In what has now started to become a routine occurrence, AAPL on Friday ended the week with a
new all-time record high for its stock, as well as its market capitalization. The stock closed on Friday at a price of $129.49 per share, though it is down a nickel in after-hours trading at the time of this article. The market cap for the company now stands at $754.28 billion after the stock rose 0.81 percent on the day, compared to $710 billion
just 10 days ago.
The stock has been on an upward tear since the company announced
record-shattering sales of its iPhone 6 line over the holiday quarter, along with strong upward trends in Mac sales, average iPhone selling price, iTunes-related software and services, sales in emerging markets, and gross margin in all of its products. The stock is up 17.32 percent for the year so far, and up 71.83 percent from a year ago today.
AAPL over the last six months
The only dark cloud on Apple's horizon at the moment is its
gently-declining sales of iPad, which racked up its first year-over-year drop in sales in the holiday quarter. Cook has promised additional efforts (such as the collaboration with IBM) that should help shore up the decline, and the iPad is still widely acknowledged as the top-selling model of tablet by a wide margin, as well as being the most profitable of such devices.
After a prolonged period of uncertainty, Wall Street appears to have decided finally that Cook (and by extension, Steve Jobs, who appointed Cook to the CEO position) knows what he is doing in leading the company, and that Apple's record of innovation has not suffered under his management, given the Apple Pay initiative and the forthcoming Apple Watch, among other innovations and inventions.
The company is now three-fourths of the way towards a possible future market cap of one trillion dollars, and has a current market cap approximately double the value of the second-most valuable US traded company, Exxon Mobil. Apple has alway recently won a spate of awards for customer satisfaction,
brand loyalty, customer service, and its management.
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