The American billionaire Warren Buffett has just offered himself an 11% stake in the capital of HP, the result of the split in 2015 from Hewlett-Packard. An operation that caused the action of the manufacturer of PCs and printers to jump by more than 15% on Wall Street.
There is definitely movement among tech stocks on Wall Street. After Elon Musk, who wrote a check for nearly $3 billion to acquire a 9.2% stake in the capital of Twitter, it’s Warren Buffett’s turn to shine.
The American billionaire, who has built a veritable empire with his conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway, has just offered himself an 11% stake in the capital of HP, the result of the split in 2015 from Hewlett-Packard. The businessman paid around $4.2 billion to get his hands on nearly 121 million shares of the PC and printer maker. An operation that allows him to become the largest shareholder, ahead of the investment company The Vanguard Group (9.85%).
HP stock surges on Wall Street
The announcement of the rise of Warren Buffett in the capital of the American firm immediately boosted its action. This was up more than 15% in trading prior to the official opening of the New York Stock Exchange. This is a positive signal for the market, as a slowdown in the growth of the computer market is expected by investors, in particular due to the shortage of semiconductors caused by the sudden increase in demand generated by the Covid-19 pandemic.
In this context, Warren Buffett’s investment is good news for HP, which had lost more than 8% on Wall Street last week. However, the American company headed by Enrique Lores is not the only one to suffer from the pessimism surrounding the market outlook. Thus, Dell also suffered a stock market loss of 11% at the same time.
Apple, the example to follow
Warren Buffett, who has made long-term investments his trademark, hopes that HP will follow in the footsteps of Apple, on which Berkshire Hathaway began betting in 2016. Until then cautious about investments in technology stocks, the American billionaire hit the jackpot with the apple brand, which at the beginning of the year (briefly) became the first company to reach 3 trillion dollars in market capitalization.
According to the Canalys institute, the PC market ended 2021 up 15% compared to 2020 and 27% compared to 2019, with a total of 341 million units delivered. Against the background of the democratization of telework, laptops and mobile workstations have been particularly in demand. They thus represented more than 80% of global deliveries last year. In the fourth quarter of 2021, Lenovo was the leading PC seller in the world, with 21.7 million units sold, ahead of HP and its 18.9 million units sold.