Apple’s 2020 stock split gave investors four shares for every one share held.
Apple completed a four-for-one stock split on August 31, 2020. An investor who owned one Apple share before the split owned four afterward, while the price of each individual share was adjusted to keep the investor’s total value approximately unchanged at the moment of the split.
Stock splits do not directly increase a company’s market capitalization. They change the number of shares and the per-share price in opposite directions. Apple’s split was therefore a notable event for accessibility and trading psychology, not an instant creation of corporate value.
The split was also relevant to the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which is price-weighted. Apple joined the Dow in 2015, and its lower post-split share price changed the index’s component weighting. Tesla carried out a five-for-one split in 2020, making the two events easy to confuse.