Apple’s Market Cap Hits $1 Trillion
by Anton Shilov on August 2, 2018 2:40 PM EST- Posted in
- Apple
- Financial Results
A day after posting strong results for the third quarter of fiscal 2018, Apple has become the world’s first publicly traded company with a market capitalization of over $1 trillion.
At press time Apple’s stock cost $206.90 and its market capitalization was $1.017 trillion. Meanwhile earlier this morning Apple’s stock hit $207.50, so it is likely that the company will stay around a $1 trillion market cap mark in the coming hours or days before either heading north or south.
Apple’s best Q3 results ever were driven by strong sales of iPhones as well as a massive increase in revenue it gets for its services. In fact, while the company’s iPhone earnings for the quarter grew 20% year-over-year because of higher smartphone ASPs, Apple’s services revenue grew 31% year-over-year as the company has been expanding its offerings for some time now. At the same time, sales of iPad tablets and Mac PCs dropped 5% year-over-year.
Originally founded as a maker of computers in 1976, Apple expanded to dozens of product categories in the 1990s, many of which were unsuccessful. After Steve Jobs returned to Apple as the CEO in 1997, he axed most of the product lines to focus on PCs. Starting from 2001, the company started to expand its family of products once again with the iPod music player that was followed by the Apple TV in 2006 (called iTV originally), the iPhone in 2007, the iPad in 2010, the Apple Watch in 2015, and the HomePod in 2017. In addition, the company acquired Beats Electronics in 2014. It is evident that the company branched into three new categories of products in the last eight years and while sales of Apple Watch and Beats products are increasing, Apple’s corporate revenues are growing mainly because of higher iPhone selling prices, such as the iPhone X at $999.
While Apple is without any doubts ahead of other US-based high-tech companies in terms of market cap, it is not the world’s most expensive firm per se. Depending on who is doing calculations, the valuation of Saudi Aramco state-controlled oil and gas company is between $1.2 trillion and $1.5 trillion. Therefore, Apple still needs to grow further in a bid to become the world’s most valuable company in history.
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zirk65 - Thursday, August 2, 2018 - link
The 1st dotcom era taught us that some financials matter.When a tech company omits sales numbers, how can their true value be found?
How long will they still be in business, or be able to support their customers?
solipsism - Thursday, August 2, 2018 - link
@smilingcrow,AT has been posting about financial results from tech companies for a long time. Here's just a single, random example for NVIDIA from 2015.
• https://www.anandtech.com/show/8973/nvidia-release...
@dagnamit,
1) I don't think Anand has anything to do with AT posting about a market valuation milestone off AAPL.
2) The iPod Touch didn't launch until 9 months after the iPhone was announced and demoed, and 3 months after it had been on sale.
smilingcrow - Thursday, August 2, 2018 - link
2015 is not a long time ago.Ian Cutress - Thursday, August 2, 2018 - link
One of our editors started doing it regularly around that time, and we still do it as a result.https://www.anandtech.com/tag/fiscal-results
solipsism - Thursday, August 2, 2018 - link
smilingcrow wrote, "2015 is not a long time ago."As Ian's link notes, They've been reporting on finances of the largest tech companies for over 3.5 years now. You may not think that's significant 'enough' to warrant an article, but I have to wonder if this is because it involves Apple or have you made similar remarks on any of their other articles about tech company finances.
Ian's link certainly disproves dagnamit's hypothesis about it because of Apple and Anand getting a job there a couple years ago.
A quick google search using the date parameters you required brought up this 2007 article from AT written by Ryan Smith that specifically mentions finances:
"Creative first went public in 1992, listing their shares on the NASDAQ stock exchange. It's important to note however that Creative is not an American company but rather a Singapore company; so the NASDAQ listing was followed 2 years later with a listing on the Singapore Exchange, a result of their desire to tap the richer American IPO market. Creative Labs as we commonly refer to them by is actually the American subsidiary of Creative Technology Ltd.
"If a stock is the best way to measure the health of a company, then Creative is about as sick as they come."
The article brilliantly begins with, "Business and technology are forever linked together in one inseparable mass."
• https://www.anandtech.com/show/2342
Ryan Smith - Thursday, August 2, 2018 - link
Aye. I don't believe you can completely understand the technology decisions of a company without understanding the business behind it, especially as the cost to design and build chips continues to rise. So these business-focused articles have long been one of my initiatives.=)iwod - Friday, August 3, 2018 - link
> I don't believe you can completely understand the technology decisions of a company without understanding the business behind it, especially as the cost to design and build chips continues to rise.I argued not just technology company but any company or any product. But yet we live in a world where even analyst barely understand the business behind it ( At least those who publish on the internet and self claiming analyst ) , most people doesn't even understand basic business.
smilingcrow - Thursday, August 2, 2018 - link
You appear to have missed the context which was me asking, ‘When did tech review sites start reporting the financial results and stock prices of tech companies so assiduously?’.The key world there is assiduously as I have nothing against financial info as it is important even in the basic sense which I mentioned in my first post; ‘As long as a company is solvent to the extent that they can honour their warranties I'm happy.’.
But when I see some sites live blogging earnings reports I do scratch my head. Quarterly results are important for share holders and if the results are a break out for the company either way they are newsworthy. But otherwise it seems like part of the current trend of too much information, sites desperate to spew out content in an attempt to grab eyeballs. So crass basically.
solipsism - Friday, August 3, 2018 - link
@smilingcrow,1) I really don't want to seem like an attack on you, but I don't think that's the most appropriate word based on your comments as I'm not seeing any perseverance (steadfastness in doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success), just a slight uptick in reporting when it's apropos. There seems to be no real difficulty in talking about financials for the major companies whose tech they test and review.
2) Based on the link offered by Ian, I'm seeing 13 articles about 6 companies under the Fiscal Results category for 2018. This is day 213 of the year. Personally, that seems very low consider the number of companies that AT covers and there being financial reports for all of them ever 3 months (which we can assume also covers their previous fiscal year in that 10K filing).
3) AT is certainly different than from when it started, but I think that's a good thing. That 2007 article about Creative is pretty interesting. Ryan's assessment wasn't wrong. Surprisingly or not, the company is still holding on and still losing money, but they did appear in Vegas this year to win a Best of CES 2018 Award by AVS Forum for their Super X-Fi dongle. All they need is one great product to make their way back into the black. We've seen before with several tech companies, but Apple is probably the most famous of these…. especially with today's milestone.
solipsism - Friday, August 3, 2018 - link
The Super X-Fi dongle seems impressive, but I'm not sure of the market for a $150 dongle attachment for your headphones. I hope AT reviews it when it's "released in the third quarter of the year."• https://www.cnet.com/news/creatives-new-super-x-fi...