Report: Apple’s Cook Saves $80 Billion in Market Value on China Turmoil

Apple (AAPL) chief executive Tim Cook is showing himself to be a leader not only on the product and strategy front but also in calming the company’s market value in choppy economic waters.

With the stock market in a freefall following China’s market turmoil–the Dow dropped 500 points two days in a row and lost 1,670 points in five days as Apple’s stock tumbled 10 percent to start this week–Cook on Monday sent an email to “Mad Money” television host Jim Cramer asserting the vendor’s China market showed “strong growth,” the Financial Times reported.

“I get updates on our performance in China every day, including this morning, and I can tell you that we have continued to experience strong growth for our business in China through July and August,” Cook wrote, the report said.

“Growth in iPhone activations has actually accelerated over the past few weeks, and we have had the best performance of the year for the App Store in China during the last two weeks,” he said.

Cook reportedly acknowledged that commenting publicly on fluctuations in Apple’s share price was an unusual move on his part, typically reserved for the vendor’s quarterly earnings reports, if at all.

Still, it may have been an effective one. By the end of the day, Apple had recouped some $78 billion in market valuation it had lost as its share price crept back over the $100 mark.

The Financial Times reported that Apple confirmed Cook’s comments to Cramer.

For the past two years, Cook repeatedly has pointed to China as the vendor’s geographic growth engine. On visit there last May he said that at some point China’s sales volume of Apple products will exceed the U.S.

“it’s just a matter of time, he said. “It’s very difficult to predict when exactly it will occur, but if we do our jobs right, it will occur.”

More recently, on Apple’s July earnings call Cook said he remained “very bullish” on China.

For the full year 2014, China contributed about 17 percent to Apple’s revenue, up from 15.8 percent the prior year and 11.7 percent the year before that. In the first three months of this year, sales of larger-screen iPhones in China outpaced the U.S. for the first time. And, in Apple’s Q2, China iPhone sales jumped 40 percent over last year.

Part of Apple’s hefty growth strategy in China is its plan to double the number of stores it has there by the end of this year.