Apple Inc. Days Numbered As World’s Most Valuable Company

Written by StockNews.com

Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) is currently the world’s largest publicly traded firm, with an approximate market cap of $728 billion but a Saudi oil behemoth is set to IPO soon, and its valuation could actually be double that of Apple’s.

Some time in 2018, Saudi Aramco will hit the public markets for the very first time, and its market cap will likely dwarf that of any other company in history. From the New York Post:

Oil giant Saudi Aramco is expected to have a market capitalization of $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion when it sells shares to the public next year, a survey of fund managers and institutional investors by regional investment bank EFG Hermes showed on Monday.

Believe it or not, that lofty valuation is somehow still well below what Saudi Arabian royalty believes the company should be worth:

Indeed, the high end of the survey’s range still falls short of a target of at least $2 trillion set by Saudi Arabia’s Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who oversees the kingdom’s economic policy.

With oil prices possibly permanently depressed, bin Salman may want to sharpen his pencil a bit there. What’s more, analysts at Foreign Reports in 2016 estimated a much lower valuation for Saudi Aramco. That firm sees a market cap of just $250 to $460 billion, when “excluding the value of refining assets and guaranteed access to oil and gas.”

Maybe it isn’t an absolute lock that Apple will lose its crown next year. It’s also possible — however unlikely — that Apple’s new iPhone 8 (or iPhone X, depending on who you ask) could help propel the tech giant’s valuation above $1 trillion before then. That would necessitate a 37% rally from current levels, which may sound laughable, until you take a look at a one-year AAPL chart and realize that the stock is up 35% in the trailing twelve months – so let’s not count Apple out just yet.