On Monday, Apple Inc. became the first public company to have a stock market value of $3 trillion, lifted by investors’ confidence that the iPhone maker will continue to release best-selling products while it explores new markets including automated vehicles and virtual reality.
Around noon, the Silicon Valley company’s shares hit a record price of $182.88 on its first day of trading in 2022.
As investors bet that consumers will continue to spend top dollar on iPhones, MacBooks, and Apple services like Apple TV and Apple Music, Apple became the first company to reach the latest milestone.
“This is an impressive achievement and certainly worthy of celebration,” said Jake Dollarhide, chief executive officer of Longbow Asset Management in Tulsa, Oklahoma. “It shows how far Apple has come and how dominant it is considered by investors.”
A few companies have market values above $1 trillion, such as Alphabet, Amazon.com Inc, and Tesla. Apple shared the $2 trillion club with Microsoft Corp, now worth about $2.5 trillion.
“The market is rewarding companies that have strong fundamentals and balance sheets, and the companies that are hitting these sort of huge market caps have proven they are strong businesses and not speculation,” said Scott Wren, senior global market strategist at Wells Fargo Investment Institute.
Its quick adoption of 5G technology, a technology with broader implications for the future, contributed greatly to Apple’s success. Its new iPhone 13 is equipped with 5G technology as the second wave of its 5G phones.
Apple continued to dominate China’s smartphone market for the second straight month, outperforming its rivals Vivo and Xiaomi, recent data shows.
The company’s stock reached a record high of $182.88, giving it a market value of a little over $3 trillion based on about 16.4 billion outstanding shares. The shares closed up 2.4 per cent at $181.86.
