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Warren Buffett continued to slash his stake in Apple as part of a selling spree that has seen his Berkshire Hathaway dump $166bn worth of stocks over the past two years, with the Oracle of Omaha finding few other opportunities to chase in the US stock market.
The sprawling industrial and investment conglomerate disclosed on Saturday that it had reduced its position in Apple to $69.9bn in the third quarter, indicating it had shed a further 100mn shares in the three-month period.
In just over a year, Buffett has ditched almost two-thirds of his stake in the technology company, which at its peak in 2023 accounted for $178bn of the company’s stock portfolio.
The stock sales are a dramatic shift by Buffett, given in 2022 he described Apple as one of Berkshire’s “four giants”, accounting for the bulk of the company’s value. At the company’s shareholder meeting in May he described the iPhone maker as “an even better business” than Coca-Cola and American Express, two of Berkshire’s longtime holdings.
“Unless something dramatically happens that really changes capital allocation strategy, we will have Apple as our largest investment,” Buffett told shareholders at the time.
“But I don’t mind at all, under current conditions, building the cash position,” he added. “I think when I look at the alternative of what’s available in the equity markets and I look at the composition of what’s going on in the world, we find it quite attractive.”
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