Some striking facts about money tech companies are making

The Associated Press

Everyone knows the tech industry is rich, but it can be challenging to get your head around just how much money it’s minting.

Four of the industry’s giants — Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon and Google parent Alphabet — reported unexpectedly large profits this week. (Amazon’s profit more than doubled Thursday.) A fifth, Apple, releases earnings on Tuesday. These companies are the largest on Earth, at least in terms of their market value.

The large profits come even as the tech industry, notably Facebook, faces questions about the extent to which companies depend on collecting personal data on users to fuel their advertising revenue.

Raw financial figures only tell you so much, though. Here are some facts you might not know about the lucre the technology industry is rolling in.

The five largest tech companies are collectively worth more than the entire economy of the United Kingdom. Investors value these companies at $3.5 trillion; the gross domestic product of the U.K. was $2.6 trillion in 2017, according to the International Monetary Fund. Only four national economies are larger than the combined tech giants: those of the U.S., China, Japan and Germany.

The same five tech companies are worth more than the next 11 most valuable U.S. corporations, a list that includes JPMorgan Chase, Johnson & Johnson and Walmart.

Apple makes roughly as much money every day as 2,500 average U.S. households can expect to see in a year. That’s $151 million, a figure calculated from the company’s expected profit in the January-March quarter and the median household income of $57,230, as reported by the Census Bureau.

For a more prosaic comparison, Apple makes almost three times what ExxonMobil does; the oil giant had an average daily profit of $54 million last year.