Google’s parent company Alphabet has hit the market capitalization of $1 trillion. The company reached the market cap milestone on Thursday as it saw its share price jump by 0.87 percent on the day.
Alphabet joins Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon in this exclusive $1 trillion club on Wall Street. Chinese oil and gas company PetroChina was the first company ever to hit the $1 trillion mark in 2007.
Apple was the first US company to hit the trillion dollars milestone back in August 2018. Amazon followed it the very next month, while Microsoft joined the duo in April 2019. Amazon has since dropped below that figure, though. The e-commerce giant is currently valued at about $930 billion.
Apple and Microsoft, meanwhile, are still valued at more than a trillion dollars, with a market cap of nearly $1.4 trillion and $1.3 trillion respectively.
Alphabet hitting the $1 trillion market cap means this is the first time that three US companies are in that club at the same time. Facebook is likely to join them next. The social media giant is currently valued at about $620 billion.
Saudi Arabian oil giant Saudi Aramco is the most valuable company globally, and the only company ever to hit the $2 trillion market cap. It made its debut on the Riyadh stock exchange in December last year at a valuation of $2 trillion. The company is currently worth around $1.8 trillion.
Alphabet off to a red hot start in 2020
Alphabet has had a bumpy couple of years. Allegations of sexual misconduct and incidents like the 20,000-person Google Walkout employee protest in November 2018 didn’t add to the company’s reputation.
In December last year, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin announced plans to relinquish control of Alphabet. Google CEO Sundar Pichai took over from them to lead the whole conglomerate.
In 2019, Alphabet’s stocks slightly underperformed the S&P 500. The company’s share price rose 28.2 percent compared to the S&P 500’s 28.9 percent. However, that doesn’t tell the complete story.
Alphabet’s revenue for the first three quarters of 2019 jumped 19 percent year on year (YoY) while its operating profits saw a 29 percent YoY growth. It’ll announce fourth-quarter earnings on February 3 and industry watchers are again expecting YoY revenue growth of almost 20 percent.
Alphabet is now off to a red hot start this year as well. The company’s shares have already surged more than 8 percent in the first 16 days of 2020. The rest of the tech sector is soaring too, though. Much of this surge is attributed to optimism around the US-China trade deal.
The world’s two largest economies signed the first phase of the trade deal on Wednesday. Nasdaq, S&P 500, and Dow all closed at record highs on Thursday.