Buffett bought more Apple last quarter and said he would add more if the stock didn't rise

Berkshire Hathaway chairman and CEO told news Becky Quick that he earned $600 million in Apple stock after a three-day plunge in the last quarter. Apple is the conglomerate's largest shareholder, holding $159.1 billion at the end of March, about 40 percent of its stock portfolio.

"Unfortunately, the stock went up again, so I quit. Otherwise, who knows how much we'll buy?" The 91-year-old investor told Quick Sunday after Berkshire's yearly shareholder meeting. There are plenty of opportunities to buy Buffett this year as Apple shares come under pressure amid concerns over increasing interest rates and supply chain constraints. The stock fell 1.7% in the first quarter, with several three-day losing streaks throughout the period. In January, Apple fell once for eight straight days, and the stock fell nearly 10% in the second quarter.

Berkshire began buying shares of Apple in 2016 under the influence of investment delegates Buffett, Todd Combs, and Ted Weschler. As a result, Berkshire is now Apple's most significant shareholder outside the index and a provider of exchange-traded funds.

Buffett has previously called Apple one of the four "giants" in his conglomerate, thanks to its CEO, and second only to the Berkshire group of insurance companies. "Tim Cook, Apple's brilliant CEO, rightly sees consumers of Apple products as his first love, but all of his other constituents also benefit from Tim's managerial touch," Buffett's 2021 annual letter reads.

Oracle of Omaha said it was a fan of Cook's stock buyback strategy and how it gave the conglomerate an increased stake in every dollar of the iPhone maker's earnings without investors lifting a finger.

Apple said last week that it had authorized a $90 billion share buyback, offsetting as a publicly-traded company spending the most on buying its shares. In 2021, he spent $88.3 billion on redemption.

The conglomerate has also received regular dividends from the tech giants, averaging around $775 million per year.