Investing.com — Warren Buffett remains a “staunch believer” in Apple, Wedbush said after Berkshire Hathaway's (NYSE:) earnings on Saturday showed it sold about half of its stake in Apple, even as the conglomerate posted a record quarterly operating profit.
Berkshire sold about 390 million shares of Apple (NASDAQ:) in the second quarter, on top of the 115 million sold between January and 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 Saturday note, Wedbush noted that Berkshire has been selling Apple stock over the past year and in the first quarter sold more than 10% of its stake, “so it's not a surprise that the selling continued into the second quarter, although the magnitude is what's striking.”
Wedbush noted that Berkshire still has Apple as its No. 1 position and is more than double its next-largest position in Bank of America (NYSE:) at about $41 billion.
“While bears will clearly be nervous about this news and this narrative coming out of a brutal sell-off in tech stocks on Friday, we strongly caution that Buffett is a fervent believer in Apple and we don't see this as a smoke signal of bad news ahead (and it remains Berkshire's number one position by a wide margin),” the note said.
“In our view, Apple just delivered a 9.7/10 June quarter with strong guidance for September toward an ai-driven iPhone 16 supercycle and that bullish thesis is stronger today than it was before earnings.”
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