At the time, Exxon was roughly $75 billion ahead of Apple. And in the following months, while Apple’s stock began to stagnate a bit, Exxon’s kept rising, pushing their value way past $400 billion. But in recent months, Exxon’s stock has also begun to stagnate. Meanwhile, in the past few weeks, Apple’s stock is like a rocket once again. Today, the stock closed a new all-time high, just under $375 a share, as 9to5 Mac points out. And it’s trading even higher in the after-hours market, as anticipation builds for Apple’s latest quarterly earnings tomorrow.
Apple’s market cap is now just under $350 billion. Meanwhile, Exxon’s cap is just under $410 billion. With momentum once again, Apple is gaining ground. And if, as expected, Apple’s beats the Street again tomorrow, the stock should go even higher — after stellar earnings last week, Google’s stock added about $20 billion in value. This all points to Apple having a very real shot at becoming the most valuable public company in the world in the fall.
Obviously, there are a lot of variables at play here. For one thing, who knows what will happen in the oil industry. The summer driving season will be winding down, but any number of things can cause gas prices to still fluctuate either way, and that will obviously have an impact on Exxon’s stock price. But let’s assume for the sake of this argument that Exxon’s stock remains roughly flat, as it has been the past several months. And their market cap remains around $400 billion.
If Apple does indeed announce good numbers tomorrow, their market cap will almost for sure go shooting right past $350 billion. (Though, any small miss or weak guidance could easily send the numbers the other way as well.) Regardless, tomorrow isn’t actually that important. More important is the coming weeks and months.
First and foremost, Apple will release their next operating system, OS X Lion, shortly. Promised before the end of July, rumors have it appearing this week. Alongside that, rumors also have new MacBook Airs appearing. Considering that the majority of Macs that Apple now sells are notebooks, this should mean big business for them in the coming quarter.
More importantly, Apple is also widely believed to be preparing a new iPhone, for release this fall alongside iOS 5. There’s still some arguments as to whether this will be an “iPhone 4S” or an “iPhone 5″, but regardless, it’s going to sell a massive amount of units. It will be the first time that Apple releases a new device on both AT&T’s and Verizon’s networks at the same time. And there are whispers that at least one of the other major U.S. carriers — Sprint or T-Mobile — could be added as well (assuming, of course, that AT&T and T-Mobile don’t merge before then). Read More
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