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Key Points
Buffett invested $36 billion in Apple between 2016 and 2018.
He's since sold off over 75% of that stake.
Apple remains Berkshire Hathaway's largest equity holding.
Warren Buffett once joked that outgoing Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) CEO Tim Cook had made more money for Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRKA) (NYSE: BRKB) than Buffett ever did. Of course, it was Buffett's decision to pile about $36 billion into Apple stock between 2016 and 2018, an investment that resulted in massive capital gains for Berkshire shareholders.
Unfortunately, Berkshire has sold more than 75% of its Apple stake since 2018. The stock now trades near its all-time high, about 70% higher than where it was when Buffett started selling the stock in earnest in early 2024. He even joked in an interview earlier this year that he sold it too soon.
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Indeed, if Berkshire had held on to every share it owned in 2018, its stake in Apple would be worth approximately $330 billion today.
Buffett's most profitable investment ever
Despite "selling too early," the Apple investment netted over $100 billion in profit for Berkshire Hathaway, Buffett estimated earlier this year. With the stock price climbing to a new all-time high this month, the value of that investment keeps going up. Apple remains Berkshire's largest equity position.
The reason Buffett sold the stock was simple: The value of Berkshire's stake in the tech company had exceeded the value of everything else in its equity portfolio in 2023.
"I'm very happy to have it be our largest holding," he explained. "I was not happy to have it be as large as almost everything else combined."
While Buffett prefers a relatively concentrated portfolio and favors a strategy of letting his winners run, the portfolio's degree of concentration in Apple became too large even for him. It was all about risk management.
However, 2026 has been another strong year for Apple. The market has rewarded Apple for its relatively capital-light business model compared to other tech giants like Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL). While the hyperscalers are planning to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on capex this year to build and outfit new data centers, Apple's capex has barely budged. It spent about $11 billion on capital expenditures over the past 12 months. That's remarkable for a business that generated over $140 billion in cash from operations over the same period.
Apple has seen strong iPhone sales, and the market still expects strength from its flagship product with potential for an AI-driven upgrade cycle, thanks to the long-awaited Siri revamp released this summer.
Interestingly, Buffett and his successor, Greg Abel, have turned their attention to Alphabet amid its capital spending spree, suggesting the market may have become overly pessimistic about the potential returns on hyperscalers' data center investments. The size of Berkshire Hathaway's bet on Alphabet is quickly approaching the amount of capital Buffett poured into Apple a decade ago.
Buffett said he'd be interested in buying more Apple stock again if the price came down, but the price has only moved higher since he made that comment. Even at today's price, he and Abel appear to be comfortable with Berkshire's current stake in Apple, keeping it as the largest position in the company's stock portfolio for now.
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Adam Levy has positions in Alphabet and Apple. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Apple, and Berkshire Hathaway. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
