Buffett Dumps Apple Shares

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Feb 15, 7:00AM EST

Follow 24/7 Wall St. on Google

This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

Buffett Dumps Apple Shares — © Marco_Bonfanti / iStock via Getty Images

Apple Inc.’s (NASDAQ: AAPL | AAPL Price Prediction) share price is down just over 4% this year, while the S&P 500 is roughly flat. Apple’s shareholders are used to a stock that keeps rising. That has not been the case this year. World famous investor Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK-A), dumped a bunch of shares last quarter in a sign he thinks Apple stock’s run is over.

Buffett sold 10 million shares of Apple in the final quarter of 2023. According to the Financial Times, Apple stock is about 20% of Berkshire’s market cap. Buying Apple was a stroke of genius, some people say. The stock is up 367% since late 2018, when Buffett began to take a large position. (Warren Buffett can’t get enough of these seven dividend monsters.)

What Warren Buffet Sees for Apple Stock

Warren Buffett

While the sell-off of the Apple shares in Berkshire’s portfolio is modest, Buffett may see what some analysts who downgraded the stock have seen. That is, iPhone sales in the largest smartphone market in the world have been weak.

There have been worries for at least a year that the iPhone 15 might sell poorly compared to recent generations. It may not have sufficient upgrades from the iPhone 14 to tempt owners to upgrade. It could be too expensive. Perhaps competing models like the Galaxy Z Flip5 from archrival Samsung had attracted Apple customers.

The iPhone had a modest sales increase, based on the company’s most recent earnings report. Apple’s revenue rose only 2% overall to $119.6 billion. iPhone revenue worldwide grew faster, but not by much. The increase for the quarter was from $65.8 billion to $69.7 billion.

The earnings report also shows that Apple’s wheels fell off in China. Revenue for what Apple calls Greater China dropped from $23.9 billion in the year-ago quarter to $20.8 billion. With over 900 million users, China is the largest smartphone market in the world by far.

Apple competes with local manufacturers in China, which is not a challenge in any other large country. China-based Huawei has about a third of the market, as does Apple. Xiaomi and Honor each have slightly less than 10%. Samsung has a presence in the market.

Apple stock has been downgraded recently because of worries about China. The competition is fierce, unlike in the United States and much of Europe. Without healthy growth in China, Apple’s prospects are mediocre.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.