The onslaught of the pandemic has affected the markets, but not all sectors or companies equally. The year of Covid closes with technology companies, especially the American ones, reinforced after the virus hit. And with a new leader in the ranking of the world's most valuable companies: Apple. The iPhone maker regains the throne after the parenthesis of 2019, when the Saudi oil company Aramco finished as the company with the largest capitalization after the largest IPO in history. The oil and gas business is precisely one of the hardest hit by the uncertainties created by the pandemic.
Apple has received the backing of investors with a share rise of 85% from January to December and a value of 1.87 billion euros. The launch of its first 5G device and the pull of services such as Apple Music and the App Store have underpinned its prospects.
Third place belongs to Microsoft, with 1.38 billion euros, followed by Amazon, which moves up one position and surpasses Alphabet, Google's parent company, which ranks fifth. The online trading platform is worth 1.36 billion euros, compared to 970,000 million for the search engine.
Chinese presence
Below the trillion dollars are Facebook, which with a value of 643,000 million euros, is maintained compared to 2019, and the Chinese giant Tencent, owner of applications and video games. In eighth place is the Chinese Alibaba, which debuted on the stock market in 2019, and is worth 521,000 million.
The technological roll is overwhelming in the classification: seven of the ten largest companies are related to technology. Only Aramco (from the energy sector), Tesla (electric cars) and Berkshire Hathaway, the conglomerate of businessman Warren Buffet, remain in the top ten beyond technology. In 2019, the leading area still showed balance: five were technological and the other half were different sectors.
There are some especially striking cases and Tesla's is overwhelming. With a rise of almost 700% on the stock market, the electric car manufacturer has risen two hundred places in the ranking and has slipped into the top ten. A meteoric career based on its expectations of profits and technological improvements for mobility, not without doubts about its solidity.
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Also vertical has been the rise of Paypal, which closes 2020 with an advance of 64 positions in the classification and with its shares that have more than doubled their value, benefiting from the acceleration in digital payments during the pandemic.
Telecommuting and lockdowns have boosted the demand for chips around the world and semiconductor companies have been able to take advantage of the stock market. Among them, Nvidia has moved to 23rd place from 76th, with a share rise of 120%, and the European ASML Holding, has advanced 53 positions, with a market value of more than 166,000 million.
Online entertainment has been another of the businesses with a strong pull derived from the confinements. Netflix has risen to 34th place in the rankings, with a share gain of 64%. The growth in the volume of subscribers, especially in the first half of the year, has supported the commitment to the streaming company.
The big losers have been the oil companies, which have practically disappeared from the ranking. Aside from Aramco, which remains in second place, other companies that ranked high for their size have fallen off the list. This is the case with Exxon, which has dropped to 57th place from 19th last year, Royal Dutch Shell, which has fallen to 88th from 36th, and Chevron, which has dropped to 68th from 40th in 2019.
The Spanish go down
There is no Spanish company among the 100 most valuable companies. Inditex, which last year ranked 96th, leaves that list this year and stands at number 129. The pandemic has hit the textile sector and the Zara group has suffered its first quarterly losses. Despite the pull of online sales, the company has not been able to compensate for the closure of stores and its stock has fallen 14% since January.
Iberdrola is the next Spanish in the ranking, and has improved its position to position 151 compared to 185 last year. Its stock is up 33% for the year.
Santander has dropped to position 297 from 170 in 2019. The entity provided 12,600 million in the first half of the year due to the Covid crisis, an invoice that made it enter the red for the first time with historical losses.
