Is Apple in for a fall? Well it could be if the Nasdaq has anything to do with it.
The company which is regarded as the Wall Street’s star child, is currently valued at US$300 billion, making it one of the single most valuable companies in the world today.
But now it seems the highly successful tech house has become a victim of its own success. Of sorts.
Earlier this year, it reported a massive jump in profits, posting record net quarterly profit of $6 bn on the back of phenomenal iPad, iPhone and Mac sales.
The first ever iPad released in March last year, sold over 12 million units.
However, this starry performance is taking over the US Nasdaq-100 index it appears, with the giant accounting for 20 per cent of all shares traded.
The iPhone creator was given over double the weight it should have had based on the number of shares held, according to the Wall Street Journal.
A new reweighting plan by the index of top 100 companies will knock Apple off its perch, and reduce its weight by 8 per cent.
The new plan will give it the appropriate weighting for its size, said to be 12.3 per cent.
And that’s not all.
The re-jigged index, which includes 100 of the largest domestic and international non-financial companies, will also pull up arch rivals Google as well as fellow tech houses Intel, Microsoft and even Oracle.
Steve Ballmer’s Microsoft will have the biggest win – almost trebling its clout from from 3.4% to 8.3%.
The reconfiguration is likely to ‘kick off waves of trading’ in the stock as money managers scramble to adjust portfolios based on the new weights, according to the Journal.
This will have a massive bearing on share prices and Steve Jobs’ company’s overall market clout. QQQ exchange-traded fund and many other securities trade on the index, which is tracked in 27 countries.
“Looking ahead to the second fiscal quarter of 2011, we expect revenue of about $22 billion and we expect diluted earnings per share of about $4.90” Apple’s CFO Peter Oppenheimer, said earlier this year.
Whether this forecast will stay the same remains to be seen.
The tech giant shares slid 0.98 per cent yesterday to $341.19 on the news.
And that’s not all the Californian based giant have to contend with. Persistant competition from Google’s Android is also a looming threat to the prowess of its iPhone as the leader of the smartphone pack.
