Shares in Apple, Inc. could hit US$1,000 per share, according to company cofounder Steve Wozniak. The noted engineer—who is not noted as a stock analyst—said in an interview with CNBC that he believes a product like Apple TV could give Apple plenty of room to grow.
Brian Sullivan interviewed Mr. Wozniak in Singapore, where the inventor of the Apple I and Apple II computers was intending the YPO Global Leadership Summit. In that interview, Mr. Wozniak said that he saw Apple as being one company made up of many other companies.
“Every one [of those companies] is so excellent,” he said. “The retail stores are a company, the iTunes store is a company. The iPods are a company. The iPhones are a huge company. The iPads are a huge company, and we still have computers.”
He argued that any one of those aspects of Apple on its own wouldn’t offer as much of a dramatic presentation as Apple as a whole, but that combined they make Apple amazing. Mr. Sullivan then pressed him on whether or not Apple has much room to grow, and The Woz said he thinks it does.
“People talk about a thousand dollar stock price,” Mr. Wozniak said. “At first you want to doubt it, but I actually believe it.” He then pointed out, “And I don’t really follow the stock markets.”
He added, “Apple has that much growth left because we’re talking about something like Apple TV that works with all these other great companies and products [that make up Apple today], all in the same sphere. It’s not like a side project—‘We’re going to start a TV company.’ No, we’re going to start TV within the whole Apple world.”
“Assuming we are going to. I don’t know,” he added in a half-hearted attempt at clarification.
Mr. Wozniak also said that his fellow Apple cofounder, the late Steve Jobs, called him when Apple’s market cap surpassed IBM’s to make Apple the most valuable tech company. He said that Mr. Jobs was excited about the accomplishment and asked if The Woz had ever thought they might see such a day.
The full interview:
CNBC Interview with Steve Wozniak
Shares of AAPL closed higher on Thursday at $544.47, a gain of $2.03 (+0.37 percent), on strong volume of 24.4 million shares trading hands. That gives Apple a market cap of $507.6 billion.
*In the interest of full disclosure, the author holds a tiny, almost insignificant share in AAPL stock that was not an influence in the creation of this article.