Investment firm BlackRock increases stake in Apple stock, now owns 6.1% of shares

Posted:
in AAPL Investors edited January 2017
The world's largest asset management firm BlackRock has increased its holdings in Apple, with a regulatory filing revealing its total ownership in the company is now over 322 million shares, worth approximately $38.4 billion.




A filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchanges Commission confirms the investment firm owns 322,683,504 shares in total, which works out to be a 6.1 percent stake in Apple. The figure is up from the same time last year, as in January 2016 BlackRock owned a 5.7 percent stake in the iPhone producer.

The news of BlackRock's increased ownership in Apple has positively affected the markets, with Yahoo Finance noting the Apple stock price has risen by 0.3 percent to $120.11.

As the largest investment firm, BlackRock has considerable holdings in other major tech companies, owning at least five percent of Microsoft, Facebook, and HP. BlackRock also has a seat on the Apple board, with co-founder and current chief operating officer Susan Wagner the second woman to do so after replacing the long-serving Bill Campbell in 2014.

Earlier this week, Apple's stock price reached a 14-month high, while Morgan Stanley rated Apple as "overweight" and set a price target for the company's shares of $148. As part of the rating, Morgan Stanley's estimates for the fiscal 2017 iPhone revenue were reduced by 3 percent due to anticipated "weak demand" ahead of an iPhone "supercycle."

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 18
    sog35 said:
    Thats a crapload of shares owned by one fund.

    Over $35 billion. Wow.
    Indeed, that's a very high proportion for a fund to own. But BlackRock has become a bigger and bigger piece of f corporate America. They own 5% or more of a number of US companies.

    Also interesting to note that Susan Wagner, one of BlackRock's co-founders, is on Apple's board (she joined in 2015).*

    *(Oops... I see the article refers to that fact as well!)
    edited January 2017
  • Reply 2 of 18
    gatorguygatorguy Posts: 24,176member
    sog35 said:
    Thats a crapload of shares owned by one fund.

    Over $35 billion. Wow.
    They reportedly control north of $5Trillion (yes that's a T) in corporate stocks.

    EDIT: Here's a fairly recent article about them.
    https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/18/business/dealbook/at-blackrock-shaping-the-shifts-in-power.html?_r=0
    edited January 2017
  • Reply 3 of 18
    schlackschlack Posts: 719member
    apple has a decent upside potential and very minimal downside while still paying 2% dividend, a good place to park a whole bunch of money.
    brucemc
  • Reply 4 of 18
    rezwitsrezwits Posts: 878member
    Wow I read the NYTimes Link, 13,000 employees, just to buy/trade stocks and generate money. It's funny, their product is money...
  • Reply 5 of 18
    brucemcbrucemc Posts: 1,541member
    schlack said:
    apple has a decent upside potential and very minimal downside while still paying 2% dividend, a good place to park a whole bunch of money.
    Yep, although a lot of "gloom and doom" media-blog-o-sphere stories, the truth is that given Apples brand, loyalty, installed base, premium customers, services, new products, and ecosystem, they have probably one of the least risky downsides in tech
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 6 of 18
    flaneurflaneur Posts: 4,526member
    brucemc said:
    schlack said:
    apple has a decent upside potential and very minimal downside while still paying 2% dividend, a good place to park a whole bunch of money.
    Yep, although a lot of "gloom and doom" media-blog-o-sphere stories, the truth is that given Apples brand, loyalty, installed base, premium customers, services, new products, and ecosystem, they have probably one of the least risky downsides in tech
    PED on Apple 3.0 had a story recently about some unusual bullishness around AAPL.
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 7 of 18
    Impressive! Most impressive.
  • Reply 8 of 18
    quinneyquinney Posts: 2,528member
    They must be certain that there will be no 35% import tax on consumer electronic devices manufactured outside the U.S.
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 9 of 18
    quinney said:
    They must be certain that there will be no 35% import tax on consumer electronic devices manufactured outside the U.S.
    No one is certain about anything. When you have 5 trillion dollars to invest you have to put money almost everywhere. Even if you were certain that major new tariffs were coming, AAPL is still a better bet than many other options. 
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 10 of 18
    mpantonempantone Posts: 2,033member
    sog35 said:
    Thats a crapload of shares owned by one fund.
    I take it you don't invest much.
     
    BlackRock is an asset management company that has many funds, over a thousand. They have 600+ BlackRock branded mutual funds, 300+ iShares branded ETFs, and 70+ closed end funds.

    Their AAPL holdings are most certainly not held in one fund.
    edited January 2017
  • Reply 11 of 18
    mpantonempantone Posts: 2,033member
    rezwits said:
    Wow I read the NYTimes Link, 13,000 employees, just to buy/trade stocks and generate money. It's funny, their product is money...
    Whereas Bank of America has 16x employees as BlackRock.

    Let's take a quick glance at both:

    Bank of America (BAC)
    • Total revenue: $93B (Dec 2015)
    • Net income: $15.8B
    • Number of employees: 209,000
    • Net income per employee: $76K

    BlackRock (BLK)
    • Total revenue: $11.2B (Dec 2015)
    • Net income: $3.35B
    • Number of employees: 13,000
    • Net income per employee: $258K
    BlackRock employees are generating 3.4x more net income for their company than BofA.
  • Reply 12 of 18
    sog35 said:
    Thats a crapload of shares owned by one fund.

    Over $35 billion. Wow.
    I believe Vanguard own double that.
  • Reply 13 of 18
    carnegiecarnegie Posts: 1,077member
    sog35 said:
    Thats a crapload of shares owned by one fund.

    Over $35 billion. Wow.
    I believe Vanguard own double that.
    Vanguard owns around the same number of shares as BlackRock. As of the end of 2015 they owned just under 323 million shares, about 7-1/2 million more than BlackRock did then and a few hundred thousand more than BlackRock did at the end of 2016. Vanguard hasn't filed that information for 2016 yet, so we don't know whether they've added or subtracted shares since then.

    In response to the OP: BlackRock did add about 7 million shares to ts AAPL holdings in 2016, but most of the increase in the portion of AAPL shares they owned was due to the number of AAPL shares outstanding decreasing. Apple's been buying back shares so if you just hold the shares you have steady you own more and more of Apple each year. BlackRock would have gone from about 5.7% to about 6.0% in 2016 had they just kept the same number of shares.

    BlackRock reported net inflows for 2016 of more than 4% (over $200 billion) of their assets under management for 2015. Their increase in AAPL shares was more than 2%, so it didn't quite keep up with the amount of new money that BlackRock had to manage and invest. On the other hand, as a percentage of the total assets under management that BlackRock had, the total value of their Apple holdings did grow a bit due to the market price of those shares increasing more than the value of their total assets under management.
  • Reply 14 of 18
    quinney said:
    They must be certain that there will be no 35% import tax on consumer electronic devices manufactured outside the U.S.
    I do know one thing:  US policy will favor companies, foreign and domestic, making and selling things within US borders.
  • Reply 15 of 18
    carnegiecarnegie Posts: 1,077member
    Vanguard filed its ownership statement today. It also increased its holdings of AAPL shares in 2016. At the end of the year it owned about 337.5 million shares, nearly 14.6 million more than it owned at the end of 2015.
    edited February 2017
  • Reply 16 of 18
    carnegiecarnegie Posts: 1,077member
    BlackRock filed its ownership statement yesterday. As of the end of 2018, it owned 296,598,349 shares of AAPL. That's down from the 319,715,585 shares it owned as of the end of 2017. So during 2018 it net sold about enough shares to maintain the same level - about 6.3% - of Apple ownership.


  • Reply 17 of 18
    carnegiecarnegie Posts: 1,077member
    Vanguard filed its ownership statement today. As of the end of 2018, it owned 338,533,988 shares of AAPL. That's down from the 348,468,032 shares it owned as of the end of 2017. So, because of Apple's share buybacks, Vanguard's level of Apple ownership was up from 6.85% to 7.13%.

    The question now is, will we see an ownership statement from Berkshire Hathaway? I expect that we will in the next few days.


  • Reply 18 of 18
    1st1st Posts: 443member
    look like everybody uses aladdin predicted that apple is a buy for the stock at that price (possibly explain the similar % ownership of each company ;-). its time to buy BLK stock?
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