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As of 31 May, Vanguard had more than 30m investors and 410 of funds offered. By the end of 2021, the company’s asset under management (AUM) reached $8 trillion. And that’s hardly surprising, as in the last two decades Apple became a legendary firm beloved by famous investors such as Warren Buffett. The Cupertino-based iPhone maker went public on 12 December 1980 at $22 a share. Adjusted for three stock splits, Apple share price has grown 12,881%. Jeff Williams, who is the Chief Operating Officer at Apple, owns 489,260 shares of Apple stock as of Dec. 28, 2020.

The Vanguard Group, Inc. is currently the company’s largest shareholder with 7.7% of shares outstanding. BlackRock, Inc. is the second largest shareholder owning 6.2% of common stock, and Berkshire Hathaway Inc. holds about 5.4% of the company stock. Apple’s largest shareholders are asset managers who invest other people’s money. This is to be expected for one of the largest companies in the world. Apple’s shareholders have a significant degree of influence on the company’s decisions. Major shareholders can affect decision-making processes at Apple as they own large percentages of the company’s stock, which can give them voting power when it comes to certain matters.

Corporate culture

Researching institutional ownership is a good way to gauge and filter a stock’s expected performance. There are a reasonable number of analysts covering the stock, so it might be useful to find out their aggregate view on the future. As of August 2021, Tim Cook owned almost 3.3 million Apple shares, which amounts to 0.02% of all company shares. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust, a charity organisation run by the former couple, owned one million Apple shares at the end of 2020, but sold them in 2021.

• It is a conglomerate of insurance businesses, utilities, and other companies.
• As the market for personal computers expanded and evolved throughout the 1990s, Apple lost considerable market share to the lower-priced duopoly of the Microsoft Windows operating system on Intel-powered PC clones (also known as “Wintel”).
• Knowing who owns the most of Apple’s stock can help in understanding the company’s objectives.
• It manages other people’s money through its mutual funds and exchange-traded funds and also offers other related investing and financial planning services.
• Macs have been popular among students, creative professionals, and software engineers.
• Who Really Owns Google (Alphabet) and Who Controls ItOverview of who owns Alphabet (Google) and who controls it.

The table below shows the total number of votes for each large shareholder. Apple Inc. had a total of 15,842 million outstanding shares as of December 2022. The following table shows how many shares each Apple’s large shareholder holds. The only interesting thing about Apple’s ownership structure is that the third-largest owner is Berkshire Hathaway, a company led by legendary investor Warren Buffet.

BlackRock Inc.

Company’s CEO Waren Buffet and his “sidekick” Charlie Munger are proponents of value-based, long-term investing. They stick to the business they understand and avoid new trendy things, whatever it means. I think that it is fair to call them “old-school.” Their old-school approach is not limited only to their investment style, as anyone who visited their company webpage can confirm. Berkshire Hathaway is an iconic company represented by legendary investor Warren Buffet who is also its significant shareholder and CEO. There were 15,842 million votes distributed among shareholders of Apple Inc..

As you can see, institutional investors have a fair amount of stake in Apple. This implies the analysts working for those institutions have looked at the stock and they like it. It is not uncommon to see a big share price drop if two large institutional investors try to sell out of a stock at the same time. So it is worth checking the past earnings trajectory of Apple, (below). Of course, keep in mind that there are other factors to consider, too.

How much of Apple does Tim Cook own?

The top shareholders of Apple are Arthur Levinson, Tim Cook, Jeff Williams, Vanguard Group Inc., BlackRock Inc. (BLK), and Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK.A). The NeXT acquisition was finalized on February 9, 1997,[76] and the board brought Jobs back to Apple who owns apple now as an advisor. On July 9, 1997, Jobs staged a boardroom coup that resulted in Amelio’s resignation after overseeing a three-year record-low stock price and crippling financial losses. The remaining 10% was a share of third minority co-founder Ronald Wayne.

In 2020 Apple introduced its own microprocessor, the M1, for Macintosh computers, which had previously used Intel chips. The M1 was one of the fastest microprocessors available and was designed to be fast while also using less power than previous chips. It’s always worth thinking about the different groups who own shares in a company. But to understand Apple better, we need to consider many other factors.

Apple Store

As this percentage has gone below 5%, there is no obligation for information about such ownership to be reported, making it difficult to know what Steve Jobs’ widow currently holds. Tim Cook (Timothy Donald Cook) is currently the CEO of Apple and was appointed to that position back in 2011 when Steve Jobs passed away. He owns about 0.021% of Apple’s shares, with a net worth of $1.8 billion. He reportedly received these stocks through various grants offered by the company throughout his tenure as CEO and executive vice president for worldwide sales and operations prior to becoming CEO. The general public, who are usually individual investors, hold a 41% stake in Apple. This size of ownership, while considerable, may not be enough to change company policy if the decision is not in sync with other large shareholders.

Apple ‘s dispersed ownership might create conflicts of interest between Apple ‘s management and its investors, which are represented by another management layer in the form of asset managers. In situations like these, insiders of the large asset manager shareholders and insiders of the company hold significant power over it. As of 6 July, institutional investors such as asset management firms Vanguard, Blackrock and Berkshire Hathaway hold more than 57% of Apple’s shares.

However, the actual decision power is in the hands of Vanguard’s insiders since the ownership is diluted over millions of investors worldwide. Vanguard owned 1,278 million shares in Apple and controlled 1,278 million shareholder votes as of December 2022. The following table summarizes how much is each shareholder’s stake in Apple Inc. worth. Now he owns a remaining 112,064 shares that, at today’s value, are worth over $24 million. Apple Inc. is owned by two main institutional investors (Vanguard Group and BlackRock, Inc).

This might be a strategic stake, so it’s worth watching this space for changes in ownership. Most consider insider ownership a positive because it can indicate the board is well aligned with other shareholders. However, on some occasions too much power is concentrated within this group. Alternatively, email editorial-team (at) simplywallst.com.This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature.

Based on his claims, he technically never stopped to be an employee of Apple, even after he left the company in 1985. However, keep in mind that a stake in Apple could be just one part of their portfolio, and their total worth could be bigger, thanks to other investments. Thus, he became a minor shareholder in comparison to Steve Jobs.

The value of shares and ETFs bought through a share dealing account can fall as well as rise, which could mean getting back less than you originally put in. Previous to his work at Compaq, Tim was the chief operating officer of the Reseller Division at Intelligent Electronics. Tim Cook is the CEO of Apple and serves on its board of directors. The company, which reported over $30 billion in earnings as of Sept. 30, 2020, also holds a sizable portfolio of equity securities valued at hundreds of billions of dollars. The iShares Core S&P 500 ETF (IVV) is among one of BlackRock’s largest ETFs with more than $251 billion in net assets as of Feb. 5, 2021.

Every company has them, and we’ve spotted 1 warning sign for Apple you should know about. However, it is not uncommon for managers to be executive board members, especially if they are a founder or the CEO. Institutions typically measure themselves against a benchmark when reporting to their own investors, so they often become more enthusiastic about a stock once it’s included in a major index. We would expect most companies to have some institutions on the register, especially if they are growing.