Apple to enter 119-year old Dow Jones Industrials Average

In with the new and out with the old, consumer technology giant Apple will push AT&T out of the over more than one century old Dow Jones Industrials Average on 18 March, with the change due to become effective at the opening bell of the next day.

The Cupertino, California-based company now sports the largest market capitalisation in the world, which was at $736.3bn at last count.

Although the firm’s forward price-to-earnings multiple now stands at just 8.56, its price-to-sales ratio is a hefty 3.76.

To take note of, less than ten years ago Apple had been written off by many analysts as a “cash-cow” for dividends whose phase of highest growth had passed.

Since then it has come to be almost an industrial sector unto itself.

The 119-year old Dow Jones Industrials Average purports to reflect the broad make-up of the US economy.

Apple’s entry into the veteran benchmark, and AT&T’s (American Telephone&Telegraph) ouster, was triggered by Visa's recent 4:1 stock split, which will become effective at the same time.

The post-split adjusted lower price of Visa will reduce the weighting of the Information Technology sector in the index, the West coast-based company explained in a press release.

“The DJIA is price weighted so extremely high stock prices tend to distort the index while very low stock prices have little impact. The timing of Apple’s addition to the DJIA hinged on two stock splits: Apple’s 7:1 last June and Visa’s 4:1 on March 19th this year. Apple’s split brought the stock price down closer to the median price in the DJIA,” the press release read.

As of 14:53 the company’s stock was trading higher by 1.08% to $127.78.