MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Apple becomes the first company to hit a market cap of US$ 1 trillion

Apple reached the trillion-dollar milestone just before noon, with share price of US$ 207.05, based on a recently adjusted outstanding share count of 4,829,926,000

Apple hit a market cap of US$1 trillion on Thursday — and hung onto the record valuation at market close — as the iPhone maker became the first publicly traded U.S. company to reach US$1 trillion.

 The stock gained 2.92% during trading after a strong fiscal third quarter earnings report earlier this week to close at US$207.39. It reached the trillion-dollar milestone just before noon with a share price of US$ 207.05, based on a recently adjusted outstanding share count of 4,829,926,000 shares.

Investors had previously been looking for a share price of US$ 203.45 to push Apple across the finish line in the race to US$ 1 trillion, but the company's hefty stock buybacks moved the threshold higher on Wednesday.

“I think it just speaks to just how powerful the Apple ecosystem has become over the last few decades,” GBH Insights analyst Dan Ives told CNBC after the historic market move. “This is not the end, that they hit US$1 trillion. I view this as just kind of speaking to a new stage of growth and profitability.”

Amazon had also been approaching the threshold, surpassing US$ 900 billion in market value in July. Apple had quite the head start, though, hitting US$ 900 billion in November.

Many on Wall Street noted earlier this week that Apple was firmly on the path to US$ 1 trillion. Aswath Damodaran, professor of finance at New York University's Stern School of Business and the so-called dean of valuation, said the stock is still cheap even at US$ 1 trillion.