Apple wins race to $3 trillion market cap

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Apple earnings blow past analysts’ estimates yet again
After growing steadily for years, Apple’s market capitalization passed the $3 trillion point.
Photo: Cult of Mac

Apple just became the first publicly traded U.S. company to be valued at a whopping $3 trillion. AAPL stock topped out at $182.88 a share Monday before dropping slightly, bringing the market cap back below the $3 trillion milestone.

It closed at $182.01, leaving Apple’s market cap at an astonishing $2.99 trillion. But it continued to climb once again in after-hours trading.

Apple’s road to $3 trillion

Monday’s high came after Apple passed the $2 trillion milestone in 2020. Even though the iPhone-maker’s sky-high valuation didn’t last after Monday’s peak, Apple’s market capitalization remains vastly higher than any of its Big Tech rivals. It’s 20% ahead of the nearest, Microsoft. And ahead of every other U.S. publicly traded company, too.

Apple’s share price has climbed steadily into the stratosphere in the last few years. It hit the $3 trillion point about 16 months after getting to $2 trillion back in 2020. And that came two years to the month after becoming the first public U.S. company to reach $1 trillion.

Cupertino got close to $3 trillion several times in recent months, but this time it finally went over the top. If only for a short time. And it happened on the exact 45th anniversary of Apple becoming a company.

The market cap figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of AAPL shares by the current value of each one. While that sounds simple, it’s more complicated than it seems because Apple has a policy of buying its own shares and retiring them. That means it’s not easy to say exactly how many outstanding shares there are at any given moment. The $3 trillion market capitalization figure comes from experts at Yahoo Finance.

Why so high?

Determining why Wall Street values the price of any stock is a dicey business at best. Quite a few people devote their entire lives to trying to answer the question. The ones who guess right we call “millionaires.”

But it’s safe to say Apple’s share price has risen tremendously due to heavy demand for computers of all types during the COVID-19 pandemic. iPad has done particularly well. And Mac is doing its part, too, with computers running the powerful Apple M1 processor buoying sales.

Demand for the iPhone 13 is higher than Apple’s ability to fulfill it, while the company’s Services division brings in tremendous revenue, too.

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