Tim Cook announced today that he is stepping down as CEO If you bought Apple stock on the day Tim Cook became CEO (2011/08/24), from $13.44 (after two stock splits) to $273.24 when he announced his resignation as CEO today. Over the past 14 years, it has increased by 20.33 times, with an annualized rate of return (CAGR) of 22.8%. It outperformed the S&P 500 by 13.2% and the Nasdaq by 17% during the same period. If continuous dividends are included, the yield will be higher. As the successor of Steve Jobs, Tim Cook was not highly regarded by many when he first took office. I believe that although he is good at operations, he cannot steer Apple, a company driven by innovation. As a comparison, let's also take a look at how Steve Jobs brought returns to shareholders. We won't talk about earlier years, starting from Steve Jobs returning to Apple as interim CEO on September 16, 1997, and handing over the baton to Tim Cook on August 24, 2011. At that time, Apple's stock price was around $0.15 (market value of $2.3 billion), and by 2011 it had risen 88.6 times to $13.44 (market value of $350 billion), with an annualized return rate of up to 38.3%. At that time, Steve Jobs faced a mess of disintegration, with only a few weeks' worth of cash in his account. He revived Apple through the iMac, OS X, iPod, iPhone, and iPad product lines. The Apple of the Jobs era was innovative, making it difficult for competitors to reach, from near death to a great company; The Apple of the Cook era was a continuation and a commercial miracle.