Apple, Inc. (AAPL), currently the world's largest company by market value, designs, manufactures, and sells a wide range of consumer technology devices including smartphones, tablets, personal computers, and wearables. Some of its best-known products include the flagship iPhone brand, and also the iPad and Mac lines. Apple is expanding its service revenue by dramatically growing its cloud services business, and by selling streaming entertainment like Apple TV+ and Apple Music.
The top shareholders of Apple are Arthur Levinson, Tim Cook, Jeff Williams, Vanguard Group Inc., BlackRock Inc. (BLK), and Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK.A).
Apple's 12-month trailing revenue and net income are $268 billion and $57.2 billion, respectively. The company's market cap currently is nearly $1.7 trillion. All figures are as of July 13, 2020.
Below, we'll look at Apple's top six shareholders in more detail.
"Insider" refers to people in senior management positions and members of the board of directors, as well as people or entities that own more than 10% of the company's stock. In this context, it has nothing to do with insider trading.
Top 3 Individual Insider Shareholders
Arthur Levinson
ArthurLevinson owns 4,592,140 shares of Apple stock as of Dec. 28, 2020. Levinson has been the chair of the board ofApple since 2011, and a co-lead director since 2005, having originally joined in 2000. In his role as director, Levinson has served on all three board committees: audit and finance, nominating and corporate governance, and compensation.
Levinson is a former chair of biotech company Genentech Inc. and is the founder and current CEO of biotech company Calico.
Tim Cook
Tim Cook owns 837,374 shares of Apple stock, representing 0.02% of all outstanding shares. Cook rose to CEO of Apple in 2011 after the death of founder and longtime CEO Steve Jobs. Cook, who arrived at Apple in 1998, was the chief operating officer, responsible for all worldwide sales and operations.
Cook also headed Apple’s Macintosh division and played a key role in the continued development of strategic reseller and supplier relationships. Prior to joining Apple, Cook was Vice President for Corporate Materials for Compaq, and Director of North American fulfillment for IBM.
Jeff Williams
Jeff Williams, who is the Chief Operating Officer at Apple, owns 489,260 shares of Apple stock as of Dec. 28, 2020. Mr. Williams, 57, oversees Apple’s global operations and the development of Apple Watch and Apple's health initiatives. After joining Apple in 1998, Mr. Williams held previous positions that included Senior VicePresident, Operations, and Head of Worldwide Procurement. Before joining Apple, Mr. Williams worked in a number of roles at IBM from 1985 to 1998.
Apple briefly became the world's first $3 trillion company during intraday trading on Jan. 3, 2022. The iPhone maker also holds the distinction of being the world's first company to reach $1 trillion and $2 trillion.
Top 3 Institutional Shareholders
The top three institutional investors own—in total—slightly more than 20% of the outstanding common stock outstanding for Apple as of Dec. 28, 2020.
Vanguard Group Inc.
Vanguard Group owns more than 1.3 billion shares of Apple, representing 7.83% of total shares outstanding, as of Dec. 28, 2020. Vanguard is primarily a mutual fund and ETF management company with about $6.2 trillion in global assets under management (AUM).
The Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (VOO) is one of the company's largest exchange traded funds (ETFs) with about $636 billion in net assets. Apple is the number one holding, comprising 6.7% of the VOO portfolio as of Dec. 31, 2020.
BlackRock Inc.
BlackRock owns 1.11 billion shares of Apple, representing 6.60% of total shares outstanding. BlackRock is primarily a mutual fund and ETF management company with approximately $8.67 trillion in AUM as of Dec. 31, 2020.
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. Apple is the second-largest holding, comprising 6.70% of the IVV portfolio.
Berkshire Hathaway Inc.
Berkshire Hathaway owns more than 1 billion shares of Apple, representing 5.96% of total shares outstanding, as of Dec. 28, 2020. Led by billionaire investor Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway is a diversified holding company with investments in a broad range of industries including insurance, railroads, gas and electric utilities, and more.
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.
