Apple hit a massive $2 trillion valuation early Wednesday, becoming the first publicly traded U.S. company in history to hit this milestone.
Apple needed to climb to $467.77 per share to reach the $2 trillion valuation, according to CNBC. It reached a high of $468.09 in early trading Wednesday. On Thursday, it climbed even higher to $469.17.
Apple achieved this astonishing $2 trillion valuation two years to the month after becoming the first public U.S. company reach $1 trillion.
(Market cap is determined by multiplying the share price by the total number of outstanding shares. Due to inconsistencies with the exact number of outstanding AAPL shares, there’s a chance the stock price needed for Apple to hit $2 trillion could be inaccurate. These numbers are based on Yahoo Finance’s and Seeking Alpha’s AAPL reports.)
Apple has been setting financial milestones for years now. It became the first public U.S. company in history to reach $700 billion, $800 billion, $900 billion, $1 trillion and $1.5 trillion valuations. Although other tech giants like Amazon and Microsoft later followed suit, Apple blazed the trail.
The path to $2 trillion: Apple’s turbulent year
The Cupertino company continued its upward trend despite a turbulent year. At one point, it looked like Apple’s growth days were going to be over for some time.
The China trade tensions of late 2019 preceded the outbreak of COVID-19 in early 2020. The pandemic caused Apple to temporarily shutter its retail stores, and caused no end of problems throughout its supply chain. Apple revised its earning guidance for one of the first times in history. In just around a month, Apple shed about $100 from its previous all-time high stock price of $324.95 in early 2020.
Things began picking up again after a low of $224.37 on March 23. It took Apple until early June to recover to its pre-COVID valuation.
It’s worth remembering that, as great as this news is for Apple investors, it doesn’t fundamentally change anything for the company. Or, rather, as Apple CEO Tim Cook said about the $1 trillion benchmark in August, it should be considered a milestone and not a focus. (Cook, incidentally, recently became a billionaire due to Apple’s 2020 financial success.)
During Apple’s most recent earnings call, Apple announced a planned 4-to-1 stock split. The last time Apple stock split was in 2014, when it split 7-to-1.
