APPLE OF HIS EYE
Crowds follow as Buffett buys more of tech titan
Wherever Warren Buffett goes, investors follow.
Apple shares hit an all-time high Friday after the Berkshire Hathaway chief executive said his sprawling conglomerate bought an additional 75 million shares of the Cupertino, Calif., company, bringing its stake to 240 million shares.
Berkshire is now the second-largest Apple shareholder, behind only Vanguard, the mutual fund behemoth.
Apple shares added 3.9 percent, to $183.83, as investors hoped to grab some of the Buffett investment magic.
With the increase, Apple’s market cap crept ever closer to the $1 trillion level, finishing the day at $933 billion.
Amazon, the second-most valuable company in the world — which on April 30 had moved to within $79 billion of Apple’s net worth — was a more distant No. 2 at Friday’s close, just four trading days later, trailing the iPhone maker by $166 billion.
Buffett revealed his additional Apple share late Thursday in an interview with CNBC.
At the same time, Buffett sold out of an unsuccessful investment in IBM.
It was the Apple’s second significant gain this week, after the company surprised Wall Street on Tuesday with resilient iPhone sales and quarterly results that topped expectations.
Apple reported $61.1 billion in revenue for the March quarter, up from $52.9 billion last year, and promised $100 billion in additional stock buybacks.
In explaining his growing love for Apple shares, Buffett explained that the tech company’s dominance in the smartphone market and “strong ecosystem” make it an attractive investment.
“If you look at Apple, I think it earns almost twice as much as the second-most profitable company in the United States,” Buffett said.
“Apple has an extraordinary consumer franchise,” the billionaire octogenarian added. “You are very, very, very locked in, at least psy- chologically and mentally, to the product you are using.”
Indeed, research from Strategy Analytics released Friday cements Apple firmly at the top of the smartphone food chain.
The analysts examined total smartphone shipments during the first quarter and found that Apple’s handsets occupied the top four spots, with the flagship iPhone X leading the way with 16 million units sold.
Last year’s iPhone 7 came in No. 4, behind the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus.
The $999 iPhone X, which features an edge-to-edge display and facial recognition technology, has been plagued by supply bottlenecks and concerns about weak sales since it went on sale in November.
GBH Insights’ Daniel Ives told The Post that he thinks Apple has weathered the storm of doubt over the iPhone X’s sales, and is on track to become the world’s first $1 trillion company by September.
“Going into this massive three-pronged product cycle, combined with the buyback tailwinds, I think this is a Goldilocks scenario to finally hit that elusive market cap,” Ives said.
Berkshire’s larger Apple holdings make it the conglomerate’s largest single holding.