019s estimated that Berkshire Hathaway\u2018s dividend revenue from Apple is $784 million per year, and if Buffett sold all his holdings tomorrow he\u2019d earn a cool $30 billion.<\/p>\n Ironically, Hard Fork reported last month that\u00a0Microsoft founder and long-time Buffett buddy Bill Gates holds a significant chunk of Apple, too (kinda).<\/p>\nApple shares have soared since Hathaway started buying<\/h2>\n
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Bill Gates trusts Buffett to handle his charity\u2019s investments<\/h2>\n