Apple’s stock has held up better than those of its large technology rivals this year
Apple Inc. shares have held up far better than those of its Big Tech peers over the past month, and that’s helped the company to a staggering feat: The smartphone giant is now worth more than Alphabet Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and Meta Platforms Inc. combined.
Apple AAPL, -3.73% finished Wednesday’s session with a $2.307 trillion market capitalization, according to Dow Jones Market Data. Alphabet GOOG, -3.79% GOOGL, -3.87%, Amazon AMZN, -4.82%, and Meta META, -4.89% were worth a combined $2.306 trillion.
The comparison was flagged on Twitter by financial YouTuber Joseph Carlson.
The contrast illustrates the sharp comedown in technology shares this year. Apple was worth $2.913 trillion to close out 2021, according to Dow Jones Market Data. The grouping of Alphabet, Amazon and Meta was worth $4.410 trillion at that time.
Apple’s stock has outperformed those of its three tech peers over both the past month and the course of 2022.
Shares of Apple are up 4.9% in the past month, while shares of Alphabet are down 9.1%, shares of Amazon are off 18.5% and shares of Meta are down 33.3%. On a year-to-date basis, Apple’s stock has lost 18.3%, while Alphabet’s has declined 40.5%, Amazon’s has fallen 44.7% and Meta’s has plunged 73.1%.
Apple’s stock has also had a better start to the week than any of those other three Big Tech names, though all four are down.
The four companies each reported earnings last week, and only Apple’s numbers were met with a positive stock reaction. Since then, Meta fell below a $300 billion valuation for the first time since February 2016. It was valued at $240 billion as of Wednesday’s close.
Meanwhile, Amazon’s stock has declined in each of the past six trading sessions, and the company on Tuesday fell out of trillion-dollar territory for the first time since April 2020.
Bernstein analyst Mark Shmulik recently highlighted the challenges facing the big internet companies in what he called an “autopsy” of their latest results. He noted that Alphabet, Amazon and Meta now have to show “perfection” as they all have diversified businesses and investors are more prone to nitpicking signs of weakness in any one of those area amid this choppy market climate.