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Apple Inc
Apple: trillion dollar baby Premium
YESTERDAY
Could Apple become the first US company with a 1tn dollars market value? Results this week inspired claims it might, particularly if the new iPhone sells well. Given the puffed-up valuations of other tech companies, it is not the only contender; RBC has predicted Amazon could hit 1tn dollars in the next few years. Measured in real terms, Apple, currently worth 803bn dollars has stiffer competition from ghosts of the past and from one future listing.
Microsoft reached 619bn dollars in 1999, equal to 901bn dollars in today’s dollars.At some point in the next decade, inflation alone would take the value of bubble-era Microsoft to 1tn dollars. (Today’s Microsoft, meanwhile, is only 560bn dollars.)
The future challenger is Saudi Aramco, whose initial public offering is due next year. There is scepticism that the equity value would be as high as the targeted 2tn dollars. But if the IPO proceeds, the kingdom’s oil company should certainly snatch the 1tn dollars crown.
Neither Apple nor Saudi Aramco would quite be the first internationally. PetroChina reached 1tn dollars in nominal terms on the first day of trading after its 2007 listing — though never again.
Some cite the first ever public companies as contenders, claiming they would be worth trillions of dollars today. But the maths suggest otherwise. The South Sea Company, after which our best-known asset bubble is named, reached 164m pounds in 1720. At twice the value of the land in the UK at the time, that was a ludicrous level, but the world was not as wealthy 300 years ago: the inflation-adjusted peak is less than 50bn dollars today. Similarly, the 32m guilders reached by the Dutch East India Company in 1650 looks nowhere close.
Other measures matter, too. Apple has been around 41 years and its best-selling product is a decade old; the Dutch East India Company endured for two centuries. And a frequent flaw of market worth applies: Apple’s is distorted by a net cash balance of more than 150bn dollars. That means an enterprise value of 1tn dollars is still a very long way off.
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