Apple not likely to hit the $1 trillion mark in 2015
$1,000,000,000,000. One Trillion Dollars.
No American company has ever had a market cap with that many zeroes in it. Does Apple - already the world’s most valuable company - have a chance of hitting the trillion dollar milestone next year?
Apple shares are already up more than 40% since the beginning of the year with sales of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus surpassing expectations. IPhone sales overall in the third quarter nearly topped 40 million and the holiday season is looking strong. The company expects to sell more this Christmas quarter than in the whole of 2010.
Still, Yahoo Finance Technology Reporter Aaron Pressman says it’s not enough to get to $170 a share, which is roughly where the stock would need to trade to have a trillion dollar market cap.
“Even if iPhone sales really boom this year, you’re still short of the $170 unless there’s some other add on business. So you have to look at the watch or Apple Pay or maybe something we haven’t imagined yet.”
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Pressman’s not convinced the watch will do the trick.
"Even the most gaudy Wall Street estimates are that they are going to sell 30 or 35 million of them (Apple Watches) so you know you’re talking about some revenue of $15 billion and maybe profits of $3 or $4 billion. It’s still not enough to move this needle gigantically.”
Pressman thinks Apple could grow its share of the global phone market which now stands at just 8%. To do that he says the company must push deeper into China and India and make some clever product moves.
“Maybe they need to come out with a lower-priced, high margin product. That’s what they did with the iPod. They’ve resisted doing that until now, but maybe that’s another way they expand here.”
Activist investor Carl Icahn thinks the company should already be trading over $200 a share and be valued above a trillion dollars, especially given Apple’s massive cash pile. But Pressman says the market's not convinced.
One issue for him: “There’s going to be a huge psychological barrier to becoming the first trillion dollar company.”
And as for Apple hitting it next year? Pressman says “It’s not impossible, but I think it’s a really tough stretch."
