Apple Is Within Striking Distance Of $1 Trillion Value
NEW YORK (CNN Money) - Apple is within striking distance of a trillion dollar market value. The iPhone maker is currently worth about $935 billion, and the stock needs to go up more than 7 percent for it to top the mark.
So, if Apple wows investors when it reports earnings on Tuesday afternoon, there is a chance that it could become the first U.S. company to cross the trillion dollar mark. That's a one with 12 zeroes.
Some think that Apple needs a new product to keep its sales and profits booming, but their stock is up 12 percent this year thanks to solid sales of the iPhone 8 and iPhone X, particularly in China and Japan. Surging services revenue from the App Store has also helped.
Apple also has been using a more than $267 billion stockpile of cash to boost its dividend and stock buyback program as a reward for investors, which now includes Warren Buffett. Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway bought nearly 75 million shares of Apple in the first quarter, making it Berkshire's top stock holding.
Apple is not the only tech giant closing in on a trillion dollar mark though. Amazon is worth a little more than $870 billion, Google owner Alphabet has a market valuation of nearly $845 billion, and Microsoft's market cap is now just under $815 billion.
Wall Street has been speculating about which of these companies will hit the trillion dollar level first, and how long it might be before all four of them are worth at least that much.
Of course, there is no guarantee that any of them will reach the trillion dollar mark. Investors widely expected both Cisco and Microsoft to top a trillion dollar market cap in the late 1990s, before the tech bubble burst in March 2000.
Microsoft still has a realistic chance to get above a trillion dollars, but Cisco has a long way to go. Its market value is now about $200 billion.
But if Apple, Microsoft, Google or Amazon eventually top the trillion dollar mark, none of them would be the first publicly traded company in the world to do so. Oil giant PetroChina briefly surpassed a trillion dollar valuation in 2007, when its stock began trading in Shanghai. Shares quickly plunged, however. PetroChina, which is also listed on the New York Stock Exchange, is now worth about $220 billion.
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