NEW YORK  - Apple is so nearly there. Becoming the first publicly traded company with a market value of $1 trillion is a tantalizing prospect. But it’s really just a number.

Breakingviews was in the vanguard suggesting Apple might win the race to $1 trillion, first saying so back in 2011 when its market capitalization was just $342 billion. As of midday Wednesday, with its stock up 5 percent to around $200 a share after a strong earnings report the evening before, the value is about $985 billion.

If the company led by Tim Cook hadn’t bought back $20 billion of stock in the April-June quarter, it would already have topped the magic number.

On the other hand, stripping out the huge pile of net cash it still holds – $129 billion as of June 30, down from $145 billion three months earlier – Apple’s enterprise value, in theory the worth of its operating businesses, comes in only a little over $850 billion, leaving some way to go.

Another 1.5 percent nudge upward and Apple will get there on the market-capitalization measure. With an initial public offering of Saudi Aramco looking increasingly unlikely, only a surge in the value of Jeff Bezos’ Amazon – currently with a market cap of $870 billion – or Alphabet, at $850 billion, could feasibly sneak in first.

Yet depending on how you measure the iPhone maker’s business, Apple both is and isn’t already a 13-digit company. Trillion-dollar valuation or not, it’s a phenomenal money machine.

CONTEXT NEWS

- Apple on July 31 reported that revenue totaled $53.3 billion in the quarter ended June 30, up 17 percent from $45.4 billion in the same period a year earlier and ahead of sell-side analysts’ mean estimate of $52.6 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Earnings rose 32 percent to $11.5 billion. At $2.34 a share, earnings were 16 cents higher than the mean estimate of $2.18.

- The company sold 41.3 million iPhones in the latest quarter, compared with 41 million in the same period a year earlier.

- At 12:52 p.m. EDT on Aug. 1, Apple’s stock was up about 5 percent at $200.27 a share, giving it a market value of around $985 billion.

(Editing by Tom Buerkle and Martin Langfield)

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