Apple became the US’s first $2 trillion company on Tuesday — almost two years to the day after it became the first company in the world to reach the $1 trillion mark.
The iPhone maker entered the rarified air when its stock value hit $467.77 just before 11 a.m., based on its 4,275,634,000 shares outstanding. It finished the day up 0.1 percent, at $462.83, leaving its market cap at $1.98 trillion.
The Cupertino, Calif.-based tech giant has seen its shares soar more than 60 percent in 2020 as it overcame extended shutdowns of the Chinese factories that produce the iPhone, as well as the shuttering of hundreds of its retail stores amid the coronavirus pandemic.
But lack of physical stores hasn’t stopped Apple’s hugely loyal customer base, which continued to buy iPhones, AirPods and MacBooks online while stuck at home. Apple recently reported blowout earnings for the April-June quarter.
“Them getting to $2 trillion ahead of Amazon and Microsoft speaks to all the doubters who thought the Apple growth story was done two or three years ago,” Wedbush Securities Dan Ives told. “Yet here they are at the top of the peak.”
Apple sits atop the heap of the most valuable companies in the US, beating out Amazon, Microsoft and Alphabet, which are worth $1.63 trillion, $1.59 trillion and $1.05 trillion, respectively. Overseas, Saudi Aramco reached a market value of $2 trillion shortly after becoming a public company last December, but tumbling oil prices have since tanked the oil giant’s shares and its market value is now about $1.82 trillion.
In a distant fifth place in the US is social media juggernaut Facebook, with its $748.1 billion market cap, according to Bloomberg.
The five Silicon Valley titans account for nearly 23 percent of the S&P 500’s entire value.
An upcoming four-for-one stock split that will make Apple’s shares more affordable to more investors also sparked a rally after it was announced three weeks ago.
Apple still has room to grow, as it is the last remaining major smartphone maker to not yet sell a 5G-enabled device. Apple is expected to introduce its 5G iPhones at its upcoming launch event this fall.
“I think in the next two years we could be staring at at $3 trillion market cap for Apple, given the 5G cycle and where services are headed,” Ives said. “With AirPods becoming a $30 billion annual business, I think there’s clear skies ahead.”
That’s despite a scuffle that recently erupted over the lucrative fees the iPhone’s App Store charges developers. Last week, Apple kicked Epic Games, the maker of the wildly popular “Fortnite” game, out of the App Store after Epic introduced a payment system that circumvents Apple’s 30-percent cut of in-app purchases.
It is the second milestone this month for Apple, whose CEO Tim Cook became a billionaire after nine years at the helm of the world’s most valuable company.
