Apple is expected to hit a milestone never before achieved by any other company in history - hit a market valuation of more than $3 trillion. As the Christmas and New Year holidays draw near, Apple could very well reach that goal.
The most famous of all tech companies have a decent chance of surpassing $3 trillion in market valuation within the next few days. Apple's stock reached about $2.944 trillion on Friday, which means that it only lacks about $56 billion to get the company into the $3 trillion club.
Daniel Ives, an analyst at Wedbush, said Sunday that Apple is inching closer to the milestone after having a bad first half.
"Hitting $3 trillion is another watershed moment for Apple as the company continues to prove the doubters wrong with the renaissance of growth story playing out in Cupertino," Ives said.
In 2018, Apple became the first company to reach a market capitalization of $1 trillion, 42 years after Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak launched the company in a garage in Cupertino, California. It took Apple until 2020 to attain a market capitalization of $2 trillion. Microsoft is now the only other tech company worth more than $2 trillion, with a market valuation of $2.57 trillion as of last week's market close.
While Apple's iPhone sales remain the company's most important source of revenue, analysts believe Apple's services sector would be the one that would push the company's valuation to where it needs to be. Apple's iPhone sales accounted for about $39 billion of the company's $83.4 billion in fiscal fourth-quarter revenues.
Analysts estimate that Apple could sell more than 40 million iPhones during the Christmas season, with China alone expected to see 15 million upgrades to the iPhone 13 during the quarter ending in December.
In Apple's most recent quarter, services, which include things like App Store sales, subscriptions, Apple TV+, and iCloud storage plans, raked in $18.3 billion in income. Apple's services division is estimated to be valued at $1.5 trillion.
Analysts believe that any challenges with component supplies that may obstruct Apple's journey to a market valuation of $3 trillion or more will be minor stumbling blocks for the business to overcome.
According to the Yahoo database, Apple has 16.41 billion shares outstanding. The stock needs to reach $182.8 to reach the magic number of $3 trillion, which is just $3.35 more than Friday's close. It looks to be a highly attainable goal for the stock, which gained $17.61 in the week ending December 10.
