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Apple Briefly Ranked as Most Valuable Company in the World

motulist said:
I think Apple stock is a bubble unto itself. Apple's been doing great financially for the past decade, no question, but I think people saw that Apple stock was going up, so everyone invested more in Apple stock, which made Apple stock rise even more, which made people want to invest more in Apple, wash, rinse, repeat. In other words, I think Apple's stock has had a HUGE gain beyond what it's actually worth merely because for at least the past 5 years people were investing in it merely because it was skyrocketing.
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AAPL shareholder here. The stock is undervalued, if anything. The company is growing like crazy, yet its P/E sits in line with flatlined companies like Microsoft. Look at Amazon's P/E. Or Netflix. Now those are overvalued stocks.

I recently read an analysis that stated that Apple would have as much cash on hand as the entire company is currently worth in a matter of 3 years or so. And I believe that was projected at zero growth, which we know will not be the case.

I would like to see an AAPL split to remove the psychological perception that it's overpriced when the facts show that it is not.

I'm hanging on to my AAPL and not letting go.
 
WestonHarvey1 said:
Are you serious? You look at the whole of Apple and all they have accomplished in the last decade and all you can see is a nearly obsolete removable media technology? All so you can sit in a chair and watch HD movies on a small laptop screen, with a battery draining motor buzzing wildly?
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I'm happy for Apple but in my opinion, I think they've to a certain degree let all this success go to their head. There are many examples and Blu-ray (again, IMO) is as valid as any so really, why try to degrade another mans post. Honestly, you need to get over yourself...and +1 on wanting an OPTION for Blu-ray.
 
re todays aapl price action

nice roller coaster ride aapl

"will worrying change the outcome?..." - kwai chang caine
 
Eric-PTEK said:
Yes when do the investigations into windfall profits start?

Apple has a large market cap, but they are still a small company.
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This is nonsense. Apple is a huge company, in terms of employee count, revenue, profit and market cap. By which definition are they small?

As long as they make their money in accordance with the law, the profits can be as "windfall" as it gets. What kind of investigation should that be anyway? "You are making a lot of money, this is illegal!" Apple doesn't even have a monopoly it could abuse.

Go back to North Korea.
 
gnagy said:
Your words have been marked and I will be back here a year from now. I set a calendar notification. AAPL is still cheap. I would be shocked if AAPL is less than $450 a year from today.
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So a derived pun from a famous quote for you:

"iPads don't buy iPads"

Maybe you'll find the original and then rethink your position ;)
 
Hmm,
It won't be official until the end of tomorrow, when we can finally know if XOM will take the lead again or fall below AAPL further.

On a side note, it's quite hard (at least for me) to comprehend those decimal differences in market cap as being huge numerical differences (in the hundreds of millions of dollars).
 
"Apple, Inc. is now the most valuable public company in the world!"

Awesome, now that they've achieved that can they fix Lion?
 
Speedy2 said:
This is nonsense. Apple is a huge company, in terms of employee count, revenue, profit and market cap. By which definition are they small?

As long as they make their money in accordance with the law, the profits can be as "windfall" as it gets. What kind of investigation should that be anyway? "You are making a lot of money, this is illegal!" Apple doesn't even have a monopoly it could abuse.

Go back to North Korea.
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LOL. It's call SARCASM.

I am the biggest right wing capitalist you will find.

My point was the hypocrisy of the mostly left wing owners of Apple and Apple equipment who would take every pot shot they can at any other company of equal profit, i.e. the oil companies. It's all bad when other companies do it and the greatest thing in the world when Apple does it.

And no, in the grand scheme of things Apple is not a large company.

They outsource most of their manufacturing, their overall direct Apple staff is not exceedingly large. Mostly what they own is intellectual property.

I read they have 49k employee's, most of them are probably in the retail outfits and in corporate terms they are fodder. The real value employee's who create, design, and market Apple products is small.

How else do your think such a 'small' company gained such a large market cap on 'small' sales?

If you added up Apple's physical value outside of the patents they hold they are extremely small.

Using that metric Google is an even smaller company.
 
Eric-PTEK said:
They outsource most of their manufacturing, their overall direct Apple staff is not exceedingly large. Mostly what they own is intellectual property.

I read they have 49k employee's, most of them are probably in the retail outfits and in corporate terms they are fodder. The real value employee's who create, design, and market Apple products is small.

How else do your think such a 'small' company gained such a large market cap on 'small' sales?

If you added up Apple's physical value outside of the patents they hold they are extremely small.

Using that metric Google is an even smaller company.
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I'm not sure I understand your "metric" and I don't think many people do, either. Apple is profitable, and we can leave the "big" or "small" determinations based on total number of employees. What you consider as "fodder" (Apple store employees) also enables Apple to have unparalleled retail reach which is key to their strategy & sales, which makes them profitable.

I'm not sure I follow what your point is, maybe you can clarify it for us.
 
Speedy2 said:
Are. Worldwide. And by calling a company "most valuable" it is commonly implied that we are talking about market capitalization. Which is a valid measure. There are other measures like revenue or profit, but they have their downsides too. I don't see the sloppiness.

The biggest problem with this "championship title" is probably that there are companies out there that would be more valuable, were they traded publicly. Saudi Aramco is regarded being worth several trillions for instance.
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Most people who work in finance or trade in the markets would understand "most valuable company" to denote enterprise value, not equity value. This would, among other things, include debt (of which Exxon has a significant amount), and omit Apple's large cash stockpile, despite the fact that most of it is restricted thanks to transfer pricing.

It's sloppy because they don't clarify that they really mean that Apple's common equity is now the most valuable, that the comparison set is limited to other publicly traded multinational firms, and that it's kinda pointless given the current market tumult.

Saudi Aramco is not worth several "trillions" but there are various state-owned enterprises (including Aramco) that are worth more than Apple's common equity.
 
Lesser Evets said:
Hatas gonna hate.

PC fans must be stabbing their genitals. After 30+ years of the most ridiculous anti-Apple attitude, they finally are facing reality: they suck in the wake of a superior computer company when marketed properly. It took the iDevices to do it, but the Apple product was always much better than the competition, just didn't have a competitive price.
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I am a PC fan though. Just an Apple PC fan. So you mean all us Apple PC fans have to stab ourselves too?
 
MacRumors said:
Update x2: At 4PM Eastern, the end of the trading day, ExxonMobil closed at $71.64 with a market cap of $348.32 billion. Apple closed at $374.01, valued at $346.74 billion, some $600 million behind XOM.
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More like $1.6 billion, or $1,600 million behind. Nice math MacRumors.
 
Exxon took back first place

Now that the markets have closed for today, we will have to wait for tomorrow to see if XOM will fall further or if AAPL will overtake XOM.

Currently, after markets closed, AAPL is almost $2 billion below XOM's market cap. But given the volatility of the markets, and the price of oil going down, that'll probably change by end of tomorrow.
 
Food for thought:
numberofemployees.png
 
This is more for fun, watching this race. When market caps are this close, the differences are meaningless. So, before we declare Apple has really become the most valuable company in terms of market cap, let there be 10 B in difference.

The reasons are:

1) Different sources quote different values for number of shares outstanding. I checked yahoo's market cap numbers and that seem to be different what is used in this thread.

2) Companies issue shares for various reasons in small quantities for employee stock ownership plan, options exercises etc. When market caps are this close, such small changes in shares outstanding can swing it one way or the other.

To account for all this, let us wait till Apple is more or less permanently atleast 10B ahead of XOM.
 
Oil is used to make many of the soft and hard plastics we all enjoy today. So no oil equals so plastic. Plus the oil for transport fuel etc etc.

Apple on the other hand enriches so many people's lives with their products.

So you can live without oil and Apple products. But our lives are so much the better with them.
 
While market cap is a fun stat and the run-up by Apple is certainly impressive, it certainly isn't the "end-all be-all" statistic. Apple has about $90b in cash. If they were to decide to give half of that back in a special dividend the market cap of Apple would instantly go down by over 10%. To be fair I have no idea how much cash XOM has but regardless, market cap really isn't the statistic to be used to measure a company's size. Revenues are a better metric IMHO.

Wal-mart is the #1 company on the Fortune 500 list with revenues of $422b with Apple at #35 at 65b.
 
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