Tim Cook announced today that he will step down as CEO.

If you bought Apple stock on the day Tim Cook took office as CEO (August 24, 2011), starting at $13.44 (having gone through two stock splits), and held until today’s announcement of his resignation at $273.24.
It has increased by 20.33 times over more than 14 years, with an annualized return (CAGR) of 22.8%.
Outperforming the S&P 500’s 13.2% and the Nasdaq’s 17% during the same period.
Including continuous dividends, the returns would be even higher.
As Steve Jobs’ successor, many people didn’t have high expectations for Tim Cook when he first took office.
They thought he was good at operations but couldn’t steer Apple, a company driven by innovation.
Let’s also look at how much return Steve Jobs brought to shareholders.
We won’t talk about earlier years; starting from when Jobs returned to Apple as interim CEO on September 16, 1997, until he handed over 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 rose to $13.44, an 88.6-fold increase (market value of $350 billion), with an annualized return of 38.3%.
Back then, Jobs faced a mess of a company on the brink of collapse, with cash on hand only enough to last a few weeks.
He revived Apple through product lines like iMac, OS X, iPod, iPhone, and iPad.
Apple during Jobs’ era was about innovation, making it difficult for competitors to catch up, transforming from a near-dead company into a great one;
Apple during Cook’s era is about continuation and preservation, and it’s also a business miracle.