Apple is no longer a $US1 trillion company – in fact, at Monday’s close it is now a $US958 billion company – and its rival and brief fellow member of the trillionaire club, Amazon is now just a $US814 billion company.
A combination of continuing weakness in the share price and a new, lower number of shares on issue as a result of the company’s $US100 billion buyback, pushed Apple’s valuation below the $US1 trillion level midway through last week and it fell further on Friday and Monday.
Amazon shares fell 2.27% on Monday on news that it was offering free delivery this Thanksgiving-Christmas buying season for all US customers (because that is what Walmart and others are offering). This offer extends the free shipping for Prime club members. Amazon was also reported to be thinking about splitting its new headquarters between two cities.
That was reported by the Wall Street Journal and was not confirmed by Amazon. Amazon shares are down around 20% from their all-time high in early September when the company briefly became a trillion dollar company for a few minutes in a single session.
In fact, Monday saw Apple deep in-market disfavor on Monday with the shares briefly dipping under $US200 for the first time in three months before closing down 2.8% at $US201.59.
Investor unease with the company’s outlook was further underlined by media reports from Asia that Apple has cut back orders of a new iPhone model with its big Taiwanese based assembler, Foxconn.
Apple and Foxconn wouldn’t comment on the media reports but they were enough to add to the unease from last week’s 4th quarter earnings report and outlook which forecast weak growth for the three months to December.
At the same time Apple said it would no longer be releasing details of unit sales of its products (such as iPhones), a decision that was openly derided by investors and analysts as being weak and fearful of for an uncertain outlook for the new phones and the new range of watched, iPads and Mac computers.
Apple’s shares were down close to 5% on Monday before scrambling back in afternoon trading. At Monday’s intraday low of $198.17, Apple’s decline over the past two sessions came to 10.8% – almost a correction in itself,
Apple now has 4,745,398,000 shares on issue as of October 26, as revealed in the company’s most recent regulatory filing with the SEC. That is down from 4.83 billion as at July 26. It means that to breach the $US1 trillion level again Apple shares will have to rise past $US210.31.
