Apple is poised to become the first company to cross the $4 trillion threshold — powered by investors cheering the tech giant’s long-awaited AI enhancements to rejuvenate sluggish iPhone sales.
The company, led by Tim Cook, has pulled ahead of Nvidia and Microsoft in the race to the monumental milestone, thanks to an about 16% jump in shares since early November that has added about $500 billion to its market capitalization.
On Monday, Apple closed at around $255 a share, putting its market capitalization at $3.86 trillion. The stock has soared nearly 40% since Jan. 1.
The latest rally in Apple shares reflects “investor enthusiasm for artificial intelligence and an expectation that it will result in a supercycle of iPhone upgrades,” said Tom Forte, an analyst at Maxim Group, who has a “hold” rating.
Nvidia, whose share price has surged by a whopping 184% since the start of the calendar year, was worth $3.35 trillion as of early Monday morning.
But the stock has cooled in recent weeks as investors have grown nervous about the company’s switch to a new AI chip, Blackwell, which has been touted as the firm’s most powerful graphics processing unit (GPU).
Microsoft, one of the biggest backers of ChatGPT maker OpenAI, is third with a market cap of $3.22 trillion.
Earlier this month, Apple launched iOS 18.2, a significant software update for its suite of iPhones that includes improvements and features that enhance its Apple Intelligence functions, including Visual Intelligence, which summarizes and translates text.
Another AI feature, Image Playground, generates original images from descriptions.
The latest AI enhancements are available exclusively to iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 users.
The Cupertino, Calif.-based company is expected to generate considerably strong sales of its iPhone during the Christmas shopping season.
“We believe Apple is set to have a strong holiday season ahead as iPhone 16 upgrades across its installed base are trending well into Christmas based on our recent Asia supply chain checks,” Daniel Ives, senior analyst at Wedbush, wrote in his recent report over the weekend.
Ives forecast that Apple’s stock will eclipse the $300 per share plateau within the next 12 months and that the company’s market capitalization will blow past $4 trillion “by early 2025.”
“We believe the success of iPhone 16 with a strong holiday season ahead over the next week will be the launchpad for a renaissance of growth in Cupertino over the next 12 to 18 months that kicks off in this December quarter,” he wrote.
Apple snapped out of a recent iPhone sales slump during its summer quarter, an early sign that its recent efforts to revive demand for its marquee product with an infusion of artificial intelligence are paying off.
Sales of the iPhone totaled $46.22 billion for the July-September period, a 6% increase from the same time last year, according to Apple’s fiscal fourth-quarter report released in late October.
That improvement reversed two consecutive year-over-year declines in the iPhone’s quarterly sales.
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