The 20 Most Valuable Companies in the World – June 2015

The 10 publicly traded companies with the largest market capitalizations. Since October of last year the top 20 list has seen quite a bit of profit for stockholders (mainly in Apple and Chinese companies).

Apple’s market cap is up $115 billion since the last list was created in October of 2014. That increase is more than 50% of the value of the 14th most valuable company in the world (in October 2014).

China Mobile increased $100 billion and moved into 6th place. Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) increased $78 billion to move into 7th place.

Exxon Mobil lost over $50 billion (oil prices collapsed as OPEC decided to stop attempting to hold back supply in order to maximize the price of oil). Alibaba (the only non-USA company in the last list) and Walmart dropped out of the top 10.

The total value of the top 20 increased from $5.722 trillion to $6.046 trillion, an increase of $324 billion. Several companies have been replaced in the new top 20 list.

The next ten most valuable companies:

Market capitalization shown are of the close of business last Friday, as shown on Yahoo Finance.

The current top 10 includes 8 USA companies and 2 Chinese companies. The 11th to 20th most valuable companies includes 4 Chinese companies, 3 Swiss companies and 3 USA companies. Facebook (after increasing $21 billion), China Construction Bank (increasing $68 billion – it is hard for me to be sure what the value is, I am not sure I am reading the statements correctly but this is my best guess) and Tencent moved into the top 20; which dropped Procter & Gamble, Royal Dutch Shell and Chevron from the top 20.

Related: Historical Stock Returns – Global Stock Market Capitalization from 2000 to 2012 – Stock Market Capitalization by Country from 1990 to 2010 – Solar Energy Capacity by Country (2009-2013)

A few other companies of interest (based on their market capitalization):

Toyota, Japan, current market cap is $213 billion.
Pfizer, USA, $210 billion.
Procter & Gamble, USA, $210 billion.
Bank of China, China, $203 billion**.
Amazon, USA, $198 billion.
Verizon, USA, $192 billion.
Oracle, USA, $191 billion.
Royal Dutch Shell, Netherlands, $184 billion.
Chevron, USA, $191 billion.
Walt Disney, USA, $187 billion.
Samsung, Korea, $183 billion.****
Agricultural Bank of China, China, $178 billion**
Gilead Sciences, USA, $167 billion.
Merck, USA, $167 billion.
BHP, Australia, $114 billion (down $45 billion since October 2014).

Apple is very close to being more valuable than the 2nd and 3rd place companies together: Apple is worth $741 billion, Google and Microsoft together are worth $744 billion. All these figures are approximate as stock buybacks and distributions are only shown quarterly, with Apple’s continued large buybacks the market cap is likely a small bit overstated for them (if I used only the price of GOOG, instead of using GOOG and GOOGL, Apple would be worth more that the other 2).

Google issued a 3rd glass of stock GOOG that doesn’t have voting rights. Depending on if you used GOOGL or GOOG to value the company you get a difference of over $10 billion. There is a special class of stock for Larry Page, Sergy Brin that has 10 times the voting rights of GOOGL. I feel GOOGL is the real stock and GOOG is a derivative without voting rights (but otherwise suppose to be equal to GOOGL). Still I used a value in between the values given using either one of those prices to value the company.

* China Mobile market cap taken from their website and converted to USD.
** calculation by taking cap from MarketWatch and converting to USD – They are quoting the cap in HK$.
*** from Google finance (the market cap varies depending on which symbol you use)
**** from Yahoo finance converting to USD from Korean Won