Having steered clear for years, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway is now buying shares of Apple (AAPL) at a time when the stock has taken a beating.
On Monday, Berkshire revealed a stake of 9.8 million shares in the tech giant, worth roughly $1.07 billion, according to a filing for the first quarter made with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Berkshire also increased its stake in IBM to 81.2 billion shares.
In years past, Buffett, who doesn’t own a smartphone and generally avoided technology investments, has teased the idea of buying into the stock, only to never do it.
“No, I mean, obviously you look back on any stock that went up a lot and you say we should’ve bought the stock,” Buffett told the Street last year, when asked if he regretted picking IBM over Apple. ” But we don’t think that way. We buy businesses we think we understand at prices that we like, and then we hold it for a long time. We usually make money, but not always.”
While Buffett has stayed away from Apple, his investment officers, Todd Combs and Ted Weschler, have bought into the company in years past—and according to CNBC, they made the purchase revealed Monday.
Shares of Apple tanked after a dismal second-quarter earnings report late April, in which slowing iPhone sales led to the company’s first quarter of lower revenue in 13 years. The stock has fallen over 13% since to a near two-year low.
Hedge fund giant, David Tepper, exited his 1.2 million stake in Apple, according to SEC filings on Friday, and in April, Carl Icahn said he no longer holds any shares.
