Apple is going to miss Tim Cook — one statistic perfectly illustrates why

It's the extremity of an era. Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) announced Monday (1) that Tim Cook, the 65-year-old CEO and erstwhile main operating serviceman nether erstwhile CEO Steve Jobs, volition measurement down connected Sept. 1 and modulation to enforcement chairman. John Ternus, Apple's hardware engineering chief, volition instrumentality the reins — the archetypal clip Apple volition person a caller CEO since Cook succeeded Jobs astir 15 years ago.

While Cook leaves down an unthinkable legacy, 1 statistic truly helps enactment it each successful perspective. Since Cook's archetypal time arsenic Apple CEO connected Aug. 24, 2011, erstwhile split-adjusted shares closed astatine $13.25 (2), the company’s banal has climbed to $269.28 arsenic of Tuesday greeting — a instrumentality of astir 1,932%. If you comparison the unadjusted adjacent terms from Tim Cook’s archetypal time arsenic CEO to now, that instrumentality balloons to 2,289%. Over that aforesaid stretch, the S&P 500 (3) roseate from 1,177.50 to 7,123.80, a summation of astir 505%.

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To enactment it plainly: Apple banal outperformed the broader marketplace by a origin of much than 4 during Cook's tenure.

In dollar terms, a $10,000 concern successful Apple connected the time Cook took the occupation would beryllium worthy astir $239,000 today. That aforesaid magnitude parked successful an S&P 500 scale money would person grown to astir $60,000. Both are beardown returns, but Apple's is successful a antithetic stratosphere — and that's mostly a effect of what Cook did with Apple erstwhile helium took implicit for Jobs, the company's visionary cofounder.

Steve Jobs stepped down (4) conscionable six weeks earlier his decease successful October 2011 — and erstwhile Tim Cook took over, galore questioned whether anyone could prolong what Jobs had built. Apple's marketplace capitalization sat astatine astir $350 billion. Today, it's astir $4 trillion (5), making it the 3rd astir invaluable publically traded institution successful the world, down Nvidia and Alphabet.

The maturation went good beyond hardware. Cook turned Apple Services — the App Store, Apple Music, iCloud, Apple TV+ and much — into a concern generating much than $100 cardinal annually (1). Revenue astir quadrupled nether his watch, climbing from $108 cardinal successful fiscal 2011 to much than $416 cardinal successful fiscal 2025. He besides oversaw Apple's modulation to its ain customized silicon, the motorboat of Apple Watch, AirPods and Apple Vision Pro, and a analyzable proviso concatenation diversification (6) distant from China.