Apple Is About To Become the World's First $3 Trillion Company (cnn.com) 49
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: Apple is on the verge of yet another major milestone. The iPhone maker is close to topping a market value of more than $3 trillion -- the first publicly traded company ever to be worth that much. Shares of Apple were up about 1% in premarket trading Monday to around $181.75. The stock needs to hit $182.85 for Apple to surpass the $3 trillion mark. Apple's market value first crossed the $1 trillion threshold in August 2018 and passed $2 trillion in August 2020. [...] But before long, Apple may have some company in the $3 trillion club. Microsoft is now worth about $2.6 trillion and Google owner Alphabet's market value is right around $2 trillion. Still giant but further behind are Amazon, which has a market cap of $1.7 trillion, and Elon Musk's Tesla, worth $1 trillion.
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Imagine if Apple paid a living wage to all the children currently working for them practically as slaves.
Image if every company that off shores manufacturing to counties with lower environmental standards had to pay for that pollution.
It's not just lower wages that makes it hard for local businesses to compete with off shoring.
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So, if there are many tiers (EU > US > China > Bangladesh), you pay just the diff between civilised and 3rd-world standards.
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pump out twice the CO2 as Europeans and Chinese.
China outputs about twice the CO2 as the US, Europe is about on par with the US. I suspect you're confusing total CO2 output with per capita output. Per capita, the US is indeed worse than Europe and China, but not as bad as Australia, Mongolia, or many of the Middle Eastern countries.
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If they were going to do that then why bother sending those jobs offshore to begin with? From their perspective it's either nearly free child labor or take their iBall and go home isn't it? Not saying it's write. Clearly it's wrong as hell but Apple is never going to pay for anything it can get out of paying for. That's how you become a $3 trillion dollar company in the first place.
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And clearly I wasn't "right" either.
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If they were going to do that then why bother sending those jobs offshore to begin with?
Well that's the question, isn't it? Apple used to at least assemble shit here. They paid decently, too. Their cash on hand and their market value collectively prove that they could be assembling this stuff here, but they don't want to. That makes them more evil than the corporations which couldn't exist without foreign labor, in my book, though most of them are pretty evil too.
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At least the coins would have rounded corners!
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There's a difference between Apple's actual value, in terms of cash reserves and realisable cash value, and the fantasy figure with lots of zeroes that stock market gamblers tell each other it's worth. Try taking that $3T fantasy figure and turning it into actual dollars and you'll see what the company is really worth.
If you want to buy the whole of Apple. Expect to have to pay even more than just that 3 Trillion dollars.
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Massive liability?
Re:BlackRock ? (Score:4, Informative)
I think in financial circles that is called leverage.
So... (Score:4, Informative)
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Apple's stock is as overpriced as their products?
Well, the whole stock exchange is over-priced. Apple is about average at a price/earnings ratio of 27.
It is the third-most profitable public company in the world, and if you think they will stay that way, it is an OK price.
The problem is that when you are that successful, there is a lot more room to go down than up. Regression to the mean.
It is no longer a little startup with unlimited potential for growth.
Sad times. (Score:2, Insightful)
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And the wealth gap widens (Score:1, Troll)
... congrats Apple, who has spent several billions on a now-empty campus, instead of investing in people.
Market Cap alone is misleading (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple's Market Capitilization is approaching $3 Trillion, but that only represents what investors are willing to pay for Apple shares. It is just what the market *thinks* Apple is worth. Does this meain that Apple have $3 Trillion in the bank? No, not at all. To see the book value of the company you need to look at Total Equity (which is the Assets minus Liabilities). As of last quarter, Apple's total equity is $63.09 Billion.... That is a far cry from even $1 Trillion.
By comparision, Alphabet's Total Equity was $244.6 Billion while their Market Cap was $1,941.5 Billion, and Microsoft's Total Equity was $151.98 Billion while their Market Cap is $2548.2 Billion.
IMO, the huge disparity between Apple's Market Cap and Total Equity, especially when compared with other similarly placed companies, means Apple's stock is overvalued.
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And one of these days that value is going to go *poof*
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Not when congress keeps dumping money on the economy to fuel the fire. Just wait until the rewind button is pressed.
Re:Market Cap alone is misleading (Score:4, Insightful)
Right now a share goes for $175 (current quote). Now dividends are usually around $.2 or $.8 a quarter, sometimes N/A, depending on what Apple is feeling like doing atm. Not very valuable, it'd take decades and decades to start earning more money than you'd pay for a share. However, Apple has been into buying back shares lately. And again, if you expect it to to up, you can buy now, wait a few years, and potentially get back more money at a later share buyback.
This is the idea behind the fundamental "underlying value" of a stock, as far as that idea gets you anyway. Now, Market Cap is different. Market cap represents the lowest amount of money someone with apple stock will sell you that stock for, that is then multiplied by the total amount of shares the company has. This however undercounts the idea of what people, overall, think the stock is worth, as it only counts the people that value the stock the least. So while "Apple" might be "worth" more as an ideal stock, the actual stock is currently worth $175, because that's what people can get it for,
Now, do you see "Total Equity" anywhere? No, liabilities have shit all to directly do with any of this, the stock is worth what the purchaser will pay for it. That is the first, and only, golden rule of economics, that there is no true fundamental value and all is worth exactly what the purchaser will pay for it. And right now that's $175 for a share of stock regardless of all else. What the "company" itself is worth, even in "market value" is ephemeral at best. Liabilities and all else included. IE Market Cap is bullshit.
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Might be true in this frenzied economy. Not so much when it goes to shit.
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Let's use our terms rather than financial lingo. The stock price is a differential -- that is, dollar-per-share ratio you would get for selling an infinitely small amount of stock. You can never actually sell for that much -- selling even a single share depresses the stock price, buying even one increases it. In a zero-sum game that'd be fair but you have High Frequency Fraud crooks siphoning value off honest traders.
If you possess X shares, the actual amount of money you can get for selling them at once
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What the market "should" (heavy quotes) be "betting" on is the total returns, to them, the market.
Except the market has a multitude of different reasons for investing in Apple. People like yourself may be looking at total returns. Other people may simply like Apple as a company and want a share of it.
The problem is with the wider public and media touting Apple's Market Cap as the measure of the company. Novice investors may see it as a 'safe bet', while other may invest simply through FOMO. This only serves to further inflate the Market Cap.
Worse, there are those who see the Market Cap in the media and
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Oh my god. You are so, incredibly wrong. Total equity and market cap are not at all related. I could have total equity of zero and be worth a trillion. Market cap is related to projected profit, not their bank balance. Please educate yourself before you go around repeating this.
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Oh my god. You are so, incredibly wrong. Total equity and market cap are not at all related.
https://www.investopedia.com/t... [investopedia.com]:
Market capitalization refers to the total dollar market value of a company's outstanding shares of stock. Commonly referred to as "market cap," it is calculated by multiplying the total number of a company's outstanding shares by the current market price of one share.
Seems very closely related to equity to me.
There used to be a rule of thumb that market cap "should be" 20 x annual profit, I think, and if the cap is over that you should sell, and under it you should buy. But there are plenty of exceptions (Uber, obviously is one since it's never made a profit) and it was only really a rough guide for investing anyway.
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Market cap is related to projected profit, not their bank balance.
OMG, you are so incredibly wrong. Please educate yourself before you go around repeating this. Market Cap is the total dollar market value of oustanding shares in a company (the number of outstanding shares * current market share price). It is simply the value of the company to the market.
While some shareholders base their investments on projected profit, many others do not (especially long term investors). While projected profit announcements can cause share price fluctuations, Market Cap itself is not dir
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I own shares in some companies, but I don't have a strong investment background, so please excuse what may seem like an ignorant question.
Why do you think Total Equity is a good indicator of a company's worth? I ask because companies might own lots of assets in the form of factories and trucks and so on. That stuff depreciates over time, and manufacturing businesses tend to produce low profit margins (e.g., many car companies). In contrast, a "knowledge" company might create its knowledge once and then pay
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Total Equity is one (but not the only) means of looking into the financial health of a company. It represents the value returned to shareholders if a company were to suddenly cease operations and be liquidated.
A very low or negative Total Equity can be seen as a sign of poor financial health or financial distress. It can be seen as a company burning through its retained earnings or its capital.
A very high Total Equity, depending on the type of company, may indicate that the company is not being managed effe
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Inflation will do that... (Score:2)
$3 trillion company? Inflation will do that...
Cancer (Score:2)
I know everything! (Score:2)
Apple's worth a hundred billion.
"Don't be stupid!"
Apple's worth a trillion.
"Don't be stupid!"
Apple's worth two trillion!
"Don't be stupid!"
I think I know what my self-advisor is thinking now! At some point, he will be right.
Presumably just after I die of a heart attack just before retirement at 67.