Now, Apple is moving closer to the next level of valuation. With its closing price of $255.65 on Friday, Apple has a market capitalization (share price multiplied by outstanding shares) of $3.87 trillion dollars as it looks to become the first publicly traded U.S. firm worth $4 trillion. Some rough calculations would indicate that Apple would hit that target once the stock traded at $264.28.
Apple seems to be well ahead of the pack. Here is the market value of some other companies that at some point over the last few years challenged Apple to be the most valuable publicly traded U.S. company:
- Nvidia-With a close today at $137.01, Nvidia has a market capitalization of $3.36 trillion. The AI/GPU chipmaker would reach a $4 trillion valuation with a trade at approximately $163.11. Nvidia’s shares are up 184% for the year to date thanks to the AI takeover of Wall Street.
- Microsoft-At the start of this year, Microsoft had a higher valuation than Apple but has underperformed Apple since then. With a current market cap of $3.2 trillion, Microsoft’s shares would have to hit approximately $538.20 to hit the $4 trillion valuation mark.
- Amazon-Closing the week at $224.38, Amazon’s market cap is $2.35 trillion even though the stock is up nearly 50% during 2024.
- Alphabet-One of the dark horses challenging Apple in 2018 to be first to hit $1 trillion, Google’s parent company is currently worth $2.37 trillion. The stock is up 39% this year.
Apple’s stock has been the beneficiary of Apple Intelligence; while a case can be made that Samsung and Google have done a much better job of implementing AI into their phones than Apple, Wall Street is happy to see the crew at Cupertino finally get off its butt and start working on AI.
Apple’s stock performance since its December 1980 IPO. | Image credit-Google
Apple’s IPO took place in December 1980 when the stock was offered at $22 making instant millionaires of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. After several stock splits, those who bought Apple during the IPO paid the equivalent of 10 cents a share. If you bought $1,000 of the stock at the initial offering price, you would have purchased 45 shares. After several stock splits, you’d now own 10,080 shares of Apple valued at $2,576,952.
