Despite Apple’s record holiday quarter earnings, investors continue to punish the Apple stock which has took quite a beating since Tuesday’s earnings report. As the stock continues to slide, Apple on Friday hit a new 52-week low, becoming worth less than Exxon Mobil and ceding the top spot to the oil corporation.
As of this writing, Exxon Mobil was worth about $1 billion more than Apple. Though Apple was briefly ahead, Exxon has reclaimed the lead. The situation is changing by the second so we’ll have to wait until the end of trading today to see who emerges victorious…
The development was brought to our attention by CNBC.
Exxon’s market cap value has surpassed Apple’s. This means Exxon has reclaimed the title of ‘World’s Most Valuable Company.’ $XOM $AAPL
— CNBC (@CNBC) January 25, 2013
At the time of this writing, Apple was trading at $441.36 a share, down more than two percent, for a market capitalization of $415.71 billion.
Compare this to a market cap of $416.36 billion for Exxon Mobil, an American multinational oil and gas corporation headquartered in Irving, Texas.
At this level, it’s fair to say that AAPL is back to pre-iPad 3 prices.
Club Cupertino was chasing Exxon Mobile throughout 2011.
Then, in August 2011 the iPhone maker was $50 billion dollars shy of Exxon Mobil and on August 9, 2011 briefly surpassed Exxon to become the world’s #1 publicly traded company.
BREAKING: Apples cedes place as most valuable company in the world to Exxon Mobil
— Bloomberg News (@BloombergNews) January 25, 2013
A few minutes later, Exxon was back on top, but the following month Apple for the first time ended the trading day ahead of Exxon and became the world’s #1 company in terms of market capitalization.
Shares of Apple peaked at just a little over $700 in September 2012 before they started dipping, losing more than thirty percent of the value to date.
So, what would you rather buy for a $500?
An iPad 4 or one share of Apple?