Google surpasses Apple as world's most valuable company
After beating Wall Street expectations for the fourth quarter of 2015, Google umbrella company Alphabet usurped Apple as the most valuable company in the world on Monday in after hours trading.
For the fourth quarter, Alphabet raked in $21.3 billion in total sales and adjusted profits of $8.67 for every Class A share, the company said in a prepared statement. Total sales were up 18 year over year, while advertising revenue was up 17 percent for the same period.
Shares popped after Alphabet's announcement, rising 1.22 percent to hit $752 per share in normal trading with a market capitalization of $517.17 billion. The stock kept rising after the bell, at one point touching $813 per share, bringing its market cap up to $559.13 billion. Apple ended the day down at $96.43 with a market cap of $538.7 billion.
Alphabet is seeing a renaissance in growth as its advertising business made big gains this quarter. The company's services division also saw wider adoption including Gmail, which passed one billion users in quarter four. Under the Alphabet umbrella, Google's "moonshot" projects" -- Wi-Fi balloons, self-driving cars, glucose-reading contact lenses, human longevity -- saw advancements, but cost the firm more than $3.56 billion over the last three months of 2015.
Apple, meanwhile, is losing ground after sitting as the world's most valuable company for more than three years. The iPhone maker reached the position in 2011 and throughout most of 2012 before being unseated by Exxon in 2013. Apple retook the lead later that year.
Despite bringing in revenue of $75.9 billion in a record-breaking first quarter, Apple stock is shedding value amid iPhone growth concerns and quickly diminishing iPad sales. For the current quarter, Apple expects year-over-year iPhone unit sales to decline for the first time since the handset launched in 2007.
As of this writing, Alphabet is trading up more than 5 percent at a market cap that will make it the world's most valuable company if those gains hold through to the opening bell tomorrow.
For the fourth quarter, Alphabet raked in $21.3 billion in total sales and adjusted profits of $8.67 for every Class A share, the company said in a prepared statement. Total sales were up 18 year over year, while advertising revenue was up 17 percent for the same period.
Shares popped after Alphabet's announcement, rising 1.22 percent to hit $752 per share in normal trading with a market capitalization of $517.17 billion. The stock kept rising after the bell, at one point touching $813 per share, bringing its market cap up to $559.13 billion. Apple ended the day down at $96.43 with a market cap of $538.7 billion.
Alphabet is seeing a renaissance in growth as its advertising business made big gains this quarter. The company's services division also saw wider adoption including Gmail, which passed one billion users in quarter four. Under the Alphabet umbrella, Google's "moonshot" projects" -- Wi-Fi balloons, self-driving cars, glucose-reading contact lenses, human longevity -- saw advancements, but cost the firm more than $3.56 billion over the last three months of 2015.
Apple, meanwhile, is losing ground after sitting as the world's most valuable company for more than three years. The iPhone maker reached the position in 2011 and throughout most of 2012 before being unseated by Exxon in 2013. Apple retook the lead later that year.
Despite bringing in revenue of $75.9 billion in a record-breaking first quarter, Apple stock is shedding value amid iPhone growth concerns and quickly diminishing iPad sales. For the current quarter, Apple expects year-over-year iPhone unit sales to decline for the first time since the handset launched in 2007.
As of this writing, Alphabet is trading up more than 5 percent at a market cap that will make it the world's most valuable company if those gains hold through to the opening bell tomorrow.
Comments
Products were much more buggy in the Jobs era, even though there were fewer of them, not to mention that resources were limited to the point that Apple had to shift back and forth from iOS to OS X. Now throw in two more iOS derived operating systems, and I would still say that products are better now.
Yes their relative market caps make sense now... /s
Kudos to them.
Apple truly can and must do better on conveying some sense of who or what it wants to be 2, 5, 10 years out. This is not rocket science. Every major company does it in some form or the other. That's a huge part of what CEOs are paid to do. It involves much more than talking about "industrial era taxes", "dollar versus yuan", etc.
I realize a lot of people here do not own AAPL and therefore couldn't care less, but for those of us who have been very long-term shareholders of the company, this news hurts. There is simply no need for such underachievement. It's bewildering.
(And, please spare me the vacuous stuff about "Wall Street casino" and such; those are simply sound bites).
One day advertisers are going to wake up and realize that most of them are pissing their money away with this company.
Google is in the business of selling the information. Apple is in the business of selling the product with some services. Apart from music and the apps, they are not very good in anything else and even here it takes them years to move over a single milestone partly due to nature of the business and partly due to nature of Apple
Market multiples are often broadly and on company-specific basis just a reflection of sentiment from the collective crowd. The sentiment from the market today on Apple is that nobody has any confidence in their ability to navigate this road bump and continue to grow. I don't get this hardware vs software crap..... apple has been sitting on tens of billions of cash for years, they could have diversified their revenue stream but chose not to. Why should management get a pass now for doing nothing when many people have for years said they law of large numbers and saturation would catch up to them. Guess what Tim Cook, it did, you just had your head buried in the sand.
I have no idea what Apple wants to be in 5 years nor does anyone on this board nor does the market. Their primary product growth is negative/shrinking (according to mgmt), why should the market give them a market multiple when mgmt can't articulate a vision for what they will be in 3 years let alone 5, something every other company on earth does???
Oh and I have been an Apple user since 1998, but since Apple went backwards on the Mac Mini upgrade, created a MacPro only the seriously rich can afford, busted up the Aperture party, went all stupid and thin on everything....I've lost my patience with Apple.