At present, Apple shares are currently trading for $175 meaning that the company currently has a market cap of around $900 billion, only $100 billion away from becoming the world’s first trillion dollar company.
To reach this valuation, Apple shares need to rise around the $195 mark and depending on the rate of its share buybacks an increasing number of Wall Street analysts expect it to happen.
For example, Brian White, a Drexel Hamilton analyst has a 12-month price target of $235 for the company’s stock. This is forecasting that Apple could be a 1.2 trillion dollar company within a year:
With a market cap of over $900 billion, we believe Apple is on its way to becoming a “trillion dollar baby” as reflected in our price target. We were the first on Wall Street to project that Apple would reach a $1 trillion market cap as reflected by a price target; our current price target of $235.00 equates to approximately a $1.2 trillion market cap.
Additionally, RBC Capital Markets analyst Amit Daryanan has said Apple has the potential to achieve a trillion dollar market cap, and even perhaps surpass the valuation, by the end of 2018. His current target price share is $190.
This would push Apple to become the world’s only trillion dollar company but this does not mean that it would be the first. In 1602, the Dutch East India Company was valued at over $7 trillion at one point when adjusted for inflation.
Analysts have been expecting Apple to reach one trillion since as early as 2012, and with the company’s recent achievements it’s no surprise that this year might be the year that they reach it.
