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Why Apple (AAPL), Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-B) and TSMC (TSM) Are in the News on Thursday

Paul Ausick

Published: January 18, 2024 9:55 am

Here is a look at some of Thursday’s biggest stories.

Taiwan Semiconductor soars on earnings

Chip foundry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Ltd. (NYSE: TSM), aka TSMC, reported fourth-quarter and full-year results Thursday morning. The company reported flat year-over-year quarterly revenue and lower EPS. For the full 2023 fiscal year, revenue fell by 8.7%, and EPS dropped by 17.5%. But that’s not what made the news.

TSMC gave better-than-expected first-quarter revenue guidance of $18.0 billion to $18.8 billion, after posting a 13.6% sequential increase in revenue. That led the company’s CFO Wendell Huang to comment, “Moving into first quarter 2024, we expect our business to be impacted by smartphone seasonality, partially offset by continued HPC [high-performance computing]-related demand.”

Revenue in 2024 is expected to improve by 20% year over year. CEO C.C. Wei said that TSMC’s business “bottomed out” in 2023 and that the company expects “healthy growth” in 2024.

TSMC stock traded up around 8% in Thursday’s premarket session, right around the stock’s 52-week high of $110.69.

Apple loses in court

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) lost an appeal to extend a U.S. International Trade Commission ruling requiring the company to stop importing and selling Apple Watches with a disputed blood oxygen monitor.

In a ruling last October, the ITC ruled that Apple infringed on two Masimo Corp. (NASDAQ: MASI) patents that use light sensors to measure a person’s blood oxygen levels.

Apple will begin Thursday selling its Series 9 and Ultra 2 Apple Watch models without the oximeter feature. The company has already appealed the patent ruling but will remove the disputed feature until its appeal is decided.

In more legal news, Bloomberg reported Wednesday that the U.S. Department of Justice is preparing a lawsuit alleging that Apple has stifled competition by imposing hardware and software roadblocks that inhibit competitors.

That follows Tuesday’s U.S. Supreme Court refusal to hear Apple’s appeal of a ruling in the Epic Games lawsuit that forced Apple to open its App Store to non-Apple payment options. The Court’s ruling let stand a 2023 ruling that Apple did not violate U.S. antitrust laws, but did flout California law.

Berkshire Hathaway loading up on media stock

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK-B) on Wednesday reported in an SEC filing that the company had acquired additional shares of two Liberty Media tracking stocks. Berkshire purchased 1.2 million shares of The Liberty SiriusXM Group (NASDAQ: LSXMA) and 1.6 million shares of The Liberty SiriusXM Group (NASDAQ: LSXMK) between January 12 and January 17.

Buffett now owns 22.5 million shares of LSXMA and 46.5 million shares of LSXMK. The former is voting stock and cost around $30.45 per share. LSXMK is non-voting stock, and the average price per share was about the same as for the voting stock. Berkshire now owns 46.5 million shares of LSXMK and 22.5 million shares of LSXMA.

The two tracking stocks hold about 82% of the outstanding shares of Sirius XM Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: SIRI). According to Barron’s, the trackers trade at about a 33% discount to the value of Liberty’s stake in Sirius XM. Holders of the tracking stock are expecting Liberty to combine the tracking shares with Sirius XM stocks later this year that will effectively be a tax-free exchange of tracking shares for shares in Sirius XM. (Why the six highest-yielding Warren Buffett stocks are perfect 2024 investments.)