Apple officially becomes first U.S. company with $1 trillion market cap

Apple shares closed at $207.39, up 2.9%

Apple beat out Amazon and became the first U.S. company to reach a trillion-dollar market cap.

Apple Inc. became the first U.S. listed company to reach a $1 trillion market capitalization on Thursday.

Apple shares AAPL-0.21% closed at $207.39, above the $207.04 threshold needed for Apple to officially hit the trillion-dollar mark. That’s based on its most up-to-date share count of 4.83 billion as of July 20. The current market-cap calculations assume that Apple’s share count hasn’t budged since that date, though that’s unlikely given the company’s rapid pace of share buybacks.

The stock’s strong performance this week comes after Apple reported better-than-expected results for its fiscal third quarter on Tuesday. The company also delivered an upbeat forecast for its September quarter, when it typically releases new iPhones.

In its two-day push to get to $1 trillion, Apple added $82 billion in market capitalization.

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After Amazon.com Inc. AMZN-0.09% reported earnings last week and saw its stock jump, some — including a majority of MarketWatch readers participating in an informal poll — thought the company would beat Apple to the trillion-dollar punch. Amazon’s market capitalization sat at roughly $873 billion Thursday, ahead of Alphabet Inc.GOOGL-0.19% GOOG-0.29% with its $849 million market cap, and Microsoft Corp.MSFT0% at $818 billion.

Apple won’t technically be the first publicly traded company to reach $1 trillion in market capitalization, as PetroChina earned that honor on the Chinese market more than a decade ago. The company’s valuation has come down sharply in the years since.

And Saudi Aramco, the Saudi Arabian state-owned oil giant, which reportedly intends to go public in 2019, was recently estimated to possess a valuation of about $2 trillion, according to the Financial Times.

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Shares of Apple are up 32% over the past 12 months. The Dow Jones Industrial AverageDJIA+0.31% , of which Apple is a component, has gained 15% in that span.