Finance

Warren Buffett’s stake in Apple now twice as large, reaches more than $18 billion

Berkshire Hathaway’s position in Apple is now more than twice as large as previously disclosed at $18.2 billion, investment tycoon Warren Buffett told CNBC in an interview on Monday. At the end of last year, Berkshire Hathaway owned 61 million Apple shares, worth $7 billion at the time.

Buffet’s annual letter to shareholders, which included a regulatory disclosure of its long positions, has revealed that his conglomerate had purchased about 120 million shares of Apple in 2017.

Apple’s stock surges to its highest price ever amid growing optimism over iPhone 8

Apple is breaking records—the company’s stock price has surged to an all-time intraday high, trading as high as $134.88 today and having surpassed the previous all-time intraday high of $134.54 set on April 28, 2015. The current stock price gives the Cupertino company a market capitalization of nearly $710 billion, the largest market valuation for a publicly traded American company.

According to MarketWatch, just yesterday the stock had closed at a record $133.00, passing the previous record set two years earlier.

Despite Note 7 fiasco & bribery scandal, Samsung just had the most profitable quarter in 3 years

Despite seeing its brand tarnished and anywhere between $2 billion and $5 billion wiped off its operating profit in the aftermath of Note 7 fiasco, Samsung of South Korea has managed to boost its fourth quarter earnings on the back of its semiconductor division and strong sales of the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge flagship devices.

Operating profits rose to $7.2 billion over the last three months of 2016 on sales of about $45.8 billion. Samsung’s mobile division captured $2.1 billion in operating income, a four percent year-over-year profit increase.

Samsung Mobile expects sales of its low-cost phones in the Galaxy A and J series to grow in the coming months. All in all, this was Samsung’s most profitable quarter in three years as the company has clearly bounced back from the global Note 7 recall.

Foxconn reports first ever annual sales decline since going public 25 years ago

iPhone manufacturer Foxconn Technology Group posted its first ever sales decline since it went public back in 1991, Japanese outlet Nikkei reported Tuesday. The outlet expectedly blames “lukewarm demand” from Foxconn’s biggest client Apple and the “saturated smartphone market” for the 2.81 percent drop in annual sales.

For context, Foxconn earns more than half of its revenue from doing business with Apple. The Taiwanese company is also known as Hon Hai Precision Industry and assembles iPhones and other gadgets like PlayStation consoles, notebooks, wearable devices and so forth on a mass scale.