In today’s episode of the 24/7 Wall St. podcast Doug McIntyre and Lee Jackson discuss what would happen to shares of Apple (Nasdaq:AAPL) if their largest shareholder, Warren Buffett, starts to trim his stake. Because of how much The Oracle of Omaha owns, even minor sales could spook Wall St. and send shares careening lower.
Transcript:
So another piece of bad news for Apple, there was one study about four weeks ago that showed iPhone sales in China were down 20% year over year, and there was another one two days ago that said they were down 19%, so fairly consistent.
China is the world’s largest smartphone market, and Apple investors are now asking themselves the question, what is gonna save us here?
Lee, one of Apple’s largest investors, maybe its largest, is Warren Buffett.
So what’s Warren Buffett going to do?
You know, that’s really a good question, Doug, because remember, he did sell 10 million shares to cut his stake down a little bit.
He still owns a 5.9% stake of the total float, and it makes up 41% of Berkshire Hathaway.
And I think if you’re an Apple investor and things start to slide off the cliff a little bit, what’s he going to do?
He can’t sell it because if he does start selling, the stock will just absolutely collapse.
And between, he has 905 million shares.
So that could prove to be a pretty dicey sell-off if he does indeed start to lose his love of the stock.
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