Apple could cede its place as the world’s largest capitalization company to Microsoft – archyworldys

(Reuters) – Apple could cede the spot as the world’s largest market capitalization to Microsoft on Friday when US markets open as iPhone-maker stock pulls back in pre-market trading after disappointment over its quarterly results and forecasts.

The American giant announced Thursday that it had lost six billion dollars (5.2 billion euros) in turnover over the July-September period due to tensions in supply chains, including sales of iPhone below expectations.

Analysts believe that a decline in the group’s results is now possible for the last three months of the year.

In non-sessional transactions, the title of Apple is given down 3.5% to 147.30 dollars, which gives the group a capitalization of 2.417 billion dollars if these losses are confirmed at the opening.

The action of Microsoft is conversely up before the market, 0.7% to 324.60 dollars for a market capitalization of 2.437 billion dollars.

Apple, which repurchased a total of 421.7 billion dollars of securities, had announced in April a repurchase program of shares of 90 billion. The number of its shares in circulation is therefore steadily declining, dropping to 16.4 billion at the end of the fourth quarter of its lagged fiscal year.

Since the beginning of the year, the software giant Microsoft has seen its share price jump by more than 45%, the demand for its cloud computing services, fueled by the COVID-19 pandemic, having boosted its sales . Apple stock only took 15% at the same time.

Apple’s capitalization exceeded that of Microsoft for the first time in 2010. Since then, the two groups have traded the world’s largest capitalization title on several occasions. Apple has occupied the first place of the podium since mid-2020.

(Report Subrat Patnaik and Sruthi Shankar, French version Laetitia Volga, edited by Bertrand Boucey)