Microsoft surpasses Exxon as world’s second-largest company

Microsoft surpasses Exxon as world’s second-largest company

PanARMENIAN.Net - Exxon Mobil Corp. ceded its title as the world’s second-largest company to Microsoft Corp. after the five-month oil rout cut $47 billion from its market value, Bloomberg reports.

Exxon, based in Irving, Texas, slipped 0.8 percent to $94.66 at 4 p.m. in New York, dropping for the third time in four days and reducing its overall value to $400.8 billion. Microsoft, in Redmond, Washington, climbed 1.7 percent, extending an advance from its October bottom to 16 percent, pushing its capitalization to $408.9 billion.

The flip-flop follows a 30 percent plunge in crude spurred by rising U.S. supplies and a refusal by OPEC to reduce output. Computer and software makers in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index have posted the third-largest gains among industries this year besides health-care and utilities, rising 17 percent.

“Nothing stays the same forever, and the stronger dollar with weaker oil prices has been the catalyst for this,” Quincy Krosby, a market strategist at Prudential Financial Inc. in Newark, New Jersey, said by phone. The firm oversees more than $1 trillion. “Larger-cap tech stocks have become a place that investors are going to as a source for dividends and buybacks, and in some cases, safety.”

Apple Inc., the Cupertino, California-based iPhone maker, retains its rank as the world’s biggest company. Its shares have rallied 41 percent in 2014, the 33rd biggest gain in the S&P 500, as the company bought back shares and extended a streak of beating analyst earnings estimates to eight quarters.

It isn’t the first time Exxon has been superseded by a technology company in the No. 2 slot. Google Inc., operator of the world’s most popular search engine, surpassed its market value for four days in February and two in March, rising as high as $410 billion. Its 0.8 percent retreat in 2014 has pushed it down to about $373 billion as of today, Bloomberg says.

Microsoft has climbed 33 percent this year, adding almost $100 billion to its equity value, as its new chief executive officer, Satya Nadella, began his effort to revive the company. The world’s largest software maker last month reported quarterly sales that topped analysts’ estimates, driven by cloud-computing growth and recovering personal-computer sales.

 Top stories
Yerevan has dismissed Turkey’s demand to shut down the Armenian nuclear power plant as “inappropriate”.
Armenia will loan 2.9 billion drams to Nagorno Karabakh (Artsakh), according to a draft government decision.
The Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources of Azerbaijan has “strongly condemned” Armenia’s decision.
Kerobyan has said that for the first time in the history of Armenia, the volume of foreign direct investments amounted to about $1 billion.
Partner news
---