100 Most Valuable Public US Companies by Market Cap and HQ Metro; Dec 17, 2019

[badrunner]

Amazon's entire business model is based on the systematic annihilation of Main Street USA and they're doing a bang up job of it so far.

[craigs]

Originally Posted by badrunner

Amazon's entire business model is based on the systematic annihilation of Main Street USA and they're doing a bang up job of it so far.

That is also Walmart's business model, and they have been doing a bang-up job of it for a lot longer.

[Yuri]

I don’t buy anything online, except for tickets. Shops are essential for me, it’s part of the experience. Otherwise I can do just fine without spending money on something that I won’t need anyway.

[Shawn]

Take all of the following with a grain of salt: I see the inside, but only so deep.

In the industry, we refer to the Global 4.5. The 4 are: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. The 0.5 is Microsoft. Out of these, Facebook is by far the most single-trick pony and is by far the most exposed to oversight risk. Facebook's entire business model is predicated on the continual monetization of its users' behavior, both directly and inferred. Once (and this is where you have to take that grain of salt - it is "once" and not "if") the EU further tightens their GDPR guidelines to the point where inferred personal identification information aggregation is illegal, then Facebook literally has no way of making money. Google makes a shit ton off of this processes too, but unlike Facebook, has many other revenue streams to call on. Facebook will be forced to spin Insta and WhatsApp off at some point, a self-inflicted wound which could have been avoided if Facebook didn't existentially need to start aggregating user data across three separate platforms into single profile silos.

Facebook won't be on this list in 15 years. It probably won't exist as we know it today.

Google is the second most-overexposed to regulatory risk out of the Global 4.5. Alphabet is trying to diversify, but the vaaaast majority of Alphabet's revenue comes from targeted media . . . which is just as at risk as Facebook's only revenue stream. The difference is YouTube, which is one of the most valuable and self-sustaining media ecosystems ever born. Even without the programmatic media offering to advertisers, YouTube can still rake in the cash through old-school block impression sales. YouTube has captive audience levels surpassing all major TV networks combined at any given moment in time, and all those eyeballs, all those ad impressions, are tangible. And they'll only increase as we further migrate away from linear media.

Alphabet should still be on this list in 15 years, but it won't be at the top.

Amazon and Apple have much healthier profiles and far brighter futures because their revenue streams are beautifully mixed across a variety of disparate-yet-linked offers and services. They own tangible assets, their regulatory risk exposure is either well-insulated (Amazon) or in Apple's case, so negligible that they've turned this into a branding point of pride. I trust Apple with my user data to an extent that I would never, ever trust any of the others.

Both Apple and Amazon will continue to top the lists of US-listed publicly traded companies for the foreseeable future. Amazon will win, though: Apple's brand strength is also its limiting factor. It will never lower itself to selling mid-range anythings, thus pricing itself out of market share in most markets where future growth will take place. It's not that Indians and Bangladeshis don't like Apple - it's just that 99% of these markets can only afford an Oppo or some other Chinese shit brand.

People forget about Microsoft, but they're lean and mean now. And their pivot to focusing on enterprise solutions instead of the consumer end-user has paid off big-time. In the end, I think Azure will win the cloud: who do you trust more with your company's sales and customer data - Google, Amazon, or Microsoft? Google and Amazon are likely competing with your company in the same space you're in. You really want to trust your competitor with managing your entire digital data infrastructure, including all your users' data and all your priceless 1st party data - the very data Google and Amazon need to sell media? <Lana Kane>"Noooooooope."</Lana Kane>

As an aside, market caps for publicly traded companies aren't all that useful a long-term comparison tool. They capture snapshots at specific points in time: relative sizes, not absolutes, at exactly the time the comparisons were made.

We all understand that publicly traded companies' stock values are largely (and unhealthily in my opinion) derived from whether or not said company hit quarterly and annual growth targets. Growth is the overriding factor here. Not sustained growth, not manageable growth, just incremental growth - full stop. This is what leads to market caps exceeding 100x annual earnings. In that sense, the market values of Facebook and Google are as dc_denizen points out, grossly overpriced and built on some pretty shaky assumptions. Like that the EU won't further enhance the GDPR, thus allowing for the incremental user and sales growth institutional investors need to see in order to prop the stock values up more. These are foolish assumptions to live or die by.

[JManc]

^ Spot on. I long since dumped all my Facebook and Google stock and upped my position in Microsoft and haven't regretted it. I'm long on Amazon but they have a lot of hurdles ahead of them especially as they try to dominate every industry they partake.

Apple seems to have slid into solid blue chip territory. It's stable, profitable and a known quantity. Plus they have gobs of cash.

[dimondpark]

Originally Posted by Ronin

So Facebook is listed under “San Francisco,”
yet Google five miles south is “San Jose.” 🤔

Yes I know its weird.

Menlo Park is in the SF Metro and Mountain View is in the SJ Metro.

[Shawn]

Originally Posted by JManc

^ Spot on. I long since dumped all my Facebook and Google stock and upped my position in Microsoft and haven't regretted it. I'm long on Amazon but they have a lot of hurdles ahead of them especially as they try to dominate every industry they partake.

Apple seems to have slid into solid blue chip territory. It's stable, profitable and a known quantity. Plus they have gobs of cash.

The thing that makes Amazon relatively unique is that they don’t slavishly chase quarterly PBT targets to appease institutional shareholders. This is a strength and frees Bezos to look long term and more importantly follow through. You’ll never get dividends from Amazon, and they don’t care.

[austlar1]

Originally Posted by badrunner

Amazon's entire business model is based on the systematic annihilation of Main Street USA and they're doing a bang up job of it so far.

Walmart took down Main Street a while back. Amazon is closing malls, but that is just part of what they are all about. Amazon is known for its disruption of well-established industries through technological innovation and mass scale. It is the world's largest online marketplace, AI assistance provider, and cloud computing platform as measured by revenue and market capitalization. They are also a major player in digital streaming and more recently in television and movie production.

[mhays]

20 years ago, the largest market cap was Microsoft at $583,000,000,000. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/a-v...ap-1999-today/

As for Youtube, do they count total plays, or have a metric for which ones are in the background (like music while doing other things) and which ones are ad-blocked? If they ever kick off ad-blockers, they cease to exist for a good percentage of the population...I'd go back to CDs before letting a commercial play on my computer.

[DrakeFrst]

Thank you for the info, was interesting to look at. When i've read the title i was like: :"yeah, i know who top-5 companies will be", as everyone else did probably, too.
Amazon needs a good competitor badly, i agree but i can't see it happening anytime soon!

[dimondpark]

Originally Posted by DrakeFrst

Thank you for the info, was interesting to look at. When i've read the title i was like: :"yeah, i know who top-5 companies will be", as everyone else did probably, too.
Amazon needs a good competitor badly, i agree but i can't see it happening anytime soon!

Youre welcome.

Here is 101-150

$60,649 RTN-Raytheon(Boston)
$60,232 ZTS-Zoetis(New York)
$59,024 CL-Colgate Palmolive(New York)
$58,668 MU-Micron Technology(Boise)
$58,285 NOC-Northrop Grumman(Washington)
$55,960 VRTX-Vertex(Boston)
$55,641 AMAT-Applied Materials(San Jose)
$55,359 CCI-Crown Castle(Houston)
$54,737 DE-Deere & Co(Davenport)
$54,627 SLB-Schlumberger(Houston)

$54,239 GPN-Global Payments(Atlanta)
$53,611 BIIB-Biogen(Boston)
$52,387 LVS-Las Vegas Sands(Las Vegas)
$51,879 GM-General Motors(Detroit)
$51,776 NOW-Servicenow(San Jose)
$51,396 UBER-Uber(San Francisco)
$51,152 ICE-Intercontinental Exchange(Atlanta)
$50,792 WBA-Walgreens Boots Alliance(Chicago)
$50,230 PSX-Phillips 66(Houston)
$50,204 NSC-Norfolk Southern(Virginia Beach)

$49,145 EW-Edwards Lifesciences(Los Angeles)
$48,192 HUM-Humana(Louisville)
$47,629 AMD-Advanced Micro Devices(San Jose)
$47,547 ILMN-Illumina(San Diego)
$47,344 DD-Du Pont de Nemours(Midland, MI Micro Area)
$46,930 KMI-Kinder Morgan(Houston)
$46,355 SPG-Simon Property Group(Indianapolis)
$46,046 AEP-American Electric(Columbus)
$45,808 EOG-Eog Resources(Houston)
$45,083 EQUIX-Equinix(San Francisco)

$45,342 ATVI-Activation Blizzard(Los Angeles)
$44,104 EXC-Exelon(Chicago)
$43,091 ADI-Analog Devices(Boston)
$42,894 SYY-Sysco(Houston)
$42,713 BAX-Baxter International(Chicago)
$41,785 LRCX-Lam Research(San Francisco)
$40,773 REGN-Regeneron(New York)
$39,550 MPC-Marathon Petroleum(Findlay, OH Micro Area)
$39,539 DG-Dollar General(Nashville)

$38,810 VLO-Valero(San Antonio)
$38,317 FDX-Federal Express(Memphis)
$37,886 DAL-Delta Airlines(Atlanta)
$37,825 F-Ford Motor (Detroit)
$37,140 WDAY-Workday(San Francisco)
$34,544 OXY-Occidental Petroleum(Houston)
$34,124 CTSH-Cognizant(New York)
$33,557 NEM-Newmont Mining(Denver)
$32,451 TSN-Tyson Foods(Fayetteville)
$32,141 GIS-General Mills(Minneapolis)

[iheartthed]

Big box in general killed Main Street. The mall (enclosed and strip) killed Main Street. Amazon is killing the mall.

[mhays]

Walmart's dominance of rural and small town retail (guessing 50%+ in many regions?) is MULTIPLES of the average percentage of retail that's online in the US on average (about 15%).

[JManc]

Originally Posted by Shawn

The thing that makes Amazon relatively unique is that they don’t slavishly chase quarterly PBT targets to appease institutional shareholders. This is a strength and frees Bezos to look long term and more importantly follow through. You’ll never get dividends from Amazon, and they don’t care.

I would say the same with Apple and Alphabet to an extent. Anyone long (private or institutional) on these stocks will ride out an occasional disappointing earnings call. And since stocks like AMZN have so much upside potential in capital appreciation, the lack of dividends isn't really noticed.

I sure wish I bought 50 shares of Amazon back in 1998 when I first started investing instead of Cisco.

[10023]

^ I justify all of my Apple purchases on the basis of having bought about $5k worth of shares after I got my first iPhone in 2007. Wish I’d bought a lot more.

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Yes, if this was a list of revenue then both would be here.

But we don’t because it’s not a viable measure of economic importance and not comparable across industries. In retail, for instance, most of it is pass-through. You can buy something for $8, sell it for $10, and the entire $10 is booked as revenue despite only $2 being added value (and probably more like 50 cents after the required operating costs).

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by 10023

But we don’t because it’s not a viable measure of economic importance and not comparable across industries. In retail, for instance, most of it is pass-through. You can buy something for $8, sell it for $10, and the entire $10 is booked as revenue despite only $2 being added value (and probably more like 50 cents after the required operating costs).

Revenue is a far more relevant measure of economic importance.

[Gordo]

That's the reason that we all know that Costco is of higher regional/national/international economic importance than Microsoft, and more than double that of Google.

[Shawn]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Revenue is a far more relevant measure of economic importance.

Or it’s just an indicator of how far up/down the value/supply chain a company is.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Shawn

Or it’s just an indicator of how far up/down the value/supply chain a company is.

Can you give an example?

[Gordo]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Can you give an example?

Manufacturer X sells 100 widgets to Retailer Y.
Retailer Y sells 100 widgets to 100 consumers.

The retailer will always show more revenue, in spite of the fact that very little additional economic activity likely occurs. Revenue inflates the importance of extraction companies and retailers, and obviously each step along the manufacturing chain will be bigger than the next even if little additional value is added (Boeing will always be larger than all of its suppliers combined, at least for the portion that they sell to Boeing).