Warren Buffett increased Berkshire Hathaway’s stake in Apple to 50% of its entire stock portfolio and nearly a quarter of its market cap of $ 649 billion

• Berkshire Hathaway’s holdings in Apple of 887 million shares reached a value of $ 159 billion on Friday.
• That makes the stake worth half of Berkshire’s entire stock portfolio and nearly 25% of its $ 649 billion market cap.
• Warren Buffett started strengthening Berkshire’s position in Apple in 2016 and strengthened it until mid-2018.

Warren Buffett is known to focus his investments to build generational wealth, and Berkshire Hathaway’s stake in Apple is not a better example of this investing practice.

On Friday, Berkshire’s 887.1 million shares in the iPhone maker hit a record $ 159 billion, an increase of 342% from its initial base cost of around $ 36 billion . That means Apple is now worth more than half of Berkshire’s $ 293 billion stock portfolio, based on data from its third-quarter 13F file.

And assuming Berkshire hasn’t reduced its position in Apple since September 30, the stake is now about a quarter of Berkshire Hathaway’s $ 649 billion market cap.

What also makes Buffett’s focus in Apple notable is that it hasn’t taken decades to worsen like most of the successful investments that Buffett manages. Instead, it’s only been five years since Berkshire started building its stake in Apple.

The conglomerate first bought Apple shares in 2016 and continued to buy them until mid-2018, when the position exceeded 1 billion shares after adjusting for a 4-for-1 stock split in 2020. Buffett has reduced Berkshire’s position in Apple by about 12% since initially building the stake.

Barring any changes since the last 13F filing, Berkshire’s stock portfolio would be up 13.9% year-to-date, according to a Bespoke analysis. Much of that gain is due to Apple’s gain of over 20% since the start of the quarter.

Since the start of the year, Apple is up 31%, against 26% for Berkshire Hathaway. Apple’s stock price was less than $ 1.00 from a valuation of $ 3 trillion on Monday.

Berkshire’s three largest positions after Apple are Bank of America, American Express and Coca-Cola, which together account for 30% of the value of the equity portfolio. And Berkshire is still sitting on about $ 150 billion in cash that it has yet to put to work.