Warren Buffett has earned the title of one of history's most successful investors, and he's guided Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A -0.30%) (BRK.B -0.26%) to incredible, market-crushing gains for well over half a century. While the Oracle of Omaha is open to selling stocks when it seems like the right move, he's also famously said that his company's favorite holding period is forever, and the buy-to-hold approach has clearly served Berkshire well over the years.
Interestingly, Buffett has also been warming up to the technology sector in recent years, and there are beaten-down holdings in the Berkshire portfolio that look worth pouncing on at current prices. Read on to see why these two Buffett-backed tech stocks are worth buying and owning for the long haul.
Image source: The Motley Fool.
1. Amazon
If you look at the most influential technology trends of the past two decades, Amazon (AMZN -1.65%) has strong positions in many of them. The company's leadership in e-commerce and cloud computing looks very hard to disrupt at this point, and these strong business pillars should continue to give the tech giant the leeway to experiment and grow into new product and service categories.
Amazon's digital advertising business has emerged as its most visible new growth engine, but it's hardly the only opportunity that the company has to boost sales and earnings outside of e-commerce and cloud computing services. While it undeniably has some big failures under its belt, Amazon generally has a fantastic track record when it comes to innovation.
It's already scored big wins in the smart-home and voice-based operating system markets, and there's a good chance that the tech giant will be one of the biggest players in emerging product and service categories including artificial intelligence, robotics, and self-driving vehicle technologies. In addition to presenting their own opportunities, Amazon's growth projects also have the potential to strengthen its core business pillars. For example, the company's big investment in building out its entertainment ecosystem as a supplementary component to its Amazon Prime service should also work to solidify its dominance in online retail and bolster its digital ads business.
Amazon has fantastic business strengths that will help it continue to be one of the world's most influential tech companies, and the stock looks attractively valued, trading down roughly 42% from its high. Berkshire holds 10.66 million shares of AMZN stock.
2. Snowflake
Buffett has historically been averse to technology stocks, instead preferring to back companies with comparatively simple business models. The Oracle of Omaha also has a reputation for being cautious when it comes to initial public offerings. That didn't stop Berkshire Hathaway from establishing a position in Snowflake (SNOW -1.61%) when the data-services company went public in September 2020, which might cause investors to wonder why Buffett made an atypical move in buying the stock upon its public debut.
In short, it's probably because Snowflake is building a leadership position in service categories that will only become increasingly important. Large businesses and institutions rely on cloud services and apps hosted on infrastructure provided by companies including Amazon, Microsoft, and Alphabet. However, these infrastructure leaders prevent data from being natively shared between their respective services. Snowflake provides a data-warehousing platform that allows information from these infrastructure providers to be combined and analyzed, and this service is becoming more and more valuable as data analytics come to play a bigger role in organizational operations.
Reflecting surging demand for data storage and combination capabilities, Snowflake has continued to grow revenue at a rapid clip since going public in September 2020.
SNOW Revenue (TTM) data by YCharts.
With the market's wavering appetite for growth stocks, Snowflake stock now trades down roughly 64% from its lifetime high. For long-term investors looking for beaten-down stocks capable of delivering huge returns, the data specialist's shares present an attractive risk-return profile at current prices. Berkshire holds 6.12 million shares of SNOW stock.
