Apple’s stock market value drops below $2 trillion

By Nivedita Balu, and Noel Randewich

(Reuters) –Apple Inc’s stock price fell sharply on Tuesday, following a steep decline last year. The stock market value is now below $2 trillion for only the second time since March 2021.

The sale came one year after iPhone maker became first company to achieve the milestone of $3 trillion in market capitalization.

Apple shares fell 3.7% to $125.07 following Exane BNP Paribas analyst Jerome Ramel downgrading the company to “neutral”, from “outperform” and slashing his price goal to $140, from $180 according to Refinitiv Eikon.

Investors are also worried that high inflation and slowing growth may have an impact on demand for Apple devices. Nikkei reported that Apple has ordered suppliers to produce fewer parts of its earbuds, watches and laptops.

Apple’s share price dropped, and its market capitalization was $1.99 trillion.

Ramel has reduced his iPhone shipment targets for fiscal 2023 from 245,000,000 units to 224 Million units. This is due to supply chain issues at Foxconn and consumer spending cuts on high-end smartphones.

Apple’s stock price at the moment is $1.8 trillion. Microsoft Corp is valued at around $1.8 trillion.

Refinitiv estimates that investors are worried about consumer demand and analysts anticipate that Apple will report a 1% decrease in its December-quarter revenue. This would be Apple’s first quarterly revenue decline since March 2019, according to Refinitiv.

Kim Forrest, Bokeh Capital Partners’ Kim Forrest stated that Apple tends to favor high-end consumers but even this demographic may be affected by high prices of everything.

Wall Street’s dramatic sell-off in 2013 punished tech-related heavyweights. As investors worried about rising rates, they dumping stocks at high valuations.

The combined stock market value of Apple, Microsoft, Amazon.com Inc, Alphabet Inc and Meta Platforms now accounts for about 18% of the S&P 500, down from as much as 24% in 2020.

Even with the 27% decline in shares last year, Apple continues to provide excellent returns for long-term shareholders. Investors who bought and held Apple shares when cofounder Steve Jobs launched the iPhone in 2007 have enjoyed a gain of over 4,000%, not including dividends, compared to a 180% gain in the S&P 500 over the same period.

(Reporting done by Nivedita Balu at Bengaluru; Editing done by Arun Koyyur, Richard Chang).