Or, as Luca Maestri, Apple’s chief financial officer, put it during a Wall Street conference call, Apple wants “to make our stock more accessible to a broader base of investors.”Let me explain — and I’ll also explain why Apple’s stock split, which takes effect near the end of August, goes against conventional wisdom on Wall Street. In Apple’s case, a 4-for-1 split means that its stock would have sold at $96.19 at Thursday’s market close rather than at $384.76. When you combine that upcoming split with Apple’s 7-for-1 split in 2014, you’ve got splits totaling 28-to-1 that produce a two-digit share price rather than a stock selling at around $2,700. Only two S&P 500 stocks split last year, down from a peak of 112 in 1986. ADAmazon, whose chief executive, Jeff Bezos, owns The Washington Post, split three times in 1998 and 1999, but hasn’t split since then.

Source: Washington Post July 31, 2020 23:26 UTC