Apple on Thursday marked the 44th anniversary of the tech giant's initial public offering (IPO) just days after its market capitalization reached a new all-time high that emphasized its growth over the last four decades.
Apple shares reached $250.42 during Wednesday's trading session, an all-time high that followed a record close of $247.70 at the end of Tuesday's trading day.
Though it has since declined from that peak to just under $248 a share during Thursday's session, the company's market capitalization of $3.74 trillion remains near its all-time high.
Apple's stock surge coincides with the 44th anniversary of its IPO, which was held on Dec. 12, 1980. Investors who bought Apple stock at that time – which was priced at $22 per share at the time of IPO – and held it for four decades would have seen massive growth in the value of that investment.
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The company has conducted five stock splits since its IPO, so when accounting for those, the split-adjusted basis for an Apple share at the time of the IPO was $0.10 per share.
If an investor had bought $1,000 worth of Apple shares at the time of the company's IPO, they would have acquired a total of 45 shares.
Apple conducted a trio of two-for-one stock splits in 1987, 2000 and 2005, as well as a seven-for-one split in 2014 and a four-for-one split in 2020.
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Taken together, those splits increased Apple's share count by a factor of 224, meaning that the initial 45 shares bought for $1,000 44 years ago would have grown into 10,080 shares.
Based on Thursday's closing price of $247.96, that means the initial $1,000 investment would now be worth nearly $2.5 million – or $2,499,436.80, to be precise – without accounting for the reinvestment of dividends, which Apple started offering to shareholders in 2012.
