From: John Conover <john@email.johncon.com>
Subject: Re: Has S&P made a mistake or is Microsoft worth 400 billion?
Date: 2 May 1999 08:34:12 -0000
Archimedes Plutonium writes:
> Tonight looking at S&P data, it shows MSFT with 5 billion shares
> outstanding and with a price of 80 per share that is a whalloping 400
> billion in market value
>
> Looking up GE, it has 3.27 billion shares outstanding and with a price
> of approx 100 per share has a market value of 327 billion
>
> Looking up MRK, it has 2.36 billion shares outstanding and with a
> price of approx 70 per share has a market value of 165 billion
>
> If that Microsoft data is correct, then when did MSFT surpass GE as
> the richest market value company?
>
Yes, that is true. MS is the highest capitalized company in the world.
It happened in the middle of 1998. I haven't looked in several months,
but the US market's total capitalization is about 12 trillion dollars,
US.
MS does somewhat less than 20 billion bucks a year in GR. In 1997, MS
was 172'nd on the Fortune 500 list, and had 25,000 employees, or
so. In 1997, Intel's earnings were twice what MS's were, as was their
GR.
More information can be found at http://www.sec.gov/edgarhp.htm. The
10-Q documents are the ones you want. For market capitalizations, see
http://www.nyse.com/public/market/2c/2cix.htm, (but you will have to
click around to find it.)
John
BTW, so much for the EMH and rational investor hypothesis. MS is not a
fledgling Internet company with exuberant investors for the IPO. It is
the largest capitalized company in the world.
--
John Conover, john@email.johncon.com, http://www.johncon.com/