Warren Buffett Made This Surprising $35 Billion Bet 10 Years Ago, and It Turned into $185 Billion. Is It Still a Buy Today?

Apple is portrayed as still a buy, with Buffett’s $35 billion initial stake now worth $185 billion pre-tax and including dividends. The article cites strong iPhone demand, record services revenue, earnings that beat estimates, and current-quarter revenue guidance for 14% to 17% growth versus 9.5% expected. It also highlights a CEO transition to John Ternus and potential AI-driven product upside, but the piece is largely commentary rather than new market-moving news.

Analysis

The real signal here is not “Buffett likes Apple,” but that the market is still underpricing the durability of Apple’s monetization stack. The hardware cycle is no longer the main driver; the installed base plus services attach creates a compounding revenue annuity that is much less cyclical than the stock’s headline multiple suggests. That makes Apple less a device company and more a consumer-fintech/media toll road, which is why earnings resilience can persist even if unit growth slows.

The second-order winner is BRK.B, because Apple’s success validates Berkshire’s capital allocation discipline and reinforces the market’s willingness to pay a conglomerate premium for low-turnover, high-conviction portfolios. The more interesting spillover is to AXP and KO: Buffett-style “known consumer behavior” names can rerate when investors seek balance-sheet quality and visible cash generation, especially if macro growth stays noisy. NVDA and INTC are only tangentially helped here through the AI narrative, but Apple’s AI rollout matters mainly as a sentiment bridge that can offset skepticism about mature megacap tech.

The key risk is that consensus is extrapolating Apple’s services growth and AI optionality while underestimating governance transition risk over the next 6–18 months. If product execution under the new CEO is viewed as incremental rather than transformative, the multiple can compress even with decent earnings, because the stock already embeds “defensive growth” expectations. Another hidden risk is that Apple’s services expansion could draw more regulatory attention over time, turning a quality story into a margin-normalization story.

Contrarian take: this is not a timing call to chase AAPL after a good print; it is a call to own downside-hedged quality. The market likely views Apple as fully appreciated, but the combination of recurring revenue, buybacks, and a massive user base can keep per-share compounding above index levels for years. The better expression is a relative-value trade: long Apple versus lower-quality hardware/software names that lack comparable cash conversion and customer lock-in.

Key Decisions for Investors

• Long AAPL on pullbacks over the next 2-6 weeks; target a 12-month hold. Risk/reward favors owning the recurring-services compounding stream versus chasing near-term headline multiple noise.
• Buy AAPL Jan-2027 call spreads financed with near-dated puts if vol is cheap. This expresses upside from services/AI and management transition while limiting drawdown if execution slips.
• Pair trade: long AAPL / short a basket of mature consumer-tech peers with weaker monetization or less pricing power over 3-9 months. The goal is to isolate quality-recurring-revenue premium dispersion.
• Add BRK.B as a low-beta quality compounder on any market-wide risk-off move. The thesis is that Berkshire benefits from a renewed preference for capital discipline and long-duration cash generation.
• Avoid overreacting into INTC or “AI laggard” sympathy trades. Apple’s AI relevance is sentiment-positive, but the cleaner expression remains AAPL itself rather than hardware turnaround optionality.