Apple Breaks Record Becoming the World’s Most Valuable Publicly Traded Company

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Apple, the world’s largest publicly traded company, has now become the most valuable, with a market capitalization of $776.7 billion at close on Friday — and the company could be on track to become the world’s first trillion dollar corporation.

Shares opened at $149.06 a piece on Monday, with 5.2 billion outstanding shares. That market cap sets a new record — overwriting Apple’s record high of $774.7 billion set in February 2015, the Wall Street Journal reported. While Apple stock has been setting records for months now (17 times since February, to be specific), Monday marks the first time in which Apple shares opened at a market-cap high — owing primarily to the fact that Apple has been buying back millions of its shares in recent years, Business Insider reported.

Last week, Apple reported earnings that fell slightly below Wall Street expectations and forecasts, but the resulting slide in share prices was brief and quickly overcome. On Monday, a particularly bullish analyst gave Apple a bump on its price target — $202 per share within a year. The analyst, Brian White of Drexel Hamilton, wrote in a client note on Monday that Apple’s stocks are the most “underappreciated” in the world and carry an “attractive upside” for investors, according to CNBC. That $202 price target would see Apple becoming the world’s first trillion dollar company, with a market cap of around $1.05 trillion.

Many Apple investors remain upbeat about the company’s future, specifically due to this year’s radically redesigned flagship iPhone — known alternatively as the iPhone 8 or iPhone Edition. This year’s iPhone is expected to produce an upgrade “super-cycle” and a resulting sales boom. The iPhone 8 is largely expected to feature a nearly edge-to-edge OLED display with minimal bezels, a new “function area” in lieu of a home button, and other innovative features.

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