As the digital advertising market booms and demand for smartphones wanes, Alphabet Inc could soon dethrone Apple Inc as the world’s most valuable company.
If it happens, Alphabet would move to the head of the class just months after Google reorganized itself under the holding company.
The Silicon Valley rivals could trade places soon, given how rapidly the financial gap between them is narrowing. At the end of trading on Friday, Apple’s market value stood at US$540 billion; Alphabet was worth US$524 billion.
That is a dramatic swing from where things stood just 13 months ago. Apple then boasted a market value of US$643 billion, almost twice Google’s US$361 billion.
Since then, investors have soured on Apple. The company has struggled to come up with another trend-setting product amid slumping sales of its most important device — the nearly nine-year-old iPhone, which accounts for roughly two-thirds of Apple’s overall sales.
Apple has already acknowledged the iPhone is to begin this year with its first quarterly sales decline since it debuted in 2007. The slowdown helped push down Apple’s stock price by 12 percent since the end of 2014.
In contrast, Google has maintained its leadership in the lucrative Internet search and advertising market, while building other popular products in video, mobile, Web browsing, e-mail and mapping. That bundle of Google services brings in most of Alphabet’s revenue and is expected to deliver growth in the 15 percent to 20 percent range as marketers shift even more of their budgets to digital services.
Alphabet has also impressed investors by reining in its spending. Google hired Wall Street veteran Ruth Porat as its chief financial officer in May last year.
In addition to reversing a long expansion of Google’s operating expenses, Porat also persuaded Alphabet’s board to spend US$5 billion buying back its own stock. That move signaled a more shareholder-friendly approach to managing the company’s cash hoard.
Investors have also applauded the creation of Alphabet, which is structured to provide more information about the cost of the company’s experimental ventures into self-driving cars, Internet access services, health science and city management.
All of those factors have helped lift Alphabet’s stock — previously Google’s — by 43 percent since the end of 2014.
It is a potentially big shift for Apple, which has held bragging rights as the world’s most valuable company for most of the past four-and-a-half years — ExxonMobil seized the high ground for a brief time in 2013.
Alphabet would become the 12th company to rise to the most valuable spot, according to Standard & Poor’s.
BGP Financial analyst Colin Gillis said the potential changing of the guard reflects a wider recognition that Alphabet is fostering a “culture of innovation,” while Apple has lost some of its magic since the death of co-founder and former chief executive officer Steve Jobs in October 2011.
“I no longer see a sense of urgency at Apple,” Gillis said.
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