Warren Buffett on Apple

$Apple (AAPL.US)$ is the largest holding for Berkshire Hathaway even as Warren Buffett hasn’t bought any shares since the third quarter of 2018. Notably, AAPL stock tumbled in the fourth quarter of 2018 and its market cap fell before $1 trillion. The stock has jumped threefold from those levels which looks like no mean achievement for a mega-cap company like Apple.

Buffett has praised Apple as well as its CEO, Tim Cook, on multiple occasions and in 2020 he even started to use an iPhone. Buffett praised $Apple (AAPL.US)$ and Cook in his this year’s annual letter as well.

Buffett said, “It’s important to understand that only dividends from Apple are counted in the GAAP earnings Berkshire reports – and last year, Apple paid us $785 million of those. Yet our “share” of Apple’s earnings amounted to a staggering $5.6 billion. Much of what the company retained was used to repurchase $Apple (AAPL.US)$ shares, an act we applaud.” He added, “Tim Cook, Apple’s brilliant CEO, quite properly regards users of Apple products as his first love, but all of his other constituencies benefit from Tim’s managerial touch as well.”

Investing in companies with honest and competent management has been among Buffett’s foremost investing tenets. $Apple (AAPL.US)$ is by far the biggest holding in Berkshire Hathaway’s portfolio of publicly traded companies.