• | 6:18 am

These 3 companies could be the first to reach an eye-popping $5 trillion market cap

According to a new report, Apple could hit that threshold before the end of the decade, followed in a few years by Microsoft and Amazon.

[Source photo: C.J. Burton/Getty]

Despite a pandemic, the sky seems to be the limit for corporate profitsā€”as it was for Apple, which soared to a $3 trillion market value in early January, a landmark summit no company had reached before. Appleā€™s moment in the sun lasted only for minutesā€”its stock price since dropped and its valuation is now $2.84 trillionā€”but surely it will be back up there again, its success a sign of more to come.

At least, thatā€™s according to XTB, a leading European foreign exchange brokerage, whoseĀ new researchĀ predicts which of todayā€™s mammoth companies could be first to reach the mind-numbing $5 trillion mark. Based on historical market capitalizations dating back to 2010 (and some Excel wizardry), XTB forecast that five companies could do it within the next half-century.

Unsurprisingly, all of them are tech businessesā€”led by Apple itself, which could cross the threshold in the next decade.

The ranking follows:

  • Apple,Ā by 2028
  • Microsoft,Ā by 2035
  • Amazon,Ā by 2035
  • Tesla,Ā by 2066
  • Nvidia,Ā by 2066

Another three companies are expected to hit $5 trillion before the turn of the century:Ā TSMC, by 2078;Ā Tencent, by 2083; andĀ UnitedHealth, by 2090. Meanwhile, a handful of big names will just miss the mark: Berkshire Hathaway, Visa, Samsung, Home Depot, and LVMH are all projected to be worth just under $4 trillion by 2100.

Also missing from the list are Netflixā€”which XTB contends hasĀ too much competition in the streaming fieldā€”and fast-food giants McDonaldā€™s and Starbucks, whose performance has been mediocre despite their popularity.

However, a notable disclaimer to the list is that it excludes some of the worldā€™s largest companies, for which full historical market data was unavailableā€”including industry baronsĀ likeĀ Saudi Aramco, Alphabet, Meta, PayPal, Alibaba, and Meituan. Saudi Aramco and Alphabet have both cleared the $2 trillion milestone, at least briefly, with Alphabet doing so for the first time in late 2021. Meanwhile, Meta was on the cusp of $1 trillion before anĀ unfortunate fourth-quarter earnings report triggered a disastrous stock market wipeout, which scrubbed $250 billion from its value in a single day.

But Apple, on the other hand, has momentum on its side. It took nearly four decades of trading to hit $1 trillion in 2018, but then saw one of the greatest gains in the Dow Jones Industrial Average in 2021, rising 41% throughout the year. Tesla has also seen astronomical growth, with its market cap skyrocketing from $75 billion in 2019 to $1.1 trillion in late 2021 on the tailwinds of electric-vehicle investor mania.

Althoughā€”if we zoom out for a moment, we might also remember that 50 years from now is aĀ long time. That long ago, the internet was still a decade pre-birth, which was the event that spawned many of todayā€™s most powerful conglomerates. In another half-century, the world could be ruled by an industry that has yet to exist.

Check out theĀ full report here.

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