Apple reclaimed the title of the world’s most valuable public company from Nvidia on Monday as its stock headed toward a record-high close. A market value of roughly $4.94 trillion put it ahead of Nvidia’s $4.83 trillion, with investors treating Apple’s restrained AI spending as a strength. The company reports fiscal Q3 results on Thursday, in Tim Cook’s final earnings call as CEO.
Apple reclaimed the title of the world’s most valuable public company from Nvidia as the iPhone maker’s stock headed toward a record-high close on Monday. Shares rose over 1% to give Apple a market capitalization of roughly $4.94 trillion, per Yahoo Finance data, against Nvidia’s $4.83 trillion.
Restrained AI spending turns into a selling point
Apple shares have climbed more than 22% year to date, outperforming the Magnificent Seven group, as investors increasingly view the company’s restrained AI spending as a strength rather than a weakness. Yahoo Finance’s AlphaSpace data shows Apple’s capital spending has declined over the past three quarters rather than increased.
According to Yahoo Finance, Jay Woods, chief market strategist at Freedom Capital Markets, said Apple has been able to “avoid some of those capex pitfalls” after criticism for not spending more on AI.
That stands in contrast to Alphabet, which last week raised its capital spending outlook to support its AI infrastructure build-out, and Tesla, which increased spending to fund its robotaxi and robotics ambitions. Shares of both companies fell following their earnings reports, and Alphabet stock is up about 3% year to date while Tesla has tumbled roughly 30% over the same period.
The record high lands three days before earnings
Apple stock notched a record high on Monday, three days before its fiscal third-quarter report, according to Investor’s Business Daily. The all-time high came in morning trades at 339.50 before the stock pulled back. Earlier this month the shares broke out of a flat base at a buy point of 317.40 on July 13, according to IBD MarketSurge charts.
What Thursday’s report has to clear
Apple will report earnings on Thursday after the closing bell, and investors will look for signs it can scale its Apple Intelligence features on its devices without a bump in capital expenditures or an impact on operating margins. Analysts polled by FactSet expect $1.89 a share on sales of $108.9 billion in the June quarter, which would translate to year-over-year growth of 20% in earnings and 16% in revenue.
Microsoft, Amazon and Meta also report this week, and all three are expected to announce further increases in AI-related spending. For Apple, Thursday marks Tim Cook’s final earnings call before he steps down on Sept. 1 to become executive chairman, passing the reins to John Ternus, a hardware engineering veteran at the company.
Sources: Yahoo Finance, Investor’s Business Daily
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