Apple Will Probably Lose Its Market Cap Crown in 2025

The battle to command the largest market cap among U.S. exchange-listed companies is a lot like Game of Thrones. Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) regained the crown this past summer, after two other "Magnificent Seven" stocks wrestled the market cap leadership title away earlier in 2024.

Despite surrendering 12% of its value since hitting an all-time high in the final trading week of 2024, Apple has a comfortable lead at the top right now. Its $3.4 trillion price tag is nearly $400 billion higher than its closest rival to the market cap throne. I would still be shocked if it stays there through the end of this year. Cue the Game of Thrones intro music.

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Taking a bite out of the Apple

Even before taking some shots at the class act of Cupertino, it's a safe bet that it won't be a permanent resident at the top of the market cap heap. Apple was also the leader at the start of 2024 before not one, but two rising companies would be crowned as the new kings of the hill. They are both less than 20% away from Apple now. A bullish catalyst or a whiff of artificial intelligence (AI) dominance can shake up the leaderboard, but let's not talk about them. Let's talk about Apple.

Apple is surprisingly vulnerable right now despite its current royalty status. For the past dozen years, Apple's financial performance has clocked in with a fiscal year of monster double-digit growth, followed by two subsequent years of single-digit-percentage moves. A material upgrade to its annual iPhone installments is usually the catalyst for the pop, but that three-year pattern blew up last year.

Check out Apple's top-line moves for its fiscal years -- which end in September -- going all the way back to 2012.

• 2012: 45%
• 2013: 9%
• 2014: 7%
• 2015: 28%
• 2016: (8%)
• 2017: 6%
• 2018: 16%
• 2019: (2%)
• 2020: 6%
• 2021: 33%
• 2022: 8%
• 2023: (3%)
• 2024: 2%

Revenue growth has stalled. Including the fiscal first quarter of 2025, Apple is on a streak of 12 straight quarters of single-digit moves, and a third of those reports have been year-over-year declines. The compound annual growth rate in that time is a mere 1.5%. Apple's business isn't even keeping up with inflation.

It's not expected to get materially better in the near term. Analysts see revenue rising less than 5% this fiscal year before improving to an 8% jump in fiscal 2026. Put another way, we're just barely halfway through a five-year run of single-digit top-line gains.

Image source: Getty Images.

Think different

The bullish counter to the doom and gloom is that Apple is transforming itself into a services company. Margins will be materially juicier on that end of the business, so Apple shouldn't be judged solely by its top-line stagnancy. That's fair, but consider that the compound annual growth for earnings from continuing operations over the past three years is a modest 2.4%. The bottom line isn't keeping up with inflation, either.

There are some pretty good reasons for Apple's streak of blowout results every three years ending last year. The $3,500 Apple Vision Pro extended reality headset that hit the market 12 months ago wasn't a hit. It's not a surprise that customers are flinching at the high price tag, but now reports are surfacing about Apple nixing the augmented reality glasses project it was working on as another potential needle mover that is now lost in the haystack.

Fiscal 2025 is also off to a problematic start. The fall launch of the iPhone 16 was hyped up to be the consumer tech giant's overdue push into smartphone AI. Last week's financial update showed that iPhone sales declined 1% in the first full quarter of iPhone 16 availability.

There are some silver linings here. Folks may upgrade to the new iPhone as Apple's AI platform evolves. Maybe the iPhone 17 coming out later this year is the next great launch that jump-starts Apple's flagship business. Even the Vision Pro headset may get a second shot at success if new models can achieve kinder sticker prices. The bottom line is also expected to deliver double-digit growth in these next two fiscal years, rising 20% and 12%, respectively.

The challenge here is that Apple is trading for more than 30 times this new fiscal year's expected earnings. It's a steep forward multiple with Apple growing at a much slower pace. It's going to need a new hit offering, but thankfully that's what Apple and its long history of innovation has consistently done.

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Rick Munarriz has positions in Apple. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Apple. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.