Apple has long been in premier position in the race to become the first publicly traded US company valued at $1 trillion. For much of the summer, it was fighting off tough competition from Amazon; however, today, Apple finally passed the magic number to reach a truly historic milestone.
It was only on Tuesday that the Cupertino company reported expectation-smashing earnings for its third fiscal quarter, with revenue rising by 17% year-on-year to reach $53.3 billion. The earnings announcement sent the stock soaring by 5% in the following 24 hours, as AppleInsider reports.
On Wednesday, Apple also revealed that its share count had been tweaked to 4,829,926,000, requiring the stock price to reach $207.05 to lift the company into trillion-dollar territory. The stock price went on to do exactly that just before noon Eastern Time today.
Despite the impressive figure, Apple isn’t strictly the world’s first company to attain a $1 trillion market value. That accolade goes instead to Chinese oil giant PetroChina, which briefly hit the $1 trillion mark back in 2007.
Through PetroChina has not sustained its financial success in the years since, Apple is still not the world’s most valuable firm if the state-owned oil entity Saudi Aramco is also taken into account.
Saudi Aramco, the planet’s leading exporter of oil, is owned by the Saudi Arabian government. However, the firm is currently valued at $1.5 trillion, meaning that it would surpass Apple on this count if it went public.
Check out the new special edition of AppleMagazine for more information on Apple’s huge achievement! This edition is free for all users via the AppleMagazine app.
