Over the years, the legendary Warren Buffett has become one of Apple’s leading shareholders (), and the company began to occupy the most representative position in the Berkshire Hathaway portfolio. This is true to this day – but by luck, chance or more of its great hits, the mega investor broke out of a considerable portion of the papers before President Donald Trump announced the new US import tariffs policy, who played spotlights on the company founded by Steve Jobs.
Buffett began to ‘pitacos’ over Apple even before becoming a shareholder. In an interview with CNBC In 2012, he said that Jobs himself sought him by asking for advice, but ended up not doing what was suggested to him. Buffett, at the time, recommended that Apple from this flow to the excess of cash he had on an action repurchase program. But the buyback It only happened after Tim Cook took charge of the company, with an aggressive program that repurchased hundreds of billions of dollars in stock.
Berkshire Hathaway only became Apple’s shareholder in early 2016, when it acquired more than $ 1 billion in company shares – which at the time corresponded to 0.2% of society. In 2019, during his first participation in Berkshire’s annual meeting, Cook confessed that he had no idea of Buffett’s interest in the company.
“He always made it clear that he didn’t invest in technology companies or businesses he didn’t understand. So, obviously, he was seeing Apple differently, like a consumer company. That was very special,” said Apple CEO in an interview with CNBC during the Berkshire convention. Cook explained that the company is part of the technology industry, but consumption is at the center of the business. “I love the fact that he [Buffett] Look at us in this way [como empresa de consumo]because that’s how we want consumers to see us too. ”
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Berkshire Hathaway’s investment chronology at Apple
1st quarter of 2016: Apple first appears in the manager’s portfolio. There are 9.8 million shares of the company, with a market value of R $ 1.069 billion – the equivalent of 0.8% of Berkshire’s portfolio.
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4th quarter of 2017: The manufacturer of the iPhone shares with Wells Fargo the largest weight of the still well diluted portfolio of the manager. By this time, Berkshire was already 165.3 million from Apple in the wallet.
Year full of 2020: In the first year of the pandemic, Berkshire almost quadrupled Apple’s volume of shares in its wallet, from 245 million to 887 million papers.
2nd quarter of 2023: Apple now represents 51% of Berkshire’s portfolio value. Now the manager has 915 million shares of the company.
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Year full of 2024: Apple’s volume of actions in the Berkshire portfolio is reduced to one third of the peak reached the previous year. The last time it opened the market portfolio in February this year, the manager had 300 million roles from the Technology Company, which still has the highest weight of the portfolio (28% of the total value).
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Why did buffet reduce position in Apple?
In addition to Apple, Berkshire Hathaway also has made relevant position reductions in other companies, especially in banks such as Bank of America, Citigroup and Nu Holdings in 2024. Thus, the conglomerate ended the year with a record cash of $ 334.2 billion. In the annual letter to shareholders, Buffett did not explain what would have motivated the sale of the stakes. He stated that a substantial part of cash resources would continue to be invested in action, but admitted that allocation options are scarce.
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In the case of Apple, the partner and specialist in technology actions at WG manager Guilherme Novello points out some reasons that may have led to the drastic reduction in Berkshire exposure to paper. One of them is the price. “Today, Apple is not cheaper. It is negotiated in a multiple ‘rich’ and many people evaluate that it is at a price well above what should be negotiated,” he says.
Novello explains that actions today have two demand supports. One comes from the company itself, which continues to repurchase, which reduces the amount of stocks in circulation in the market and, consequently, improves the relationship between the price of paper and the company’s profit.
“With this, there is a price gain for profit of 3% to 4%. The company can sell the same thing from one year to the next, but as it has bought a lot of action, you have a larger piece of the Recomparated profit [de ações]”Says the WG partner.
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Another support comes from passive investments, such as pension funds in the United States. These vehicles have wallets that, to the greater or lesser extent, replicate the S&P 500 index, whose most weight company today is Apple.
On the other hand, according to Novello, Apple’s velocity of innovation “clearly fell”, as well as the company’s ability to charge more for new models of its devices. “Today people no longer know how to differentiate iPhone 14 from 15, because the difference is very small,” he says. Added to this the high penetration of smartphones in the global market. “Who wanted to have one, already have. From here, the gains of share [participação de mercado] They are very small. ”
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Impacts of the Tariff War on Apple
Buffett sold Apple shares before the start of the tariff war between the United States and China, another event that plays against the company’s growth prospects.
“Since the iPhone was released, Apple has a symbiotic relationship with Chinese manufacturing,” says Pedro Oiticica, a partner and analyst of manager Nextep. “Over the past and half decade, Apple was not just outsourcing production in China. It has indeed built a supply and manufacturing operation that is super complex, deep, and difficult to separate.”
Last week, the newspaper Financial Times reported that the company is preparing for. This change could take place next year as a direct response to the trade war started by President Donald Trump.
The United States that, if applied to Apple, would increase its production costs by 30%, according to Nextep calculations. “It would be devastating to the margins and deeply modify the company’s profitability profile,” says Oiticia.
Apple’s efforts to migrate production out of China began eight years ago in the first Trump government, but the company has faced difficulties in finding skilled labor and an integrated supply chain, such as the one in Chinese territory, which still concentrates 90% of production of hardware of the company.
Lag in artificial intelligence and regulatory risks
Approximately three thirds of Apple’s revenue comes from the sale of devices. Between October and December last year, only iPhone sales accounted for 56% of total revenues. But the product line has been presenting modest growth and consensus Bloomberg For the balance of the first three months of 2025 it foresees an advance of only 0.61%. Meanwhile, the line of services (App Store, Icloud and Advertising) should expand 11.97% year by year.
“In terms of investments, Apple looks far behind its other pairs [outras big techs]so that it is difficult to see the emergence of a new growth avenue. This leads us to believe that the relationship of profit growth and price today is not advantageous for the investor and we believe that is what Buffett saw too, ”says Oiticica.
Nextep partner says Apple is not only under the artificial intelligence race in relation to others techsnor is it clear the integration of technology with the products the company sells. “There is no obvious benefit in terms of growth or profitability that may arise from AI, which is already in course in other players,” says Oiticica.
For NOVELLO, from WHG, Apple’s privacy guidelines make this integration even harder. “They take this topic very seriously. Siri knows very little of each user because Apple insists that it has no access to anything you see on your phone,” explains the manager of the manager. “The great balcony of artificial intelligence is to be able to use all this app information to create an AI agent. If Apple cannot break it, it will hardly get out of the disadvantage position in which it is today.”
Another risk component that adds to the company’s analysis are regulatory issues involving Google. The company pays about $ 20 billion to Apple to make its search engine the default option on the company’s devices, according to the Bloombergciting documents from the United States Department of Justice.
“It has already been concluded that Google is a monopoly and now comes the phase of defining punishments to the company. A second order effect, may be the ban on any kind of exclusive distribution agreement. Over the night, we could have the elimination of a significant portion of Apple’s profit. We are talking about 20% of the value of the company at stake,” says Oiticica.
“This regulatory risk does not seem to be priced in the role of the company today,” he adds.
Since last year, the European Commission has applied billionaire fines to big techs For violations of the new Block Antitrust legislation, focused on large technology companies. Under the newly implemented Digital Markets ACT (DMA), Apple was fined 500 million euros because it does not allow developers to direct users to purchase options outside the App Store. Google has also been fined by European courts for paying for its search system to have preferred treatment.
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“This is a point where the market will hit a lot, besides all the tariff negotiation [da guerra comercial]. That [as multas] You can hurt Apple’s result. It is a legal risk that imposes a little more caution and will be a warning for the season of results, ”says Raphael Figueiredo, XP’s strategist.
The balance of Apple’s second fiscal 2025 fiscal (period between January and March this year) is scheduled to be released next Thursday (1) after the closing of the market. The company’s projections are expected to be expected to be reviewed down.
“The quarter will not yet be able to materialize all the economic deceleration or a possible recession [nos Estados Unidos]. Relationship with China, I believe Apple will reduce or even suspend the dissemination of guidance“Says Figueiredo.
