Topline
Apple shares hit their highest price in the stock’s 43-year history early Monday ahead of the debut of its mixed reality Vision Pro headset, though the stock then slid after the tech giant announced a far heftier than expected price tag for its biggest product launch in years.
Key Facts
The stock gained as much as 2.2% in morning and early afternoon trading, hitting as high as $184.95, shattering its prior all-time high of $182.94 achieved last January.
But the fanfare proved to be short-lived, as Apple shares slipped about 3% in later afternoon trading, closing below $180, a 0.8% loss for the day.
The tumble came immediately after Apple CEO Tim Cook announced the company’s hotly anticipated headset will retail at $3,499, nearly 20% higher than the $3,000 price tag most experts predicted for the device ahead of the launch at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference.
Despite the Monday decline, shares of the Silicon Valley behemoth are still up some 44% in 2023, erasing its 27% slide last year and captaining tech’s broader rebound year-to-date.
Apple’s market capitalization now sits at about $2.8 trillion, about $325 billion richer than the next most-valuable public company on the planet, Microsoft.
Tangent
In a Monday note to clients, Wedbush forecasted Apple will sell about 150,000 headsets for its first year on the market, which would be $525 million in sales. This would be roughly 0.1% of Apple’s nearly $400 billion in revenue last year.
Key Background
Apple has tacked on roughly $765 billion in market cap this year, which is more than the total respective total valuations of Berkshire Hathaway, Meta and Tesla. Broad investor sentiments for mega-cap tech stocks have shifted dramatically from bearish to bullish over the last year, thanks in no small part to Apple’s top- and bottom-line beats during 2023’s first quarter. Fueling Apple’s strong financials was a record $20.9 billion in quarterly revenue from its services segment, which includes App Store sales and other non-product revenue streams. In a Sunday note to clients, Bank of America analysts Wamsi Mohan and Ruplu Bhattacharya, raised their price target for Apple by 8% to $190, citing significant upside in the company’s services segment thanks to the new headset.
Big Number
Nearly $2 million. That’s how much a $1,000 investment at Apple’s 1980 initial public offering—when shares traded at a split-adjusted level of $0.10—would be worth now.
Crucial Quote
In a note previewing Monday’s conference, Rosenblatt analyst Barton Crockett declared the “bar is set low” to excite investors considering “nobody expects this to be a financially meaningful product near-term.” Apple’s roughly $80 billion market cap slip-up Monday afternoon suggests the company failed to beat the already dampened expectations.
Apple Unveils Vision Pro AR/VR Headset, Its First Major New Product In Nearly A Decade (Forbes)
Apple Announces Plans For Its Largest MacBook Air Yet At Developer Conference (Forbes)
These 7 Tech Stocks Command Almost 90% Of The S&P 500’s Gains—Signaling Market Rally May Not Be So Healthy (Forbes)
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