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Apple's first iPhone game in over a decade stars Warren Buffett
Apple doesn't do gags by half-measures, apparently. Tim Cook made an appearance at Berkshire Hathaway's annual meeting where he jokingly suggested in a short film that Warren Buffett could have a newspaper-tossing iPhone game, but it turns out that this wasn't just empty banter -- the game is real. Apple has released a Warren Buffett's Paper Wizard title for iPhones that has you tossing papers (much like Buffett did as a child) to earn "Warren Bucks" based on your delivery skills. Think of it as a first-person, touchscreen Paperboy for would-be billlionaires.
Warren Buffett's company is buying Duracell for $6.4 billion
Last month, Procter & Gamble decided that it wanted out of the battery game, and was selling Duracell to the highest bidder. Today, a surprising figure has emerged as the buyer: America's richest man, Warren Buffett. According to the release, Berkshire Hathaway (Buffett's company) will spend around $1.7 billion in cash and will swap stock worth around $4.7 billion in order to own the power outfit. After all, as devices with built-in, rechargeable batteries rise in prominence, the need to buy expensive AAAs from the store is decreasing. Still, Buffett's got a track record of making savvy investments - so perhaps this is time for a corporate reinvention that P&G couldn't, or didn't want to, implement.
Apple soars into Fortune 500's top 10
Despite the media's best attempts to make it appear that Apple is in dire financial straits, Fortune today reported that the company has made it into the top 10 of the Fortune 500 list. Apple arrives in the top 10 in the number six spot, replacing HP (now No. 15) as the leading tech company. Here's the amazing thing -- just last year, Apple was listed as No. 17 in the Fortune 500. Two years ago Apple was a distant No. 35, the spot now occupied by Microsoft. The ranking of the Fortune 500 is based on revenues, with Wal-Mart Stores at the top of the list with 2012 revenues of US$469.2 billion. Three US oil companies -- Exxon Mobil, Chevron and Phillips 66 -- made up the second through fourth positions respectively on the list, with Warren Buffett's investment firm Berkshire Hathaway just ahead of Apple in the No. 5 spot. Apple's revenues for 2012 were $156.5 billion with profits of $41.7 billion. That profit figure was exceeded only by Exxon Mobil, which, as of today, has a market capitalization of "only" $406 billion compared to Apple's $433 billion.
Warren Buffett speaks out on Apple's cash pile
Warren Buffet was on CNBC yesterday, and the famous investor had some opinions about Apple, its stock price and the enormous pile of cash it's sitting on lately. His basic thoughts, not surprisingly, were just for Apple to keep making money. "The best thing you can do with a business is run it well," said Buffett, "and the shares will respond." Apple recently had a big investor try and sue them to get dividends from the company's cash back to the shareholders, but that lawsuit failed, and Buffett says he wouldn't have worried about it. "I would ignore him," Buffett said of the investor David Einhorn. "I would run the business in such a manner as to create the most value over the next five to 10 years." Which makes sense -- while stockholders might not be happy about not getting paid cash right now, no one will argue with an extremely valuable business that grows even more valuable in the future. Buffett also shared a story of Steve Jobs calling him when Apple made a little extra cash, and Buffett advised him to get some of the stock back. "When Steve called me, I said, 'Is your stock cheap?' He said, 'Yes.' I said, 'Do you have more cash than you need?' He said, 'A little.' [laughs] I said, 'Then buy back your stock.' He didn't," Buffett remembers. And Buffett finished his story with a wise bit of advice for Tim Cook, Apple and really any investor out there: "If you could buy dollar bills for 80 cents, it's a very good thing to do." Obviously, Apple is working hard on R&D spending, and the company could go through its vast cash reserves very quickly if that's indeed what it wanted to do. But instead, the strategy should probably be to keep making the company even more valuable, because both Apple and its shareholders will benefit if that happens.
Warren Buffett hesitant on Apple, tech companies
Multi-billionaire investor Warren Buffett says he still has no plans to invest in technology companies, including Apple, preferring to stick with companies like Coca-Cola because it is "very easy for me to come to a conclusion as to what it will look like economically in five or 10 years, and it's not easy for me to come to a conclusion about Apple." Buffett's latest comments came at the opening of a new cutting tools factory in Daegu, South Korea, in which his investment company Berkshire Hathaway Inc. has a share. Even though he's a long-time friend of Microsoft founder Bill Gates -- the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation receives around $1.5 billion a year from Buffett -- the 80-year-old investor has never been comfortable with technology companies. He says that, although recent events in Japan mean that technology stocks are depressed and therefore a good buy at the moment, he's sticking with what he knows. In fact, it's only within about the past five years that Apple stocks have out-performed those of Coca-Cola. Hindsight shows that a switch to Apple from Coke five years ago would have made Buffett a much richer man, but with around $50 billion to his name, his foresight seems to work pretty well. While Apple's stock has gone up like a rocket in the past five years, Coca-Cola's has remained fairly stable -- and in the previous five years, Apple's stock was in the doldrums in comparison, and Buffett's choice looked wise. And now, it turns out, even Bill Gates is investing in Coca-Cola via its Mexican bottler Femsa. [Via Electronista]
