The world’s most valuable company reached another milestone. On the first day of trading in 2022, Apple Inc became the first company to hit a $3 trillion stock market value. However the day ended just below the milestone. Less than three and half years ago Apple reached the $1 trillion milestone. On August 19th 2020 Apple market value reached $2 trillion. 16 months later, Apple continues to grow as they add another trillion. Investors are betting on further growth as the iPhone maker will keep launching best-selling products while it explores new markets. But how exactly did Apple reach this milestone?
The recent milestone means that Apple has now tripled its valuation in just under four years. Analysts believe that there is still plenty of room for Apple to grow. Within its fourth quarter earnings, Apple showed significant annual growth across all of its product range. The iPhone remains the best selling Apple product, driving in the biggest sales revenue. The product line experienced a big drop in Q4 2020 however the iPhone recovered with an eye popping 47% year-over-year increase in revenue bringing in $38.9 billion in comparison to $26.4 billion made in the year-ago quarter.
Apple’s services have also shown 25.6% growth year-over-year, this has led to $18 billion in revenue during the quarter. Services became its own category in 2015. Tim Cook has been vocal about the success of Apple TV+, which has critically acclaimed offerings such as Ted Lasso and The Morning Show. Cook also revealed that across all Apple Services (which includes Apple TV+, Apple Fitness+, Apple Music and Apple Arcade) there are now 745 million subscribers.
Apple Wearables is another product range that is seeing great success. Over the holiday season, Apple sold 27 million pairs of its latest AirPods model. The Apple Watch also continued to dominate the market. This has resulted in a 20% year-over-year growth on Apple wearables. This category is predicted to grow further in the first quarter of 2022.
Apple iPad range continued its growth from 2020 to 2021. Seeing in a 21.4% revenue increase over the year-ago quarter. Raking in $8.4 billion in revenue in the fourth quarter. However Apple does expect supply chain constraints due to the on-going pandemic to reduce revenues in the first quarter of this year.
Apart from having a very successful product range, Apple has seen investors turned to them as a safe haven during market uncertainty. On 30th November 2021, when the discovery of Omicron was made public, Apple stock closed up 3.1% while other tech companies saw stocks tumble. This is all due to Apple’s strong balance sheet, healthy cash flow most of which is being used to invest into new products and markets, stock buybacks and to return capital to shareholders through dividends.
Overall Apple stock rose 34% in 2021, it’s product range saw healthy sales across all categories and investors turned to Apple in times of uncertainty. All of these factors have contributed to achieving its latest milestone. Apple is now looking into the augmented reality and electric car markets. Analysts and investors predict further growth for the company in 2022.
