This Is the Most Valuable Company in the World

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Aug 23, 11:15AM EDT

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This Is the Most Valuable Company in the World — © Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

Market capitalization is the way the investment community says how much a company’s total value is. In general, it is calculated by the number of shares outstanding that trade multiplied by the price per share. Some of the most valuable companies have doubled in value in the past three years, in part because the general market has surged so much. The value of the S&P 500 has doubled since the pandemic bottom of set on March 23, 2020.

The first company ever to pass the $1 trillion market cap level was Apple, on August 2, 2018. Since then, that number is up by well over 100% to $2.45 billion. Four other companies currently have market caps above $1 trillion. Microsoft is at $2.29 trillion, Alphabet (owner of Google and YouTube) is at $1.84 trillion, Amazon is at $1.62 trillion and Facebook is at $1.03 trillion. The value of these companies has made some of their founders among the richest people in the world. Most notable among them are Jeff Bezos of Amazon and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook.

Apple has become among the largest companies in the world. Last quarter, it had revenue of $81.4 billion. It is among the most profitable, with net income of $21.7 billion. Apple also holds marketable securities of $132 billion. When Apple announced the numbers, Luca Maestri, Apple’s chief financial officer, commented:

Our record June quarter operating performance included new revenue records in each of our geographic segments, double-digit growth in each of our product categories, and a new all-time high for our installed base of active devices.

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Apple does not announce unit sales by product line, as it once did. However, the consensus among analysts is that the iPhone is by far the largest contributor to revenue. In 2021, Apple may sell as many as 250 million iPhones. This should be boosted by the release of what probably will be called the iPhone 13. It is expected to be released around the third week in September. That period on the calendar is an Apple tradition for releases of major new products.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.