Alphabet overtakes Apple as the world’s most valuable company

The shares of Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL), the parent company of Google surged after reporting better-than-expected financial results for the fourth quarter of 2015. Alphabet’s market cap is now approximately $547.1 billion compared to Apple’s $529.3 billion.

Alphabet’s shares rose as much as 4.4 percent to $804.50 on Tuesday, valuing the company at $546.50 billion, making it the world’s most valuable company – for now.

The last time Google surpassed Apple’s market cap was February 2010, when both companies were worth less than $200 billion and the iPad tablet had yet to be released.

Google’s advertising revenue increased almost 17 per cent to $19.08 billion, while the number of ads, or paid clicks, rose 31 per cent, the company said. As a whole, Alphabet posted total revenue of $21.32 billion for the fourth quarter, although Google was the driver behind the revenue, the “Other Bets” companies just happy to spend it – losing lost $3.6bn during the period.

Apple’s stock has been sliding amid concerns over slowing iPhone sales. Google accounted for all but a sliver of its parent company’s revenue.

The new structure was introduced under Alphabet in a bid to offer more transparency for investors, who were previously anxious about Google’s investment in what they considered as money-losing projects.

Alphabet as a whole reported strong results for last quarter.

To put that in context, Apple is valued at about $535 billion. Wall Street had estimated that Alphabet would report $8.10 on revenue of $20.8 billion, and these predictions were considered high at the time. But the core Google businesses are thriving, and the company earned an operating profit of .8 billion, with a lot of that coming from Google’s ad businesses. But the search engine still represents by far most of the company’s earnings.

Other Bets includes more experimental ventures such as self-driving cars and internet balloon programmes.

“We are already getting significant traction”, Pichai said.

“As Google continues to diversify its ad offerings, we expect YouTube to play an increasingly important role to Alphabet’s earnings”, said eMarketer analyst Martin Utreras.