The market capitalization of Apple, the largest private group in the world, rose Friday for the first time closing above the symbolic threshold of 3,000 billion dollars.
• Read also: United States: inflation and spending are slowing, a good sign for the markets
Taking advantage of the enthusiasm of the Nasdaq after good news on the US inflation front, the title had to exceed 190 dollars to reach this incredible valuation.
The AAPL action, its stock code, ended on a jump of 2.31% to 193.97 dollars, representing a capitalization of 3,051 billion dollars, an amount, on paper, greater than the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the France.
A strong rating from Citigroup bank helped boost the stock on Friday, Briefing.com’s Patrick O’Hare said. Since the beginning of the year, the title of Apple has climbed more than 50%.
The apple group had already briefly exceeded this threshold of 3,000 billion in January 2022 before giving ground, having bought back and canceled billions of dollars of shares which had lowered its market capitalization.
The group from Cupertino (California) had also faced supply difficulties linked to the policy of health restrictions in China, where the largest production plant of the brand’s famous telephones is located.
Apple had even had to temporarily cede its first rank among market capitalizations to Saudi Aramco, the Saudi national hydrocarbon company.
In August 2018, 38 years after its IPO, the group had passed the milestone of 1,000 billion dollars in capitalization, an amount tripled in less than five years, despite the Covid-19 crisis which caused the financial markets to fall. .
For 2023, “Apple’s outlook remains strong given its balance sheet and revenue outlook,” said Edward Moya, analyst for Oanda.
In the first quarter, Apple posted a turnover of 95 billion dollars, of which more than 51 billion came from sales of its flagship product, the iPhone, launched in 2007. The group generated profits of 24 billion dollars.
Its sales of Macs had, however, declined, as for the entire microcomputer sector, to 7.2 billion dollars against 10.4 billion a year earlier.