(NASDAQ: AAPL) has split its stock five times since its IPO in 1980. It executed three 2-for-1 splits in 1987, 2000, and 2005, a 7-for-1 split in 2014, and a 4-for-1 split in 2020. Those splits would have turned 100 shares bought prior to the first one into 22,400 shares -- and anyone who bought 100 shares at its IPO price of $22 and held on would have seen their initial $2,200 investment turn into a holding worth more than $4.2 million today.

Now, those stock splits didn't actually make Apple's shares more valuable. They simply carved its existing shares into smaller ownership slices of the company, which reduced their prices and made them easier to trade on the options market where a single contract needs to be tethered to 100 shares. The underlying valuation of the company, and of investors' positions in it, remained the same.

Image source: Apple.

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Source Fool.com