On Friday, Eastern Time, after the opening of the U.S. stock market, Apple’s stock price fell 3.6%, and Microsoft rose 1% at one time. This means that Apple’s market value was surpassed by the latter and lost the crown of the world’s most valuable listed company.Apple’s quarterly report released on Thursday was significantly lower than expected. According to Apple CEO Tim Cook, Apple’s fourth-quarter sales shrank by $6 billion due to the global supply chain crisis.
Although analysts believe that Apple has dealt with supply chain issues very well, Cook warned that with the arrival of the US holiday shopping season, the negative impact of the supply chain crisis on Apple will be more serious.
Hargreaves Lansdown stock analyst Sophie Lund-Yates said that compared with its peers in the FAANG, Apple is more vulnerable to supply chain bottlenecks, and several other technology giants pay less attention to hardware.
Apple has repurchased 421.7 billion US dollars of stock in the past few years, and announced a large-scale share repurchase of 90 billion US dollars in April this year, which also caused the company’s outstanding shares to shrink continuously. At the end of the fourth fiscal quarter, it was 16.4 billion shares.
The new crown epidemic has fueled market demand for cloud services. Since the beginning of this yearMicrosoftThe stock price has soared by more than 45%. In contrast, Apple’s stock price has risen by 15%.
Rely oniPhoneTurned out, Apple’s market value surpassed Microsoft in 2010, becoming the world’s leading technology giant. In recent years, Apple and Microsoft have taken turns to become the most valuable companies on Wall Street. Since mid-2020, Apple has been occupying this throne until today it is overtaken by Microsoft.