Apple made more money in the last year than any other company in the world, according to the new Fortune 500 rankings. With annual profits of $57.5 billion, no other enterprise came particularly close, with the nearest rival earning about $8 billion less.
This goes a long way toward explaining why Apple remains the most valuable publicly-traded company in the world.
Warren Buffett is one of the greatest financial masterminds of our time. But he’s not infallible. Sometimes even Warren makes mistakes — and one of those recent mistakes was called Apple.
Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway firm has long invested in Apple, with Buffett once saying that, “I don’t think of Apple as a stock. I think of it as our third business. It’s probably the best business I know in the world. And that is a bigger commitment than we have in any business except insurance and the railroad.”
Apple has done extremely well for Buffett. The company’s stake in Apple has tripled in value in the past three years. On Wednesday, as Apple closed at a new all-time high, it was worth $128 billion. It accounts for more than 40% of Berkshire’s US portfolio, while Berkshire is Apple’s second larger shareholder (after index fund giant Vanguard.) However, Buffett has also been pruning his Apple stake. And it’s cost him.
Apple is the world’s most valuable public company, days from unveiling new software and hardware at WWDC, in the middle of its hottest iPhone cycle in years, and having just debuted its biggest iMac redesign in years. So all is good, then?
Well, apparently not. In fact, a report Friday notes that Apple stock is currently on track for its longest weekly losing streak in more than two-and-a-half years. Because the stock market works in mysterious ways.
Update: AAPL closed at $125.89 Friday, up $2.35 (or 1.9%). So much for the losing streak.
Apple shares spent much of Tuesday down 4% in value. The AAPL selloff was part part of a general drop in tech stocks amidst fears of a rise in interest rates.
At one point during the day, the value of each AAPL stock had dropped about $5.30. That’s a decrease of roughly $88 billion in Apple’s $2.1 trillion market capitalization.
Update: Apple shares finished the day down 3.54%.
Apple’s market cap has climbed more than $13 billion this year alone, equal to the company’s entire net worth in mid-2004. But that’s still enough to make it an underperformer next to its tech titan peers.
In a Wednesday report, the Wall Street Journal notes that Apple has risen 1.3% in 2021 so far. That’s compared to an average of 16% for Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, and Google parent company Alphabet. It’s also way less than the 81% Apple soared in 2020.
Apple’s annual shareholders meeting won’t take place on the Apple Park campus this year as it ordinarily would. With the COVID-19 pandemic dragging on, it’ll be a virtual-only event in 2021. This is likely to increase participation in the February 23 meeting. And if you own AAPL shares, you can attend.
Here’s what you need to do.
Berkshire Hathaway — the investment firm belonging to Warren Buffett, one of Apple’s biggest cheerleaders in recent years — reduced its stake in the Cupertino tech giant last quarter.
According to a regulatory filing made this week, in Q4 2020, Berkshire Hathaway cut 6% of its Apple shares. By contrast it kept its Amazon shares steady, while growing its stake in T-Mobile by a massive 117%.
One of the things that always surprised me was how, compared to some of his Silicon Valley peers, Steve Jobs’ net worth during his life paled in comparison to some of his contemporaries.
When Jobs died in late 2011, his net worth was reported as being $10.2 billion. That’s an enormous amount of money, but it was a drop in the ocean next to Bill Gates’ $56 billion that year, and less than Google’s Sergey Brin and Larry Page’s $19.8 billion apiece, Michael Dell’s $14.6 billion, and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg’s $13.5 billion.
Had Jobs had the same share arrangement today, however, it would be a very different story.
Apple has sold $14 billion in bonds in order to tap into current cheap borrowing costs, Bloomberg reports.
This money will reportedly be used for buying back stock and paying dividends, as well as giving Apple more working capital.
Apple has come a long way this century alone. In 2001, Apple had yet to release the iPod, iTunes, the iPhone, iPad or Apple Watch. While the turnaround under Steve Jobs was underway, it was still in its earliest stages.
What has Apple’s ascension in the years since done to AAPL’s share price? On January 28, 2001, Apple — adjusted for splits and dividends — was trading at 30 cents a share. On January 28, 2021, Apple closed at $137.09. That’s an astonishing 45,697.7% increase!
Sometimes, when Apple passes a major financial milestone, I’ll have a pang of regret at not having invested all the money I could lay my hands on on Apple back in the mid-1990s.
But that’s far from the worst missed opportunity involving Apple investment. A new article for Fast Company tells the story of seven early investors who sold their AAPL holdings on the day of the company’s IPO in December 1980.
When Apple holds its fiscal Q4 2020 earnings call on Oct. 29, can the company deliver another pandemic miracle?
We’ll all find out at 2 p.m. Pacific that day, when Apple live-streams its earnings call. (Actually, we’ll undoubtedly find out a half-hour earlier than that, when Cupertino issues its press release outlining its quarterly results).
Following last quarter’s record-setting results, Wall Street will be waiting with bated breath to see if Apple once again found a way to spin gold amid the economic disaster caused by COVID-19.
Tim Cook may well stay at the helm at Apple until at least 2025, according to SEC filings which detail the stock options that will vest in that time. Cook will receive 333,987 units of restricted stock options, vesting in thirds beginning April 1, 2023.
“For the first time in nearly a decade, we are awarding Tim a new stock grant that will vest over time in recognition of his outstanding leadership and with great optimism for Apple’s future as he carries these efforts forward,” Apple’s board of directors told Reuters.
After seeming to defy the general COVID-19 downturn, tech stocks have taken a dip as of late. Loup Ventures’ tech analyst Gene Munster thinks there is going to be a split in future fortunes — with some soaring back up to previous highs and others, well, not.
Apple, he believes, is going to be a big winner. And from my calculations he thinks it could be just a couple of years from another major financial milestone.
Apple has lost more than $500 billion in market cap since the start of this month, CNBC reported over the weekend.
To put that figure in perspective, it’s slightly more than the market cap it took Apple its first 36 years of existence to climb to. (Apple only passed $500 billion in 2012, the year after Tim Cook took over as CEO.)
Apple is no longer the world’s most valuable public company after it was overtaken by Saudi oil company Aramco. Apple’s share price has dropped 17% since it peaked in early September.
Having passed the $2 trillion market cap milestone last month, Apple has now dropped to $1.915 trillion. Apple and Aramco are the only two companies in the world to to have achieved valuations of $2 trillion.
Apple shares shot up more than 3% Monday following a 4-for-1 stock split that took place after the market closed Friday.
This morning, every Apple shareholder who owned one share at Friday’s closing price of $499.23 owned four shares, each with one-quarter that value ($124.81). After soaring as high as $131 in trading Monday, AAPL closed at $129.04, up $4.23 (3.39%) for the day.
Apple shares could jump by more than a third in the next year, following next week’s 4-to-1 stock split, an analyst for social trading brokerage company eToro claims.
Alongside Tesla, which will undergo a 5-to-1 stock split on the same day, Adam Vettese suggests Apple’s stock split “could act as a tailwind” for the value of its shares.
Apple’s market cap has surged by $600 billion in the past 20 days. That’s nearly the equivalent of Tesla’s $394 billion and Netflix’s $218 billion market caps combined, Above Avalon analyst Neil Cybart points out on Twitter.
Apple’s brain-melting march beyond a $2 trillion market cap might be just the start. Find out how high AAPL stock might go (and why all this success might have Apple fans tired of winning).
Plus, we’ve got more Apple rumors, this time concerning a potential cheaper Apple Watch and more! And Epic Games unleashes yet another creative salvo in its battle royale with Apple. (Surprise, surprise — Cupertino fires back in court.)
You can read all these stories, plus plenty of Apple how-tos and product reviews, in this week’s free issue of Cult of Mac Magazine. Download it now!
Apple passed $2 trillion this week, but one bullish Apple analyst doesn’t think the stock is anywhere near its limits. In a note published Friday, Wedbush analyst Dan Ives wrote to clients that he thinks Apple has “a lot of gasoline” left in the tank.
Ives predicted Apple could reach as high as $600. Currently, AAPL is trading at $473.10, defying the overall market with its upward trajectory.
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 hit a new all-time high in early trading Monday, taking the company tantalizingly close to the $2 trillion mark. AAPL rose to $464.35 on Monday before dropping to close at $458.43 (down $1.20, or 0.26%).
Apple’s current market cap (the share price multiplied by the number of outstanding shares) currently stands at $1.96 trillion. If Apple passes the $2 trillion milestone, it will become the first publicly traded company in history to do so.
This week on The CultCast: New Apple hardware is incoming, and thanks to a reliable leaker, we might know the release dates for iPhone 12, Apple Watch Series 6 and more. We’ll tell you what to expect. Plus, it’s Apple stock adventure, part 2! I talk about my massive Apple stock purchase, including how much I spent, why I’m buying in now, and how much my investment is now worth. We talk real numbers!
And if you’ve been thinking about getting a new Mac with the butterfly keyboard, don’t do it until you hear this episode, cause with COVID-19 shutdowns, keyboard repairs are now a total nightmare.
Our thanks to Netgear for supporting this episode. The Netgear Orbi WiFi 6 router gives you ultra-fast speeds and wider coverage throughout your home. Learn why Orbi are so insanely powerful at Netgear.com/bestwifi6.
Warren Buffett, the legendary investor and big-time Apple booster, now has a share of the company worth upward of $100 billion.
Even more impressive? Buffett’s firm Berkshire Hathaway reportedly spent on around $35 billion to secure its 5.7% stake in Apple. That’s a pretty darn great return on investment — and Apple’s only climbing higher.