Worth $1.02 Trillion, one Apple Equals India’s Top 50 firms Put Together

The value of one Apple Inc is now nearly the same as the cumulative value of India’s top 50 blue chip companies. The iPhone maker’s market capitalisation at $1.02 trillion is a few million away from Nifty 50 index’s value of $1.18 trillion and may soon surpass it if the Cupertino-based technology giant continues its stellar run on the bourses.

Apple posted revenues of $53.3 billion for its fiscal third quarter of 2018, up 17 per cent year-on-year. Net income stood at $11.5 billion, a 32 per cent surge over the previous year. Its shares closed at $207.4 apiece Thursday.

The world’s top five technology companies — Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook — boast of a total market capitalisation of $4.1 trillion, more than thrice that of India’s Nifty 50 companies and nearly twice that of India’s total market cap.

Their combined m-cap is larger than the 2017 gross domestic product (GDP) value of all countries barring America, China and Japan, World Bank data shows.

The share prices of Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon have run up between 18 per cent and 57 per cent this year, beating 38 stocks from Nifty 50 and 44 stocks from Nifty Next 50. Facebook is the only laggard, down 0.1 per cent in the year to date, hit by the recent weak guidance and the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Most of the US tech giants have consistently surpassed revenue growth and profit expectations for several quarters now. Besides being fundamentally tech firms, most of these companies are consumer-oriented. The positive outlook on the US economy also augurs well for these companies.

Apple has been growing on account of robust device sales. Its service offerings through app downloads and media consumption has also seen a surge. On the flip side, newer offerings such as Apple Watch and audio players have seen limited traction, said experts.

Facebook and Alphabet have benefited from a big shift in media consumption. Consumption of news and video content, for instance, has shifted to mobile devices and the internet from television and newspapers. So, advertisers have moved their spending to these new media.

Amazon has benefited from its lead in cloud computing and e-commerce. – Business Standard