The journey of technology behemoth Apple, Inc. from Apple I to iPhone 7 has been a spectacular one. Its valuation crossed $800 billion this year and is onto becoming the first trillion-dollar company. It's not been a smooth ride all the way. Like every company, Apple too had to go through phases of ups and downs and failures. It too made products that flopped - Apple Portable, Apple III, Macintosh TV - to name a few. It all changed when Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, 10 years after he was fired. Not many know that in 1997 the company was on the verge of bankruptcy and was saved by Microsoft, by pumping in $150 Million and ended the rivalry between the two innovators, Gate and Jobs.
Apple was once again being steered by Jobs, as an iCEO - interim CEO - hence the alphabet "I" prefixes the products he innovated as an iCEO. Apple with its iPod launch created a generation of fan followers that would go on to make their every product a success, no matter how flawed it was. iPhone 4 has call drop issues, iPhone 6 would bend when pocketed - yet, people bought them and made them Apple's success stories. Now that Apple's next flagship - iPhone 8 - launch is around the corner, and speculations are that Apple is going for a complete design overhaul, it's time to analyze the stock and try to make out what it would mean for the company and its future.
Analyzing the stock of Apple, I see it making a long-term high in February - March 2018 at price level of around $175. So multiplying it with the number of outstanding shares of 5.165 Billion gives us the approximate valuation of $903.8 Billion - guess Apple will not be a Trillion - dollar company, at least not in 2018 or anytime soon. In the following chart, I have also marked a few intermediate highs and lows - time targets at approximate, price targets do not mean much. High in the first week of October, then low in the first week of November, then High in the second week of December and the final low in the second week of January before moving towards its long-term high in.
As always, we will update when changing dynamics necessitates so.