Yesterday for a brief but glorious moment, Apple overtook Exxon as the most valuable company in the world. This has plenty to do with Apple’s massive and sustained growth in the past few years as it clawed its way into the music and smartphone industries and became a permanent fixture in both markets. Its recent earnings call revealed their best quarter ever, and the company’s enormous profits at one point outstripped those of the federal government. But the Cupertino, Calif. company’s recent dominance over the megalith oil company comes largely as a result of the market’s bipolar behavior during the past two days.
Today Exxon still maintains its market capitalization throne — but not by much. A week ago, Exxon held a $16 billion lead over Apple; as of 11:00 a.m. Thursday, it barely eked out a measly $3.5 billion lead.
Throughout the day The Daily Caller will be updating the latest market cap numbers from both of these giants. Check back here all day Thursday for the latest in this race, but don’t blame us if you pick the wrong horse.
Apple Market Cap Stock Chart by YCharts
11:15 a.m.: YCharts.com (above) reports that Apple currently holds a $343.84 billion dollar market cap, while Exxon leads with $348.18 billion. Both stocks have made up their losses from yesterday’s crash, where they closed at $337.2 billion and $330.28 billion, respectively.
12:00 p.m.: As of 11:38 a.m. according to CNN.com, Exxon barely stretches ahead of Apple by a Macbook Air’s thickness: $0.9 billion.
For the past two days, the blogosphere has speculated on the reason that the invisible hand is sparing Apple, relative to other publicly traded companies. The Washington Post points to brand loyalty and Steve Jobs’s leadership, MacNewsWorld explains that rumors of an upcoming iPhone 5 release couldn’t have hurt, and Computer World muses that the company’s emphasis on innovation represents a paradigm shift in the way that businesses earn money.
2:00 p.m.: As of 1:50 p.m., Exxon reclaimed the lead, ahead by nearly $3 billion.
3:41: Exxon maintains their lead with roughly $6 billion, their cap currently at $354.5 billion.
MarketWatch examines the massive hit that Exxon, and the rest of the energy sector, has sustained as a result of the volatile market. The Wall Street Journal contrasts the overall value of technology companies with their energy counterparts, but states flatly that Exxon’s enterprise value still outstrips Apple’s by nearly $100 million. Acting as a rare voice of prudence, Seeking Alpha cautions that Apple possibly surpassing Exxon’s market cap may not be all it’s cracked up to be:
In the grand scheme of things, market cap means absolutely nothing. It can easily be driven up or smacked down by the market’s mood swings. All that matters is a company’s future cash flows. Investors would be well served to remember that Microsoft’s (MSFT) market cap topped $600B right before the bursting of the dotcom bubble in 2000. Cisco (CSCO) traded at $550B at around the same time. Conglomerate General Electric (GE) was once a $575B monstrosity. All these companies have track records that make Apple’s claim to fame look like peanuts.
4:37 pm: The markets finally closed at 4 p.m., and Apple pulls off a last-minute surge past Exxon, though not by much. They close at $346.5 billion, while Exxon slips to $343.9 billion.
As we close down our thrilling and exciting coverage, we point you to the Economist’s reflection on Apple’s drastic turnaround in the past fourteen years, from an ailing, potential tech has-been to the most valuable company in the world, and its role in the emerging digital dominance in the market. BreakingViews (via the New York Times) suggests, perhaps audaciously, that Apple may one day be worth a trillion dollars. AllTechNews ponders whether the company’s successes could be sustained without Steve Jobs, an undesirable yet plausible scenario given his health issues.