Who are Apple’s largest shareholders?

Apple’s largest individual shareholders

The following people are more accurately called Apple (AAPL) insiders rather than investors, because they’ve amassed their shareholdings as part of their compensation package as employees or board members of Apple.

The table below details the shareholdings of the top five individual shareholders in Apple. The information is taken from Apple’s most recent 14A filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which details director and executive compensation and shareholdings – among other things.¹

^{*Amounts to less than 0.05% of the issued and outstanding shares of Apple’s common stock.}

Art Levinson

Arthur (Art) Levinson is chairman of the board at Apple, and he’s held this role since 2011. Before he took the position as chairman at Apple, Art was the chairman and CEO at Genentech – a biotechnology company.

During his tenure as chairman of the board at Apple, Art has secured a shareholding of 1,148,712 shares. The share price at the time of writing (10 June 2020) is $352.84 a share, meaning that Levinson’s shareholding in Apple amounts to $405,311,542

Tim Cook

Tim Cook is the current CEO and former COO of Apple, taking over from Steve Jobs as CEO in 2011 – six weeks before Jobs died due to complications from pancreatic cancer. As well as being CEO of Apple, Cook serves on the board of Nike.

At the time of writing, excluding any previous sales, Cook held 847,969 Apple shares. Using the price of $352.84 a share, this amounts to a shareholding worth $299,197,381. But, as with other executives at Apple, Cook also has unused stock options and other employee stock benefits that he has not yet chosen to exercise.

Jeff Williams

Jeff Williams is the current COO of Apple. He reports directly to Tim Cook on Apple’s entire worldwide operations, and customer service and support. He also leads Apple’s design team – a role which he took over following the departure of Jony Ive as chief design officer.

Williams’s shareholding at the time of writing is 122,195. If we use that same price of $352.84 a share, the total value of his current stake in Apple is $43,155,283.

Al Gore

Al Gore is more widely known as a former vice president of the United States rather than as an Apple board member. He joined the Apple board in 2003, three years after losing the 2000 presidential election to George W. Bush – despite winning the popular vote.

He is known for his climate activism for which was the recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. Since joining Apple, Al Gore has gained a considerable shareholding of 115,014 shares. At the time of writing, with a stock price of $352.84 a share, Gore had a shareholding in Apple worth $40,581,539.

Deirdre O’Brien

Deirdre O’Brien is the current senior vice president of retail and people at Apple. Like Jeff Williams, she reports directly to Tim Cook. She’s been at Apple for over 30 years, and her team oversees talent development, recruitment, human relations, benefits and compensation at Apple.

With a shareholding of 33,854, Deirdre O’Brien holds Apple stock worth $11,945,045 at the time of writing, using that same stock price of $352.84 a share.

More key individual Apple shareholders

The table below contains the latest SEC filings (released 3 January 2020) for Apple’s 14A statement.¹ It lists the common stock holdings of current directors and executive officers – including the five that we’ve already mentioned – as well as a former employee with a significant shareholding.

^{*Amounts to less than 0.05% of the issued and outstanding shares of Apple’s common stock.}

Apple largest institutional shareholders

At the time of writing (10 June 2020), only three institutional shareholders were included in Apple’s most recent SEC 14A filing as owning more than 5% of the company’s outstanding shares. Those three are The Vanguard Group, BlackRock, and Berkshire Hathaway.

The Vanguard Group

The Vanguard Group is one of the largest investment companies in the world with $6.2 trillion in assets under management.² The company is led by Mortimer Buckley as chairman and CEO.

The company held 338,533,988 shares of Apple as reported in Apple’s 14A SEC filing.¹ Using the share price from the previous section of $352.84, The Vanguard Group’s total stake in Apple is worth $119,448,332,325 (almost $120 billion).

BlackRock

BlackRock is another of the largest investment companies in the world, with $7.47 trillion in assets under management.³ The current CEO and chairman of BlackRock is Larry Fink. Incidentally Susan Wagner – board member at Apple – is a founder, former director and current board member at BlackRock Inc.

BlackRock held 296,598,349 shares of Apple stock at the time of writing, with a value of $104,651,761,461 (almost $105 billion) at a price of $352.84 per share.

Berkshire Hathaway

Berkshire Hathaway is the investment company owned by Warren Buffet – one of the world’s richest people. The company is described as a conglomerate holding company, rather than an investment company, because it wholly owns well-known brands including Dairy Queen, Fruit of the Loom, Helzberg Diamonds and BNSF.

Berkshire Hathaway also has significant minority holdings in Kraft Heinz, American Express, Coca-Cola and Bank of America – as well as Apple. With a shareholding of 255,300,329 and using a price of $352.84 per share, Berkshire owns around $90,080,168,084 (more than $90 billion) worth of Apple stock.

Apple’s share price movements

The below screengrab is from our trading platform, and it gives an indication of Apple’s share price movements from 1 January 2020 to 10 June 2020.

As with a majority of companies around the world, Apple was affected by the coronavirus pandemic – which put a temporary halt to sales in Apple stores amid worldwide government lockdowns. But, Apple has since recovered to post its strongest share price performance to date (at the time of writing).

¹Apple, 2020
²The Vanguard Group, 2020
³BlackRock Inc, 2020