Apple breaches $1 trillion stock market valuation

World
Europe

Apple Inc became the first publicly listed US company that worth one trillion US dollars on Thursday, crowning a decade-long rise fueled by its ubiquitous iPhone that transformed it from a niche player in personal computers into a global powerhouse spanning entertainment and communications.

The tech company’s stock jumped 2.9 percent to end the day at 207.39 US dollars, giving it a market capitalization of 1.002 trillion US dollars. During the session, Apple’s stock market value reached as much as 1.006 trillion US dollars.

Apple has rallied about nine percent since Tuesday, when it reported June-quarter results above expectations and said it bought back 20 billion US dollars of its own shares. It was Apple’s best-two-day run since April 2014.

Started in the garage of co-founder Steve Jobs in 1976, Apple has pushed its revenue beyond the economic outputs of Portugal, New Zealand and other countries. Along the way, it has changed how consumers connect with one another and how businesses conduct daily commerce.

Apple’s stock market value is greater than the combined capitalization of Exxon Mobil, Procter & Gamble and AT&T. It now accounts for four percent of the S&P 500.

An electronic screen displays the Apple Inc. stock price at the Nasdaq Market Site in New York City, New York, US, August 2, 2018. /VCG Photo

The Silicon Valley stalwart’s stock has surged more than 50,000 percent since its 1980 initial public offering, dwarfing the S&P 500’s approximately 2,000-percent increase during the same almost four decades.

One of three founders, Jobs was driven out of Apple in the mid-1980s, only to return a decade later and rescue the computer company from near bankruptcy.

He launched the iPhone in 2007, dropping “Computer” from Apple’s name and super-charging the cellphone industry, catching Microsoft Corp, Intel Corp, Samsung Electronics and Nokia off guard. That put Apple on a path to overtake Exxon Mobil in 2011 as the largest US company by market value.

During that time, Apple evolved from selling Mac personal computers to becoming an architect of the mobile revolution with a cult-like following.

Jobs, who died in 2011, was succeeded as chief executive by Tim Cook, who has doubled the company’s profits but struggled to develop a new product to replicate the society-altering success of the iPhone, which has seen sales taper off in recent years.

In 2006, the year before the iPhone launch, Apple generated less than 20 billion US dollars in sales and net profit just shy of 2 billion US dollars. By last year, its sales had grown more than 11-fold to 229 billion US dollars – the fourth highest in the S&P 500 – and net income had mushroomed at twice that rate to 48.4 billion US dollars, making it the most profitable publicly-listed US company.

Source(s): Reuters