Apple Shares Surge 47% in Past Year, Pulling Away From Other Tech Giants, as Market Cap Hits $825 Billion

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 12, 8:45AM EST · Published Aug 26, 8:35AM EDT

Follow 24/7 Wall St. on Google

This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

Apple Shares Surge 47% in Past Year, Pulling Away From Other Tech Giants, as Market Cap Hits $825 Billion — © courtesy of Apple Inc.

Apple Inc.’s (NASDAQ: AAPL) market cap hit $825 billion last week, up 47% over the past year. The surge makes it nearly impossible that the market caps of other large techs will catch it, certainly not anytime in the foreseeable future. There had been speculation that Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL) or Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) might top Apple, but those forecasts have withered.

Apple’s performance is particularly impressive when measured against the other huge tech companies. Alphabet’s shares are up 18% in the past year, which has taken its market cap to $645 billion. Microsoft’s is higher by 25% to $561 billion. Facebook Inc.’s (NASDAQ: FB) is up 35% to $483 billion, while Amazon.com Inc.’s (NASDAQ: AMZN) is up 26% to $454 billion. That means Apple’s market cap is 82% higher than Amazon’s.

Apple’s shares could rally much more. Several analysts expect its market cap to reach $1 trillion by the end of 2017. If the sales of the new iPhone 8 reach unprecedented levels, compared to other iPhone launches, those forecasts could be true.

[nativounit]

RBC’s Amit Daryanani and Amitesh Bajad recently commented, according to Barron’s Tech Trader Daily:

From a near-term perspective, we would note historically AAPL stock has done rather well into product launches with median return 90 days prior to launch @15.6% (median outperformance vs. S&P500 at 10.9%). This, we think, sets up AAPL well heading into the product cycle this time around. Fundamentally, given a strong gross-margin performance and better trends out of mainland China in Sept-qtr should give investors comfort that AAPL remains on track to not just see strong revenue growth but also outsized EPS growth over the next 12 months. Net/Net: We think AAPL remains on track to become the first company to achieve and sustain >$1.0Trillion market cap and should sustain upside bias through and beyond iPhone launch.

None of the other tech companies with large market caps have this sort of signature product launch, which makes Apple’s ongoing dominance all the more likely.

[wallst_email_signup]

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.