- Apple Inc shares soared to a record high on Friday as much as 7.1 percent after posting quarterly results on the blockbuster, helping the iPhone maker briefly surpass Saudi Aramco to become the world’s largest public company.
Apple Inc shares soared to a record high on Friday as much as 7.1 percent after posting quarterly results on the blockbuster, helping the iPhone maker briefly surpass Saudi Aramco to become the world’s largest public company.
The company’s stock soared to a record high in early trading at $412. Closing up at that point would give it $1,786 trillion in market capitalization.
Saudi Aramco, which has been the biggest public company since last year’s public launch, had a $1.76 trillion market capitalization as of the last closing.
Also on Thursday, as customers working and studying from home during the COVID-19 pandemic switched to their goods and services, the company’s shares soared up to 6 percent after Apple posted sales growth in every segment and every geography. Apple’s third-quarter fiscal sales and earnings amounted to $59.69 billion and $2.58 per share, compared to analyst estimates of $52.25 billion and $2.04 respectively.
That’s up from the company’s second fiscal quarter of 2020 when it announced a cash pile of $192.8 billion. However, it’s down from Apple’s third-quarter fiscal 2019 earnings, when Apple posted cash at $210.6 billion. Apple has invested in new offerings, including original TV shows and movies from Apple TV+. According to its earnings report, it has also spent 13.8 billion dollars on research and development over the past 9 months.
Apple has come to the top of Forbes’ annual list of the Most Valuable Companies in the World, which looked at the top 100 businesses from fiscal 2019. Google’s $207.5 billion (an increase of 24 percent from the same time last year) and Microsoft’s $163 billion (an increase of 30 percent) were the first and second runners-up, respectively.
