Apple on Monday became the first company in world history to hit the $3 trillion market capitalization milestone.
Apple’s value has tripled since 2018 as its sales continued to soar and it spent hundreds of billions of dollars on share repurchases.
Apple went public on December 12, 1980 at $22.00 per share. The stock has split five times since the IPO, so on a split-adjusted basis the IPO share price was $.10.
Reuters:
On the first day of trading in 2022, the company’s shares rose to $182.88 in mid-day trading, a new record.
The world’s most valuable company is the first to reach the milestone as investors bet that consumers will continue to shell out top dollar for iPhones, MacBooks and services such as Apple TV and Apple Music.
Apple’s march from $2 trillion to $3 trillion in market value took about 16 months as its stock roared higher, leading a group of megacap technology companies that benefited as people relied heavily on tech during the coronavirus pandemic.
Analysts expect demand for iPhones to remain strong in 2022, as Apple leads China’s smartphone market and more consumers subscribe its services.
The New York Times:
By just about any measure, a $3 trillion valuation is striking. It is worth more than the value of all of the world’s cryptocurrencies. It is roughly equal to the gross domestic product of Britain or India. And it is equivalent to about six JPMorgan Chases, the biggest American bank, or 30 General Electrics.
Apple now accounts for nearly 7 percent of the total value of the S&P 500, breaking IBM’s record of 6.4 percent in 1984, according to Howard Silverblatt, an analyst who tracks valuations at S&P Dow Jones Indices. Apple alone is about 3.3 percent of the value of all global stock markets, he said…
Apple’s immense sales and wide profit margins have provided it with a stockpile of cash big enough to buy a company like UPS, Starbucks or Morgan Stanley outright. At the end of September, Apple reported $190 billion in cash and investments.
“They’ve created the greatest cash machine in history,” said Aswath Damodaran, a New York University finance professor who has studied Apple.
Yet instead of making a major acquisition, or even trying something ambitious and expensive like building multiple factories in the United States, Apple has decided to largely give its cash back to its investors by buying its own stock.
Over the past decade, Apple has purchased $488 billion of its own shares, by far the most of any company, according to an analysis by Mr. Silverblatt.
Technovanguard Take: Merely a waypoint. Apple remains significantly undervalued. You haven’t seen anything, yet!
Please help support Technovanguard. Click or tap here to support our independent tech blog. Thank you!
The post Apple becomes first company to hit $3 trillion market value appeared first on Technovanguard.
