These 2 Companies May Join Apple in the $2 Trillion Market Cap Club

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Aug 24, 8:25AM EDT · Published Aug 22, 9:15AM EDT

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These 2 Companies May Join Apple in the $2 Trillion Market Cap Club — © Daniel L. Lu (user:dllu) / Wikimedia Commons

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL | AAPL Price Prediction) stock has risen quickly over the past year and is now 134% higher than it was 365 days ago. This has taken its market cap above $2 trillion, the first time an American company has crossed that mark. As several major tech public corporations’ prospects have surged, based on strong earnings and earnings forecasts, two other companies are approaching the $2 trillion mark. Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) has a market cap of $1.65 tillion. Microsoft Corp.’s (NASDAQ: MSFT) is $1.61 tillion.
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Apple’s stock price increase has been based on better than expected iPhone sales, a belief that sales of the new iPhone will surge at year-end, and its growing services business. The reason for improved prospects for Amazon and Microsoft are just as convincing.

Amazon’s revenue rose sharply last quarter, as people moved a huge amount of their retail activity online. Brick-and-mortar retailers could not compete because, in many cases, their stores were closed. In the most recent quarter, revenue reached $89 billion, up from $63.4 billion in the year-ago period. Amazon still has its best revenue-producing periods ahead of it this year. Prime Day, when it offers special prices on hundreds of thousands of items, driving what is often the best revenue period of Amazon’s year, will be in October. And Amazon’s largest quarter is the final one of the year, when it is swamped by sales from holiday shoppers.
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Amazon also continues to be the leader in one of the largest business-to-business sectors of the tech economy: cloud computing. Its Amazon Web Services had revenue of $10.8 billion last quarter, up from $8.3 billion in the year earlier. It also posted a very high 31% operating margin.

Microsoft is another leader in cloud computing, which has driven both its revenue and its stock price. Most of the cloud computing sales fall under its Azure brand. Its figures broke almost every expectation when most recently reported. Microsoft also has done well in hardware sales, which were not a large part of its sales just a few years ago. Its Surface personal computer products and Xbox have had strong sales through much of the year. This is expected to rise as people both work from home and rely on products like Xbox for in-home entertainment. Its new Xbox Series X is expected to launch for the fourth quarter.

Over the past year, Amazon’s stock is up 80% and Microsoft’s is 55% higher. Each has trailed Apple over the period. The two companies have prospects that could narrow the spread within weeks, if not months.
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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.