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Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has slashed its stake in iPhone maker Apple in half as part of a selling spree in which the billionaire investor dumped $76bn of stocks.
The company cut its position in Apple by more than $50bn to $84.2bn in the second quarter, according to filings published on Saturday.
The data suggested that Berkshire had sold roughly 390mn Apple shares, or about half of its stake, according to calculations by the Financial Times.
The stock sales pushed Berkshire’s cash holdings to a record high of $277bn, up $88bn from the previous quarter.
Late last year Buffett began to pare back Berkshire’s stake in Apple, and quickened the pace of stock sales in early 2024. In May, he signalled to shareholders that he believed Apple would remain one of the conglomerate’s major holdings, listing it among core long-term investments including Coca-Cola and American Express.
“Unless something dramatically happens that really changes capital allocation strategy, we will have Apple as our largest investment,” Buffett said at the company’s annual meeting in May. “But I don’t mind at all, under current conditions, building the cash position . . . when I look at the alternative of what’s available in the equity markets and I look at the composition of what’s going on in the world, we find it quite attractive.”
Berkshire separately disclosed that it had continued to sell out of some of its other positions after the end of the second quarter.
In recent weeks the company has sold $3.8bn of Bank of America shares over 12 consecutive trading days, paring a highly profitable bet. The sales cut Berkshire’s stake in the US bank by a percentage point to 12.1 per cent, according to filings with US securities regulators.
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