It took a while, but now the first of the tech giants took turns and the graph is extended with Apple. Hearing what is told about Apple – how rich it is and the incredible amount of cash being piled up – we would have expected it to be the first in our list. Then again, the list is not a recent one, so things might have changed and cash is not the same as total assets, of course.
Of course we could go on immediately and look into the financial status of Apple, but I won’t. Looking at the history of Apple at Wikipedia, thinking I knew a lot about how Jobs and Wozniak started their new company, there was a surprise for me. It seems Apple had a third founder who quit rather early for good reasons: Ronald Wayne.
It’s an interesting story and looking at Apple’s worth today compared to the USD 800 he got for his 10% of the shares back then, we wonder why. At the same time a lot of other promising companies didn’t make it for different reasnons and of course Apple could have been one of those. Yet, dividing Apple’s total value by the number of failing companies throughout the decades this risk-weighted result could still be higher than the lousy USD 800. By the way, anybody interested in taking a 10% participation in AnRep3D for let’s say USD 1000?
Photo by Tranmautritam on Pexels
Okay, it’s time to get back to the 3D-graph, combining all kinds of financial information of the companies we selected so far. Until now it was – let’s be honest – a rather boring collection of shoe-boxes standing vertically, with green layers to the top. The sizes vary a little bit and we were able to discover some interesting things. However, when I looked at the graph with Apple in it, I thought I had made a mistake and started to look at the annual reports a second time. Well, you can look for yourself. The front view was not so unusual. The thick green roof shows that Apple makes a lot of profit, but that’s all. The 2018 graph to the front fits very well in the row of largest companies in the world.
Double-clicking the screenshot will open the 3D-graph in your browser. For maniputalion of this 3D-graph: Clicking the right mouse-button and moving the mouse up and down at the same time, will zoom the graph in and out. Clicking left while moving the mouse will tilt the graph in different directions. Double clicking in the graph translates it and readjusts the centre at the same time. Just try it – If you don’t know how to get the normal position back, refresh the page in your browser.
Then, turning to the side, the surprise came up making me look twice. In 2008 we see a dwarf and it’s for real! Apple used to be a rather modest company but kept growing. In 2013 (in the middle) it was already close to Toyota and in 2018 it can be compared to the oil-majors.
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oking from above, we can see that Apple’s equity (width of the building) is not very different from the equity of some other companies like Volkswagen, BP and Toyota, but the total assets are. This is represented by the depth of a building and for Apple it’s half as much as for the others. Since total Assets = Total Liabilities + Equity this can only mean that Apple neither has a lot of loans nor suppliers yet to be paid. Only five years later, the situation is different and suddenly the Apple building looks very similar to the other ones when looking from above. Will this be the influence of Tim Cook, turning previous innovations into money?
Finally we can have a look from aside and see clearly how Apple’s revenue and profit has been growing, while some other companies saw their revenue go down. Actually, Apple should have been added before Toyota and even Volkswagen!
Please click at the screenshots and open the real 3D-graph in your browser. Try and move the graph and zoom, tilt or pivot. It can be done as it is just standard HTML5 (with Javascript).
For more background on the 3D-graph generator, download our white-paper together with the 3D-graphs (html-format, available as zip). Or download the free demo-package to try the 3D-graph generator yourself. New posts will be announced on Twitter: @AnRep3D and our Youtube-channel offers short explanatory movies on the 3D-graphs and the generator creating them.
Annual reports presented as 3D graphs 