After Apple surpassed their previous $644 per share milestone late last week, the company has kept the ball rolling forward. An extremely strong performance today has allowed Apple to pass up Microsoft as the most valuable publicly-traded stock ever. This is a milestone Microsoft has held since 1999, or close to 13 years.
With current share rates hovering at $663, Apple was able to beat out Microsoft. Currently Apple has 937.41 million outstanding shares on the market; this brings the market cap to an all-time high of 621.32 billion.
MacRumors points to Microsoft’s share peak:
“Microsoft’s market capitalization peaked on December 30, 1999, reaching an intraday high of $119.94 per share. With Microsoft having documented 5,160,024,593 outstanding shares as of October 31, 1999 in its quarterly earnings report, the company would have had a market capitalization of $618.89 billion on December 30.”
They also point out, due to inflation, Microsoft would be worth more today:
In inflation-adjusted terms, Microsoft’s $618.89 market capitalization in December 1999 would be equivalent to roughly $842.5 billion in today’s dollars.
The current question is, how much will AAPL continue to rise? Apple’s market capitalization peaked back during April primarily due to the iPad launch. The current rise in value may be a result of the highly rumored “iPhone 5” release. If rumors are correct, September 12th may be the announcement date.
Jefferies analyst Peter Misek believes AAPL will be worth $900 before 2012’s end. He expects the iPhone 5 to fuel the market value of AAPL stocks.
If you had to predict what AAPL would be worth at the start of 2013, what would you guess?
