Warren Buffett has cut Berkshire Hathway’s Apple stake by almost 50 per cent, leading to the company’s cash pile reaching a record $276.9 billion in the second quarter, Bloomberg reported.
Berkshire Hathway’s second quarter operating earnings have risen to $11.6 billion, up from $10 billion for the same period a year ago. The business conglomerate sold $75.5 billion worth of stock during the second quarter on a net basis.
As per the Bloomberg report, at the firm’s annual shareholder meeting in Omaha in May, Buffett said the firm wasn’t in a rush to spend it “unless we think we’re doing something that has very little risk and can make us a lot of money.”
This comes two years after the billionaire called Apple stock as one of the four giants of his business, the other being Berkshire insurance, utility and BNSF railroad business.
The remark had given the investors an impression that the 93-year-old tycoon might hold on to the iPhone maker indefinitely as Coca Cola and American Express shares he bought decades ago.
As per an AP report, Buffett has slashed the Apple stake over the past year. He recently sold some of his stock in Bank of America and Chinese EV maker BYD.
Buffett is now sitting on nearly $277 billion in cash, up from a record $189 billion just three months earlier, the AP report added.
“This could could alarm the markets especially given the news from last week” with weak tech earnings, a disappointing jobs report and uncertainty about the future of interest rates, Edward Jones analyst Jim Shanahan told the agency.
Having heaped lavish praises on Apple’s chief executive Tim Cook, Buffett spoke on how the customers are devoted to their iPhones and don’t like to switch.
The billionaire investor cut more than 10 per cent of Berkshire’s stake in Apple in the first three months of this year, having sold more than 116 million shares. Although the company has not revealed the exact count of Apple shares, but AP report stated that the investment was worth $84.2 billion at the end of the second quarter even though shares soared over the summer as high as $237.23.
At the end of the first quarter, Berkshire’s Apple stake was worth $135.4 billion. According to the analyst, Berkshire still holds about 400 million Apple shares.
Berkshire reported a small drop in its bottom-line earnings because a drop in the paper value of its investments.
(With AP, Bloomberg reports)