Apple Stock Price Since 1984
Apple’s stock was IPO’ed on December 12, 1980 at $22/share. On a split-adjusted basis, that’s $2.75/share. Apple closed yesterday at around $378/share for an annualized return of +17.8%/year.
Pretty incredible given the long period that Apple went nowhere and did nothing (after they fired Jobs until he came back).
The above chart shows a dark rectangle as the black hole period of Apple when Steven Jobs was not there; he was fired in May 1985 and came back as interim CEO in September of 1997. During those dark years, APPL returned 7%/year or so.
So to be fair to Jobs, let’s look at his return only when he was there.
The stock IPO was at $2.75 in December 1980 and Jobs was fired in May 1985 when the stock price was $2.52/share for a return of -2%/year for those 4.4 years. And then he came back in September 1997 when the stock price was at $5.42. Since then to yesterday, the stock returned +35%/year.
Combining those two periods, you get a Jobs-tenure stock price performance of +27%/year. Amazing.
(This is an investment blog so I am focusing on the stock price, but this is of course not Job’s biggest contribution to the world at all!)
We lost a great one last night.