Which are the 5 Highest Value U.S. Companies?

In recent years, the U.S. economic power has waned, but it’s still the most important global economy. For more than a century, the U.S. has had the highest global GDP and its economic performance over the past decade has proven to be difficult to replicate by its rivals. Tax cuts and government spending increases have improved cash flow to domestic and global markets. The 2008 recession started and ended with the U.S. and American businesses drove most of the recovery. In this article, we will take a close look at the five highest value U.S. companies operating today. 

Using Market Cap to Calculate Company Values

Before we begin, we need to examine how we value these companies. The “Market Cap” or Market Capitalization, as it is formally known, is the total value of all shares of stock in any given company. The calculation is the price of one company stock multiplied by the number of outstanding shares. So, if any given company has $50 dollar shares and they have 20 million shares available for sale, it has a $1 billion market cap. An investor uses the market cap as a measure of one company against another. This is also an important metric to evaluate the market worth and future prospects of a company. The easiest way to think of market cap is that it’s the true reflection of what investors would be willing to pay for a share of the company stock. Starting from top to fifth place, let’s take a look at the five highest value U.S. companies:

1. Microsoft

This famous company was founded in 1975. The market cap is $2.95 trillion with $227.59 billion in revenue generating $158.74 billion gross profit. Microsoft is consistently the number one ranked company with a five year annualized return of 31.07%. Windows is the most popular OS and most new computers have standard Windows OS installations. But, Microsoft has other products, such as Office Suite. Azure Cloud. Xbox and the Surface tablets and laptops line up. In recent years, Microsoft has invested $10 billion into the development of ChatGPT with OpenAI. The company also has Microsoft Copilot which is its in-house AI-powered assistant tool.

2. Apple

Apple is another famous computing company that was established only one year after Microsoft. The market cap was $2.85 trillion, the revenue was $383.29 billion and gross profit was $169.15 billion on February 1st. Apple is typically ranked as one of the top companies in terms of brand loyalty and the annualized return is a healthy 34.67%. The tech gadget market may seem saturated, but Apple always seems to have a unique take with high-quality alternatives that their customers love. Although Apple sits behind Microsoft, it was the first company to reach a $1 trillion and then a $2 trillion market cap! The company sells a wide variety of products, including the iPhone, AirPods, Macbook, Apple Watch, and Apple TV+ streaming. The newest addition to their product line is the Apple Vision Pro VR headset which has been designed for emergent VR technology. 

3. Saudi Arabian Oil

This company may be referred to as Saudi Aramco, as the name suggests, it’s an energy and chemical business owned by the government of Saudi Arabia. The company was founded in 1933, it has a $2 trillion market cap, a revenue of $552.21 and the gross profit is $283.74 billion. Saudi Arabian Oil is the largest daily oil producer with the second largest crude oil reserves. This company is reliant on daily oil prices, there are regular rises and falls, but continued oil demand ensures that the market cap is maintained. To improve stability the company has diversified into liquified natural gas with $500 million into MidOcean Energy. 

4. Alphabet (Google)

Most people typically refer to this company as Google, but a name change to Alphabet took place in 2015. Alphabet was founded as Google back in 1998, it has a market cap of $1.77 trillion, a revenue of $307.16 billion, and the gross profit is $174.30. The five year annualized return was 20.62% as of February 1st. The restructuring of the company means that Alphabet is now the holding company for Google. Although Google is probably best known for its search engine, it has a wide variety of products and services, including YouTube, Google Maps, Gmail, Pixel smartphones, Google Chromebooks, Waze Maps, and more. The company has been involved in a number of antitrust lawsuits over the last decade. The claims are that Alphabet engages in anti-competitive deals with companies such as Mozilla and Apple to make Google Search the default search engine. A recent antitrust suit by Epic Games claimed that Alphabet has an app monopoly in the Google Play store which is illegal. Despite these legal issues, Alphabet is still a large and successful company, and it has heavily invested in Google AI which is better known as Bard.

5. Amazon

This company was founded in 1994, it was originally an online book store selling physical products and it has become one of the most recognized retailers in the world. The market cap was $1.60 trillion, the revenue was $554.03 billion and the gross profit was $256.20 billion on February 1st. Amazon is currently the best known online retailer with a five year annualized return of 13.80%. The standout service offered by Amazon is Amazon Prime which has more than 200 million users. The company is also the largest provider of cloud services with Amazon Web Services (AWS). Amazon Prime Video streaming and Twitch game streaming is extremely popular with the user base. In a strange move away from its core business model, Amazon owns Whole Food Market. But, the company still has legal problems to resolve, the FTC and 17 states have filed an antitrust lawsuit claiming that Amazon is a monopoly using anti-competitive business strategies. Only time will tell how this will impact the company in the future.