(CNN) — Apple. Microsoft. Saudi Aramco. And now Alphabet.
The club of public companies worth $1 trillion added a new member this week, with Google’s parent company topping that valuation on Thursday. It’s the first time three American companies have been worth at least $1 trillion at the same time.
The view from Mountain View: Alphabet shares have already gained more than 8% this year. The rise follows the December announcement that Google CEO Sundar Pichai would also take over as head of Alphabet, succeeding Larry Page. And the company’s ad business remains a money-making machine. Ad revenues grew to nearly $34 billion in the third quarter of 2019, up 17% from the same period the previous year.
Amazon out: Apple became the first public company to pass the $1 trillion mark in August 2018 and has pushed higher since. Amazon, the second firm to hit that level, has dropped out of the club, but it still has more members than ever before.
The growing ranks of $1 trillion companies inevitably gets investors chattering about whether market valuations are a bubble waiting to pop. Years of ultra low interest rates and solid US economic growth have driven the longest bull market on Wall Street in history. The Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq all hit fresh records on Thursday.
But the consensus among analysts is that stocks still have room to run in 2020. Gene Munster, a veteran Apple analyst at Loup Ventures, sees Apple shares — currently at $315— rising to $350 a pop in 2020 and $400 in 2021.
Tech’s dominance: Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook are now worth a collective $5.2 trillion — or nearly one fifth of the S&P 500.
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