(Bloomberg) — Apple Inc. just had its worst start to the year by one measure, as investors react to growing pressures on the company, jeopardizing its long-held status as the world’s most valuable stock in terms of market value.
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Shares of the tech giant fell 0.4% on Friday to close at around $181 after The New York Times reported that the Justice Department was poised to file an antitrust complaint against the company. The decline marks the fifth consecutive negative day for Apple, its longest losing streak since October.
The possible antitrust case against Apple “would add to the plethora of problems facing the company, from slowing iPhone sales to Watch patent issues,” Anurag Rana, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, wrote in a note . “This lawsuit could attack Apple’s business model of tightly integrating its devices and services.”
The Cupertino, Calif.-based company has been the most valuable publicly traded company since July 2022, but its market value of about $177 billion has been wiped out so far this year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Although the stock suffered larger percentage declines during the first week of January, the losses represent the largest destruction of market value on record to begin the year.
The slowdown began earlier in the week after the tech giant was hit with two rating downgrades, with analysts pointing to a weak macroeconomic environment in China that was putting pressure on iPhone demand. This narrowed its lead over compatriot Microsoft Corp. – whose shares saw a less pronounced decline earlier this year – to less than $100 billion.
“Investors are realizing how rare it is for two people to go negative,” said Gene Munster, managing partner of Deepwater Asset Management. “I’ve covered this company for a long time and have never seen two downgrades before an earnings report.”
Apple is also likely under pressure as investors rotate their portfolios at the start of the year.
“Everyone is selling their winners and buying their losers,” said Brian Mulberry, client portfolio manager at Zacks Investment Management. “There’s a big rebalancing going on.”
These losses caused Apple’s market value to drop to around $2.8 trillion, close to Microsoft’s $2.7 trillion. Shares of Microsoft fell less than 0.1% on Friday to close at around $368.
The Windows software maker has benefited from the artificial intelligence business that has fascinated Wall Street over the past year. The company is OpenAI’s largest shareholder and has invested around $13 billion in parent company ChatGPT.
–With help from Matt Turner.
(Updates stock movements as of market close, adds quote to third paragraph.)
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