The Answer To The Question Everyone's Asking -- How Much Did He Make Today On Apple? May 3, 2024

Locator: 47054BRK.

Annual meeting: now on CNBC. 

May 4, 2024: annual report -- link here. 

The company bought back $2.6 billion of stock in the first quarter, up from $2.2 billion in the fourth quarter.

Two days in May:

• Apple earnings, May 2, 2024
• BRK earnings, May 4, 2024

BRK 1Q24 earnings release: link here.

Updates

May 4, 2024: Andrew Bary will have to update his story (see below). BRK sold about 13% of his AAPL holdings in the first quarter -- and, of course, missed out on huge surge yesterday. The annual meeting will be underway shortly. It can be watched live on CNBC. 

• if they sold at $170, the delta is $13 x 115 million shares = $1,495 million = $1.5 billion
  

• crawlers:
• reduced Apple holdings by 13% in 1Q24; sold about 115 - 116 million shares in 1Q24 in 1Q24; holdings still valued about $144.8 billion
• 62% decrease in earnings y/y (1Q24 / 1Q23)
  

 Chart of the week:

Original Note

Link here. 

From the linked article:

Apple rose 6% Friday to $183.38 after reporting encouraging financial results late Thursday for the March quarter.

Berkshire’s Apple stake is now worth $165 billion, against a cost of around $30 billion.

The gain in Apple stock has lifted the value of Berkshire’s holding by $9 billion and boosted Berkshire’s book value, which remains a key valuation metric for the conglomerate.

Berkshire held 905 million Apple shares at year end 2023, the most recent reporting date.

Berkshire paid an average price of about $35 a share for Apple with most of the purchases coming from 2016 through 2018. Apple accounts for over 40% Berkshire’s equity portfolio of about $380 billion.

Lazy reporting. That's a meme -- "Apple accounts for over 40% Berkshire’s equity portfolio of about $380 billion." 

Technically that's accurate but the data hasn't been updated for quite some time. My hunch: Apple accounts for more than 50% of Berkshire's equity portfolio of $400 billion. [Written before the announcement that BRK had sold 13% of its Apple equity sometime during the first quarter.]

And this is partially incorrect: Berkshire held 905 million Apple shares at year end 2023, the most recent reporting date. Yes, 905 million Apple shares is correct but the most recent reporting date was a 13F in February, 2024.