Did You Know? A Lost iPhone Led To Warren Buffett Investing Billions In Apple, Here's Why

One of the greatest investors of all time, 91-year-old Warren Buffett has for long ranked Apple amongst the best businesses he knows. He even mentioned Apple as one of his company Berkshire Hathaway's "four giants" in his latest annual letter of February 2022.

The other three include its insurance business, the BNSF Railway, and Berkshire Hathaway Energy. In the letter, Buffett also stated that the operations of our ¡°Big Four¡± companies account for a very large chunk of Berkshire¡¯s value.

But, a lesser-known aspect of Warren Buffett¡¯s Apple investment is that he partly owes his phenomenal Apple investment to a friend leaving his iPhone in the back of a taxi.

This is as per a new book by Wall Street Journal reporter Tripp Mickle, as per a report in Businessinsider.

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Also Read: Oil Giant Saudi Aramco Dethrones Apple As World's Most Valuable Company

What Had Happened

David "Sandy" Gottesman, who is a board member of Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway and amongst its early investors, had suffered a devastating loss when his iPhone slipped out of his pocket during a taxi ride in 2016, as per Businessinsider.

"I felt like I lost a piece of my soul," he told Ted Weschler, who is one of Buffett's deputies and a longtime Apple fan. The anecdote appears in "After Steve: How Apple Became a Trillion-Dollar Company and Lost its Soul," the book written by Tripp Mickle.

Berkshire's investment manager Weschler had reportedly shared Gottesman's iPhone story with Warren Buffett, who was surprised to learn that one of his friends was so enamoured with the device at his age. The Berkshire chief, who famously abstains from investing in technology companies as they're outside his "circle of competence," had then decided to take a closer look at Apple.

Warren Buffett noticed how obsessed people had become with their smartphones, including his grandchildren. So, Buffett determined that the iPhone was indispensable to many people, and would remain so for a long time.

"He (Buffett) realized that Weschler was right: the iPhone wasn't tech, it was a modern-day Kraft Macaroni & Cheese," Wall Street Journal reporter Mickle writes in his book.

Weschler had already built a $1 billion position in Apple at Berkshire. But Warren Buffett went ahead to pile up another $35 billion into the stock over the next couple of years. The conglomerate has more than tripled its money since then, as its stake has ballooned in value to more than $161 billion.

It's a no brainer that Apple is easily the most valuable holding in Berkshire's portfolio today, and Berkshire is Apple's largest individual shareholder!

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From 0.2% To 5.6% Stake In 6 Years

In May 2016, it was reportedly revealed for the first time in a regulatory filing that Berkshire Hathaway had acquired a 0.2% (around $1 billion) stake in Apple. And in the last 6 years, Warren Buffett has kept on boosting Berkshire's Apple stake. As recently as in the last quarter, i.e. Jan-March 2022, Buffett increased the stake in Apple to around 911 million shares, or about 5.6% of the company, as per his annual letter of Feb 2022.

And yesterday, i.e.on 12th May 2022, Apple¡¯s declared dividend was paid to shareholders. 91YO Warren Buffett has reportedly earned a dividend of $208,738,745.03 (approximately ?1617.23 crores) from Apple for the last quarter of Jan-March 2022.

Also Read: Warren Buffett¡¯s Berkshire Hathaway Buys Over 11% Stake Worth $4.2 Billion In IT Giant HP

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