September 17, 2012: On the again of report iPhone 5 preorders of two million in 24 hours, Apple’s inventory worth hits a brand new all-time excessive. For the primary time in historical past, AAPL breaks the $700 mark in after-hours buying and selling. Passing the milestone cements Cupertino’s place because the world’s Most worthy publicly traded firm.
Amazingly, the brand new report is $270 a share larger than at the beginning of the yr. Apple inventory rose 65% in simply 9 months.
Apple’s astonishing success
By any measurable metric, Apple loved hovering success in 2012. A inventory worth breaking $700 was simply the newest in a collection of dizzying data the corporate set in only a few brief years.
In January 2006, Apple surpassed the worth of Dell, the corporate whose founder as soon as mentioned he’d shut down Apple and refund its shareholders. Just a few years later, Apple overtook Microsoft as effectively — besting the tech large that dominated the Nineteen Nineties. In August 2011, Apple briefly overtook ExxonMobil to change into the world’s Most worthy firm.
And it simply stored climbing from there…
Apple market cap retains climbing
On the finish of February 2012, Apple surpassed the $500 billion market cap, then smashed by way of $600 billion in April. By September 2012, Apple was valued at upward of $650 billion.
To place that in perspective, Apple was value greater than second-place ExxonMobil plus your complete internet value of Google on the time. Not dangerous for a corporation that had fallen to $12.88 a share on September 29, 2000.
Apple inventory breaks data
Apple hasn’t precisely renounced its successful methods since then. It turned the primary publicly traded U.S. firm to go the $700 billion, $800 billion, $900 billion, $1 trillion, $1.5 trillion and $2 trillion valuations. In early 2022, it surged previous the $3 trillion line briefly earlier than dropping amid a wider market pull-back. And it did the identical factor in mid-2023. (Phew!)
At time of writing, AAPL is buying and selling at round $175 a share. Nevertheless, it’s not truthful to match this with Apple’s $700 milestone from 2012, attributable to a 7-to-1 inventory cut up in 2014 and a subsequent 4-to-1 cut up in 2020.