AAPL closes at record high, now top-valued company
updated 08:30 pm EST, Mon January 30, 2012
Surpasses Exxon Mobile with $422B market cap
Apple's stocked closed at $453.01 on Monday, a new all-time high for the company still seeing the effects of its record-setting last quarter reverberate on Wall Street. The stock rose $5.73 to beat the previous all-time closing high of $447.28 set last Friday. At its current market value of $422 billion, Apple surpasses Exxon Mobil by nearly $13 billion as the most valuable publicly-traded company in the world, at least temporarily.
Better-than-expected sales in all three of Apple's major product categories -- iPhones, iPads and Macs -- has caused Apple's stock to jump from a Tuesday close of $420.50 to over $448 on opening Wednesday, with steady rises since then. The company broke records on shipments of all three categories and beat even optimistic expectations from Wall Street. When iPads are added in as computers, Apple leapt from the number three PC vendor to first place, surpassing in shipments even longtime market leader Hewlett-Packard.
Consensus estimates prior to the release of fiscal Q1 figures had pegged Apple as selling five million Macs (actual result 5.2 million), just under 30 million iPhone (37M actually sold) and 13.5 million iPads (15.4 million sold) during the holiday quarter. In current after-hours trading (at 8pm EST), the stock is approaching $454.
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Jul 2008
Tim Cook...
OK, so now can these magazines who "wonder" whether Cook will do a good job just SHUT UP? Jobs groomed Cook well, just like everything he was involved in. I couldn't believe all the nonsense we were reading last quarter "wondering" how Apple phone sales would do since there was no July release. Morons! These Fortune and Forbes writers STILL don't get Jobs, Apple, Cook, or much anything else. It makes me suspicious of EVERYTHING they write.