- Warren Buffett said in a Monday interview that he would be buying more Apple shares if the stock were “cheaper.”
- He added that he personally had “never sold a share” of Apple, though Berkshire Hathaway trimmed its stake in the fourth quarter.
- Buffett also said in May that the firm would “love to see Apple go down in price” so he could buy more.
Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett says he’d be buying more Apple shares if they were “cheaper.”
“If it were cheaper, we’d be buying it,” the acclaimed investor said in a Monday-morning interview with CNBC’s Becky Quick, the cohost of “Squawk Box.” “We aren’t buying it here.”
He also said that even though Berkshire Hathaway trimmed its Apple stake in the fourth quarter, he personally had “never sold a share.” Rather, he said it was a manager at the firm who had sold Apple shares to put toward a new investment. Berkshire Hathaway owns a 5.4% stake in Apple, valued at about $44.7 billion.
Apple stock is trading at $175.34 a share, down from the $207.05 it hit in August when Apple became the first US company to be worth $1 trillion on the public markets.
On Saturday, Buffett published his annual letter to shareholders in which he discussed topics such as his plan to repurchase the company's own stock, among other items.
It's not the first time the 88-year-old investor has expressed interest in adding to his Apple holdings if the company's price were to drop. "From our standpoint we would love to see Apple go down in price," Buffett said in May during his annual shareholders meeting. "We very much approve of them repurchasing shares."
In the first quarter of 2018, Berkshire Hathaway added 75 million shares to the 165.3 million shares it owned at the end of 2017, as CNBC reported last May.
"Nobody buys a farm based on whether they think it's going to rain next year or not," he told CNBC at the time. "They buy it because they think it's a good investment over 10 or 20 years."
Watch Buffett's interview on CNBC's "Squawk Box" below:
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