Mikey Campbell
After achieving a market capitalization above $800 billion in after hours trading on Monday, Apple on Tuesday became the first U.S. company in history to cross that market value border on a closing basis.
Apple stock ended the day up one percent to close at $153.99, granting the tech giant a market cap of just under $803 billion. The company's closing stock performance echoes a performance put in during after hours trading on Monday, when Apple first passed the $800 billion mark after shares surged past $153.
The latest development continues a string of stock achievements for the world's most valuable company. In February of 2015, Apple became the first U.S. firm to close with a market cap above $700 billion in a run that peaked at $775 billion before receding. Apple's regained super-$700 billion levels in February.
Apple's iPhone is in large part responsible for nearly a decade of booming revenues. Amidst economic headwinds in China and slowing domestic demand, the popular smartphone saw its first ever year-over-year decline in sales in the second fiscal quarter of 2016. The downward trend has continued through to the most recent quarter, the lone bright spot being last year's holiday quarter.
The company saw another iPhone sales contraction during the three-month period ending in March, though revenue was up slightly due to a higher mix of iPhone 7 Plus sales. In a conference call last week, CEO Tim Cook said demand for the phablet was stronger than expected, leading to initial supply constraints. The mix toward iPhone 7 Plus pushed iPhone's average selling price up to $655 for the quarter, as compared to $642 in the same period in 2016.
Aside from iPhone, Apple is quickly growing its services business, which raked in $7.04 billion for the quarter and is on track to become the size of a Fortune 100 company by the end of the year. Wearables, which Apple considers Apple Watch, AirPods and Beats products, is another quickly growing segment that if broken out into its own category would be the size of a Fortune 500 company. Currently, Apple lumps wearables in with iPod and various accessories as "other" revenue.
Charles Martin
Christine McKee
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18 Comments
Yay! I'm happy. Hopefully by the end of the year, Apple will be over 1 trillion.
The end
is preeexistent
In the means
Do any of you remember the calls for an Apple $1T market cap back in 2012? And exactly where did it get us? So many greedy or trusting investors lost billions of dollars. Andy Zaky was telling everyone to double down on Apple stock. Yeah, thanks, Andy, for your wonderful insight (I stayed pat and didn't buy any extra shares, so no big losses for me). I'm only saying Wall Street absolutely can't be trusted. They can love Apple one day and hate it the next. Personally, I think they're still hating Apple but can't do anything about Apple's share price rise. Now they've just become sheep.
Warren Buffett is now Apple's biggest cheerleader and protector. Most of the big investors don't have the balls to contradict Buffett and his Berkshire Hathaway crew's support of Apple. I can't imagine any big investor saying Buffett is an idiot for backing Apple right to Buffett's face. Suddenly there are all these cockroaches coming out of the woodwork saying they finally see the value in Apple. Yeah, they see the value after it has gone up considerably. Six months back they were putting all their money into the FANG stocks and loudly proclaiming Apple had seen its day. They're nothing but self-serving SOBs who'd sell their mothers for a good stock tip.
Try not to get carried away with all this recent Apple chatter and believe in Apple as always, but don't keep thinking it's going to keep climbing. It's not a FANG stock and it's not Tesla. Those companies don't have to prove anything as they've been given a free pass in terms of P/E. For those companies, only the future matters. With Apple, cash in hand is the only thing that matters. I sincerely hope Apple might reach $1T market cap but I'd prefer to have higher dividends so I don't have to rely on Wall Street to give decent value to Apple. If Apple can reach a share price of $160 and maintains it until the end of the year, I'll consider myself very lucky. I sincerely hope the Apple short-sellers get pounded hard. I despise people hoping and betting on companies to fail. It's just so perverse and destructive to companies and employees.
Apple is doomed.