Apple becomes 1st US company to hit $2 trillion mark (Ld)

San Francisco, Aug 19 (IANS) Weathering the Covid-19 pandemic, tech giant Apple on Wednesday scripted history by becoming the first American firm to hit the $2 trillion mark by valuation.

Apple stock rose to cross the threshold — $467.77 per share — that helped it touch the $2-trillion mark. The stock was hovering near the threshold for most of the time and even touched $468.38 as the US market opened.

The news came as the S&P 500 closed at a new record high on Tuesday, fully wiping out its losses triggered by the coronavirus pandemic.

The Cupertino-based iPhone maker will split its stock at the end of the month. Apple’s board of directors has approved a four-for-one stock split, effective from August 31.

The iPhone maker passed the $1 trillion mark for the first time nearly two years ago.

Beating the pandemic blues, Apple posted $59.7 billion in revenue for its fiscal 2020 third quarter ended June 27, an increase of 11 per cent from the year-ago quarter, as iPhone sales beat the Wall Street estimates.

iPhone sales were $26.4 billion, iPad revenue was $6.6 billion while Mac revenue reached $7.1 billion.

Apple posted revenue of $6.5 billion in the Wearables, Home and Accessories segment while its Services vertical (App Store, Apple Music and iCloud etc) reached $13.2 billion in sales.

Apple earlier surpassed Saudi Aramco, the world’s most valuable publicly traded company, to become the world’s most valuable company with a market cap of $1.84 trillion.

Apple, however, is not the first company in the world to hit the $2 trillion benchmark.

Saudi Aramco briefly hit the $2 trillion mark in December 2019 but has since dropped below.

If Apple were a country, it would be classified as the ninth richest one with such market valuation.

–IANS

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