Veteran investor Warren Buffet gave his views on several topics at the annual shareholder meeting of his company Berkshire Hathaway. Meanwhile, he broke the tradition and not only called any CEO outside his company publicly but also praised him. He is the CEO Tim Cook of Apple. Buffet told the stage, “I think I will do something else, which is not usually done in annual meetings.” Buffett took the name of Tim Cook and found him from the crowd and said something that people became convinced of Buffet.
Buffett said, “I am a little ashamed to say that Tim Cook has earned more money for Berkshire, as much as I earned for Berkshire Hathaway. It should be credited to him. From the whole Berkshire, thank you Tim.”
Nobody could develop Apple like Tim Cook
Buffet has long been called Apple’s “third business” of Berkshire. He also said that the late CEO Steve Jobs did such things in the development of Apple, which no one else could do. Steve chose Tim Cook as his successor and he certainly took the right decision. According to Buffet, “Nobody could build Apple like Steve Jobs, but no one could develop it like Tim Cook.” This praise of Buffet was stood up and confused with applause.
As of May 2025, Berkshire Hathaway had about 30 million Apple Ink shares. Their price is about 62 billion dollars. This stake is about 2% of Apple’s shares. Apple remains the largest single equity holding of Berkshire.
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Buying apple shares started in 2016
Berkshire started purchasing Apple’s shares in the first quarter of 2016. Initially bought 98 million shares of about 1 billion dollars. In the next few years, the company increased its position in Apple’s shares extensively and by the end of 2021, the stake increased to 90.8 crore. Berkshire’s total investment in Apple between 2016 and 2018 was around $ 35 billion. By the end of 2023, the investment rose to $ 173 billion, indicating an increase of about 418 percent.
In 2024, Berkshire sold about two-thirds of his Apple Holdings, which reduced the stake to 30 million shares. Despite this deficiency, Apple remains the most important equity investment in Berkshire’s portfolio.