A Lookback at Apple’s (AAPL) Trillion-Dollar Milestones

Investopedia.com By LUCAS DOWNEY Updated Aug 13, 2021
To parents and kids, August is all about summertime fun and no school. But for Apple Inc. (AAPL), it’s the month of massive valuation milestones. Today, I’ll take you down memory lane of the tech giant’s multiple trillion-dollar achievements … then we’ll study how it relates to the stock.
Alright, let’s get to it. Just three short years ago—on Aug. 2, 2018—Apple made history, becoming the first U.S. company to reach a trillion-dollar valuation. Talk about a headline, I’m sure it likely surprised many investors.
Let’s be honest: it’s rare to be that big. But in Apple’s case, it’s not unreasonable. That’s because the company makes lots of money, selling iPhones, iPads, iPods, music … you name it. Rewinding a bit, in Apple’s fiscal 2018, the company generated an eye-popping $265 billion in sales and had net income of $59.5 billion. With numbers like that, to me it warranted the trillion.
But had investors decided to sell the stock back then because of the lofty market cap, they’d be sad. That’s because they would have left a lot of money on the table. Why? Because just two years after reaching the insane $1 trillion milestone, Apple made history again, crossing the $2 trillion valuation. That happened on Aug. 19, 2020.
Great companies tend to be great—what can I say? But there’s clearly something about these milestones and August. I say that because here we are in August 2021, and Apple is roughly a $2.5 trillion sized company. Needless to say, betting against the stock hasn’t been a good idea over the long term.