Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:) sold about half its stake in Apple Inc., even as the company posted record quarterly operating profit, earnings data showed on Saturday.
Berkshire Hathaway sold nearly 390 million shares of Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) stock in the second quarter, on top of the 115 million shares sold from January to March, as the iPhone maker’s stock price rose 23%.
Berkshire still owned about 400 million shares worth $84.2 billion as of June 30.
In a note on Saturday, Wedbush noted that Berkshire has sold Apple shares over the past year and in the first quarter sold more than 10% of its stake, “so it’s no surprise that the sales continued in the second quarter, although the magnitude is what draws attention.”
Berkshire still holds Apple in first place, Wedbush noted, and is more than double its second-largest, Bank of America, at about $41 billion.
“While it is clear that bears will run away with this news and the coming narrative of Friday’s brutal sell-off in tech stocks, we strongly caution that Buffett is a fundamental believer in Apple and we do not view this as a smoke signal for bad news to come (and Berkshire remains #1 by a wide margin),” the note reads.
“Apple just delivered 9.7/10 Q3 2018 financial results from our perspective with strong guidance in September on an AI-powered iPhone 16 supercycle, and that bullish thesis is more solid today than it was pre-earnings.”