The already soaring shares of Tesla Inc and Apple Inc soared further on Monday, as investors fervently vied for the ownership of shares at cheaper prices following the stock split by the company.
This was Apple's fifth stock split since going public in 1980. Its earlier stock split was 7-for-1 in 2014. Tesla shares rose, up 61 percent since the announcement of its first-ever stock split in mid-August, closed at $2,213.4 on Friday. They rose 3.2 percent at $456.90 in early trading on Monday.
Rising Share Prices
Splitting stocks is a way for companies to make it less expensive to buy individual shares although moves by some retail brokerages to offer slices or fractions of shares to smaller investors have made the impact increasingly marginal.
Shares of the Cupertino-California-based company, which have rallied nearly 30 percent since it announced its surprise 4-for-1 stock split and blockbuster quarterly results on July 30, rose 2.6 percent to $127.99 on Monday.
The rally helped the iPhone maker overtake Saudi Aramco as the world's most valuable publicly listed company and become the first publicly listed U.S. company to breach $2 trillion in market capitalization.
Tesla's Forward March
Apple shares closed at $499.23 before the split on Friday, up 70 percent this year. The electric carmaker followed suit earlier this month by announcing a 5-for-1 split to portion its richly valued stock into smaller chunks, which also took effect on Monday.
Tesla's stock has surged more than five-fold this year, while shares of General Motors Co and Ford Motor Co declined on the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic. Online brokerages Robinhood, Charles Schwab Corp and Fidelity, along with several smaller shops, have begun offering slices of individual shares.
Stock splits have become rare on Wall Street in recent years, with just three S&P 500 members announcing splits in 2020, compared to an average of ten a year over the past decade, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices.
(With inputs from agencies)
