September 17, 2012: On the again of document iPhone 5 preorders of two million in 24 hours, Apple’s inventory value hits a brand new all-time excessive. For the primary time in historical past, AAPL breaks the $700 mark in after-hours buying and selling. Passing the milestone cements Cupertino’s place because the world’s most precious publicly traded firm.

Amazingly, the brand new document is $270 a share increased than initially of the 12 months. Apple inventory rose 65% in simply 9 months.

Apple’s astonishing success

By any measurable metric, Apple loved hovering success in 2012. A inventory value breaking $700 was simply the newest in a sequence of dizzying information the corporate set in just some brief years.

In January 2006, Apple surpassed the worth of Dell, the corporate whose founder as soon as stated he’d shut down Apple and refund its shareholders. A couple of years later, Apple overtook Microsoft as nicely — besting the tech large that dominated the Nineties. In August 2011, Apple briefly overtook ExxonMobil to grow to be the world’s most precious firm.

And it simply saved climbing from there…

Apple market cap retains climbing

On the finish of February 2012, Apple surpassed the $500 billion market cap, then smashed by $600 billion in April. By September 2012, Apple was valued at upward of $650 billion.

To place that in perspective, Apple was value greater than second-place ExxonMobil plus the whole internet value of Google on the time. Not unhealthy for an organization that had fallen to $12.88 a share on September 29, 2000.

Apple inventory breaks information

Apple hasn’t precisely renounced its profitable methods since then. It turned the primary publicly traded U.S. firm to go the $700 billion, $800 billion, $900 billion, $1 trillion, $1.5 trillion and $2 trillion valuations. In early 2022, it surged previous the $3 trillion line briefly earlier than dropping amid a wider market pull-back. And it did the identical factor in mid-2023. (Phew!)

At time of writing, AAPL is buying and selling at round $175 a share. Nonetheless, it’s not truthful to match this with Apple’s $700 milestone from 2012, as a result of a 7-to-1 inventory break up in 2014 and a subsequent 4-to-1 break up in 2020.