On the day the world’s largest company Apple was doused with a downgrade, shares of the world’s second largest company were fanned into much anticipated $1,000 territory.
Shares of Google’s parent company Alphabet were trading at $1,006 late Monday morning, after hovering just below four digits for over a week. It is the third S&P 500 stock to breach $1,000, after shares of Amazon soared above $1,000 last week.
Alphabet’s rise comes as an analyst at Pacific Crest downgraded shares of Apple in a note Monday, calling for investors to look toward the Google parent instead. That helped push the market capitalization of Alphabet to $688 billion. But it still pales in comparison however to Apple, which is worth $803 billion after shares fell nearly a percentage point in trading on Monday morning.
While share prices alone can be a relatively arbitrary metric of value (for example, the other company on the S&P 500 to breach $1,000 per share was Priceline, with a market capitalization of $93 billion), Alphabet’s rise to $1,000 is notable in that demand for the stock is still there, despite its four-digit price. In theory, higher prices on an individual stock could make a company look unaffordable to smaller investors.
But even with a price tag of more than $1,000, analyst consensus still says the Alphabet’s stock will rise about 6% over the next 12 months, according to Bloomberg data. Already, shares have risen 39% over the past year.
It’s not the first time Google has been priced at $1,000 a share. Prior to its stock split in 2014, shares of the tech giant rose to $1,200. But it’s the first time it broke the mark since it became Alphabet.