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Apple surpasses Saudi Aramco to become the most valuable company
- baron816 6y agoApple should be investigated for violating the law of large numbers.
- crazygringo 6y agoWow, it's up over 10% since yesterday. At 1.84T, it's not that far away from 2T. Though Saudi Aramco was the first company ever to hit 2T (back in December), so Apple wouldn't be the first, if it makes it.
- coralreef 6y agoSomething like 30-40 years for the first trillion, and maybe only a few more years for the next trillion.
- JoshTko 6y agoI have the iPhone XR for almost 2 years and the uncased exposed metal rim is virtually flawless. It's details like this that make me love the iPhone and is part of why I'm a longtime investor.
- PopeDotNinja 6y agoI resisted getting an iPhone for a long time. But I bought my first one last month. I have to say I like it a lot. Very polished.
- dwaltrip 6y agoThe 2020 iPhone SE is my first iPhone. I bought it when it first came out, and I’m very happy with it so far. Especially since I have a MacBook Pro laptop. Being able to text from my laptop is such a huge improvement.
- asadlionpk 6y agoThe cross-device copy paste thing is also very useful (between iPhone and Mac).
- reidjs 6y agoAgreed! As someone who has to use a bunch of different computers/devices throughout the day I have been looking for a way to do this with computers I'm not logged into. Right now I use pastebin, but I'm thinking of building a pastebin web app that will take the text, convert it to a QR code and then you scan the code to get the text into your phone's clipboard.
- nostromo 6y agoI love Apple but I’m frustrated for a few reasons. 1. I’m sick of charging everything constantly. I feel like my phone, AirPods, laptop and watch batteries are always needing too much attention. I would prefer larger devices with bigger batteries. 2. The screens for these devices are too fragile. The devices are beautiful, but require ugly cases or regular, expensive repairs. 3. There are too many missing devices in Apple’s ecosystem. A pro computer under $3k. A TV. A smart speaker that isn’t crippled. Smart home devices that don’t suck. Apple should stop trying to compete (poorly) with Netflix and should focus on their ecosystem of devices and services.
- social_quotient 6y agoAgreed, and that’s the issue I have with the cash pile. They should be trying and failing quickly at a number of things, big things, including the small items you raised. Take a guy like Elon, give him a 500bn in cash and see what happens. The world would change in a big way. Capital should be either sunk hugely into the R&D to change the world or should be returned to shareholders to better allocate it. That said, These guys aren’t playing the game 1 qtr at a time. Not even a year at a time. They play the 100+ year game and likely they don’t see this money as “big”.
- mmm_grayons 6y agoI'd love to see Apple do some serious work on the battery side. If anyone's equipped to do it, it is (though I'm less certain of this after the "sapphire" debacle). You wouldn't believe how hard it is to actually get new battery tech to market: I've probably seen a dozen start-ups pitch technologies that could substantially improve capacity, longevity, safety, size, weight, manufacturing cost, or a combination of the above. None have yet succeeded at scale.
- baddox 6y ago> They should be trying and failing quickly at a number of things, big things, including the small items you raised. That seems very antithetical to Apple's fundamental approach to product design. Sure, they have some first-generation stinkers, but I think it's fair to say Apple tends to err on the side of waiting until they can release something to their standards.
- zhoujianfu 6y agoI remember when I sold all my Apple stock back at $250 (pre-previous-split) thinking “at this point they’d have to become the most valuable company on EARTH to go up much more!”
- caiobegotti 6y agoWhat I don't understand is not the value of Apple as a company, because I clearly see the value of their products directly as a customer for more than a decade, but WHY IN HELL they have so much actual cash piling up. I won't say they should split it with investors and blablabla but, really, why a company like that would have a cash stockpile so gigantic (around 200 billion USD) for so long without a long-term plan shared with stakeholders? It seems nearly impossible for them to use all that money with whatever comes up for half a century at least.
- draw_down 6y agoThey do stock buybacks, which return cash to investors in the form of higher share price.
- kgwgk 6y agoBuybacks return cash to investors mostly in the form of “investors selling their shares back to the company get dollars in exchange.”
- greedo 6y agoI thought that buybacks reduced the amount of shares in total, increasing the value of the remaining shares?
- kgwgk 6y agoThe value of the shares is not increased when the buyback is made. The total value of the shares goes down, as they would have if a dividend was paid. The total value of the shares will go up in the future, as it would if a dividend was paid. The value per share will grow more than in the dividends case, as there will be less shares, but of course an investor who kept all their shares won’t have received any cash (unlike in the dividends case).
- draw_down 6y ago........ after which there are fewer shares outstanding (= reduced supply) so the price goes up. Hooray. You guys are funny.
- paulpauper 6y agoAmazon, Google will soon follow. I see amazon being worth $10-30 trillion eventually,,, bigger than apple.
- hmate9 6y ago$10-30 trillion is probably not a valuation that should be or will be allowed by regulators. The business would have to be split up.
- Cookingboy 6y agoAt the point of $10-30T market cap you probably own, even if not literally, but figuratively, whatever regulators there are.
- Twixes 6y agoBarring massive inflation in a short period
- nwellnhof 6y agoJust for reference, $35T is the total market cap of the US stock market.
- throwaway6000 6y agoROFL paulpauper
- jonluca 6y agoWait, apple makes up 5% of the entire US stock market? That feels... weird.
- actuator 6y agoAmong all the big tech, I think Apple is probably the most resilient. The sort of brand loyalty and image they have, any company would love to have it. It makes even the less polished products from their stable escape the sort of ire and financial impact that most other companies face. Take the example of maps, it was clearly a way inferior product to the best in market Google Maps, still a lot of users(my physical and social media circle at least) persisted with it. This gives them immense power to grow out products that can become really strong platforms in the future. Also, their ecosystem lock in is really strong. I think in due time it is really going to stifle competition. For example, it would be really interesting to see how the headphone industry adapts to this where incumbent brands like Bose, Sennheiser with their own brand power have seen their market share erode very fast. Apple has already sold 100+ million airpods.
- JumpCrisscross 6y agoMore than any of the others, Apple at least tries to have values. Not everyone agrees with them. But I challenge anyone to identify a positive value mainstream America would associate with Microsoft, Google or Facebook.
- actuator 6y agoHave a look at some of these[1]. Some of them are vacuous, but I would definitely not call a lot of them positive values mainstream America would associate with. At the end of the day they are a corporation whose job is to make profit not possibly die by being idealistic. I would even argue that the privacy thing, while commendable is a selling point more than an ideal they hold dear. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Apple_Inc https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Apple_Inc.
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago> a selling point more than an ideal they hold dear I agree. Note that I didn’t mention privacy. We both understood that implicitly. That’s partly marketing. But it’s underwritten by some truth, if not a comprehensive truth. Values, in my view, are meaningful if strived for. They don’t need to be perfectly attained to be valid. Apple has made tradeoffs and incurred costs to strive towards protecting privacy, and it’s been consistent in that aim over its history. Even to this imperfect standard, I struggle to come up with analogs for the others.
- lumost 6y agoIs this an artifact of under-priced dollar debasement? The Fed is now actively purchasing bonds for FANG companies, these companies could in principal simply buy back their own stock with this money at 0% interest. This sounds an awful lot like the the situation where the imperial palace was worth more than California. https://amaral.northwestern.edu/blog/how-much-was-japanese-imperial-palace-worth https://amaral.northwestern.edu/blog/how-much-was-japanese-i...
- wrshpFAANG 6y agoJust goes to show capitalism is all about screwing your suppliers (developers), your customers, and using the government to enforce intellectual property. Although I'd contend that the later is not capitalism.
- jSully24 6y agoI’ll be curious how the growth exceeding expectations impacts Q4. Today I looked at ordering an iPad Pro, both the 1 TB and the 512 Gig and could not get either one until early September. While I’m celebrating the great quarter, how much will blowing out Q3 impact Q4 by way of not having the equipment people want? They also announced a several week delay and in delivery of the next gen iPhone. Might be negligible?
- xoxoy 6y agoI was scratching my head as to why Mac and iPad sales would’ve shot up 30% YoY. Then saw that two weeks before end of quarter they started a “back to school” promotion (in June?) that throws in a free pair of AirPods with a Mac or iPad purchase. Details here: https://www.apple.com/promo/pdf/EN_US_BTS_FY20_TandCs.pdf https://www.apple.com/promo/pdf/EN_US_BTS_FY20_TandCs.pdf With a $479 iPad Air that’s 33% of the price of your purchase. New Apple products can easily be sold on Amazon or Ebay for close to face value, so this is a extremely easy and generous retail arbitrage opportunity. My point is I didn’t see any language around this promotion in their earnings report but suspect because it is so generous that both legitimate customers and resellers are taking advantage of this deal, thus disproportionately lifting sales for Macs and iPads vs other categories like iPhones which was essentially flat YoY. Their surprise beat was then in part influenced by this big promotion and not necessarily totally organic demand... Edit: They do something like this every year but this one started in Q2 unlike last year in Q3 and includes much cheaper iPads, and is for Airpods for the first time (a much more desirable freebie over Beats)
- kss238 6y agoThis promotion happens every year before schools starts. I received a free pair of beats headphones with my iPad purchase in 2018.
- xoxoy 6y agoI checked 2019. That promotion started mid July (so after Q2 ended), and was for Beats only with a mac or iMac which start at > $1000. my point is this started before Q2 ended and includes much cheaper iPads. Again, this gift is 33% of the cost of entry level iPad Air. Also Airpods are much more broadly desirable than over the head Beats. 2019 promotion: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/07/macbook-air-and-macbook-pro-updated-for-back-to-school-season/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/07/macbook-air-and-macbo...
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 6y agoBut AirPods have to be close to free for Apple to manufacture. Functionally equivalent clones retail for under $10 on AliExpress.
- mensetmanusman 6y agoTechnology more valuable than sand mud?
- person_of_color 6y agoAnd all without constant long term SDC/Quantum/Space? hype.
- mensetmanusman 6y agoUse the cash to make global iphone only internet after buying spacex
- Traster 6y agoJust addressing the title a bit - Saudi Aramco isn't as valuable as is claimed. Back when the crown prince wanted to float it he wanted to get it on a real stock exchange and give up a real portion of it. However, this failed because they couldn't get the valuation they wanted and wouldn't give the transparency needed. As a result, it floated on the Saudi's own stock exchange, floated only 1.5%, and according to some reports signficant pressure was put on prominent people to buy shares. It was all very much a matter of marking your own homework. Aramco would absolutely not be trading at that level on the Nasdaq.