MARKET GIANTS
Seven interesting facts to help you understaned the enormity of that sum
Seven financial facts you might not know about the tech industry’s biggest players,
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.
But their raw financial figures only tell you so much. Here are seven 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 U.K. Investors value these companies at $3.5 trillion (U.S.); the gross domestic product of the U.K. was $2.6 trillion in 2017, according to the Interna- tional Monetary Fund. Only four national economies are larger than the combined tech giants: the U.S., China, Japan and Germany. The same 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 reported by the U.S. Census Bureau.
While you were stalking your ex yesterday, Facebook made $1.6 million. The average user spends 42 minutes a day on the service, according to eMarketer estimates. Facebook’s profits were almost $5 billion in the first quarter — $56 million a day, $2.3 million an hour, $39,000 a minute.
The two big tech companies you hardly ever pay directly — Google and Facebook — can afford to offer you free services thanks to their lock on digital advertising. The two will sell an estimated $61 billion in U.S. online ads this year, according to research firm eMarketer. That’s more than a quarter of expected U.S. spending on all forms of advertising ($221 billion).
Mark Zuckerberg made $6.6 billion on Thursday, the day after Facebook reported earnings. The company’s stock jumped 9 per cent on the news; the Facebook co-founder owned 457.1 million shares as of Dec. 31. Of course, when Facebook’s stock slid 8 per cent in a day after the Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal broke, he lost more than $6 billion.
With a single move, Amazon could create $2 billion out of thin air. The company just said it will raise the annual price of its Prime membership to $119 from $99. Given that there are now more than 100 million Prime members — and assuming they don’t flee — that’s a good chunk of change.
If you’d put $10,000 into Apple stock in September 1997 when co-founder Steve Jobs came back as CEO, your stake would be worth $2.1 million today.