Apple’s stock market value briefly topped $US800 billion for the first time overnight Monday, as the stock surged further into uncharted territory in the wake of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway revealing it had boosted its stake in the technology giant to nearly $US20 billion in recent months.
The billionaire investor’s investment vehicle disclosed in its quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that Apple was its second-biggest equity holding by value, after increasing its investment to $US19.2 billion worth of the stock as of March 31 from $US7.1 billion as of December 31. With Apple shares up 6.6% since March 31, the value of the Berkshire holding has topped the $US20 billion mark.
Berkshire’s largest holding by value was US bank, Wells Fargo at $US27.8 billion as of March 31, while Coca-Cola was the third-largest at $US16.6 billion, IBM was the fourth-largest at $US13.5 billion (but has been reduced by a third, according to Buffett) and American Express was the fifth-largest at $US11.2 billion.
Based on the March 31 closing price of Apple’s stock that means Berkshire owned about 133.65 million Apple shares, or 2.6% of the shares outstanding. That would push Berkshire up to fourth on the list of largest shareholders, according to US data group, FactSet.
Buffett has in fact bought into Apple just as its share price was soaring – he has made fools of a large number of fellow investors. At December 31 he had 57.4 million shares, and had lifted Berkshire’s September 30 stake of 15.2 million shares by 42.1 million.
Apple shares were up as much as 3.2%, to an all-time intraday high of $153.70 earlier in the day.
At that price, and with 5.21 billion shares outstanding as of March 31 according to filings, Apple’s market capitalisation reached $801.37 billion.
The shares eased after that to end the day at $153.01, up 2.7% and worth $US797.77 billion, which was still by far the highest among US companies.
Behind Apple, Google parent Alphabet Inc.’s market cap was $US659.20 billion, Microsoft Corp.’s market cap was $US530.32 billion and Amazon’s market cap was $US451.03 billion, and Berkshire’s value was around $US407 billion (the voting shares fell 1.1% overnight).
Apple’s close though was a record, the 17th time this year so far. It jumped 24% during the first quarter, compared the Dow Jones Industrial Average’s 4.6%. Since March 31, Apple’s stock has risen a further 6.6%, while the Dow has is up 1.6%.
