THE LARGEST COMPANY IN THE WORLD

I was reading the latest TIME of the 100 most influential companies and saw a note that Tesla's market cap was around $700 billion, while General Motors was under $100 billion. Turns out that today this figure for Tesla is $567 billion, even though General Motors sold 6.8 million cars in 2020 while Tesla only sold half a million. Part of this market cap value is the stock value of the company, and GE sold 8.5 million vehicles in 2018. You got to wonder if Tesla is monstrously overvalued. If you were wondering why Reese Witherspoon was on the cover, her company has been really influential.

Later, I saw that one with even fewer assets, Facebook, had a market cap of $890 billion. What is market cap? Simply, multiply the total number of outstanding shares by the current market price. Has nothing to do with what they are really worth.

Then, I saw that Tencent, a Chinese company, is the most valuable company in Asia with a worth of $750 billion. However, worth is different from cap. Market value uses numerous metrics such as price-to-earnings, price-to-sales and return-on-equity. Other factors such as outstanding bonds, long-term growth potential, corporate debt, taxes and interest payments are cranked into the worth.

Of course there is a third term again different from the other two: book value. Calculate by subtracting non-monetary assets and liabilities or debts from a company's total assets.

So I went to Statista, and saw the following ranked by market capitalization in 2020:

#1 $1645 billion Saudi Aramco (Saudi Arabia)
#2 $1359 billion Microsoft (USA)
#3 $1286 billion Apple (USA)
#4 $1233 billion Amazon (USA)
#5 $ 919 billion Alphabet (USA--parent company of Google)
#6 $ 584 billion Facebook (USA)
#7 $ 545 billion Alibaba (China)
#8 $ 510 billion Tencent (China)
#9 $ 455 billion Berkshire Hathaway (USA, Warren Buffet)
#10 $ 395 billion Johnson & Johnson (USA, one of those vaccine companies)

Well, what about the largest by annual revenues (with market cap shown in parentheses)?

#1 $542 billion Walmart ($393 billion)
#2 $356 billion China Petroleum & Chemical Corp ($54 billion)
#3 $322 billion Amazon ($1.6 trillion)
#4 $320 billion PetroChina ($59 billion)
#5 $274 billion Apple ($2 trillion)
#6 $264 billion CVS ($77 billion)
#7 $263 billion Royal Dutch Shell ($110 billion)
#8 $260 billion Berkshire Hathaway($520 billion)
#9 $249 billion Toyota Motor Corp ($182.7 billion)
#10 $247 billion Volkswagen ($95 billion)

Why are the market caps different? Depends on the value of the stock. Today, for example, here are the largest by market cap:

#1 $2.1 trillion Apple
#2 $1.9 trillion Saudi Aramco
#3 $1.8 trillion Microsoft
#10 $0.5 trillion Tesla
#15 $0.4 trillion Johnson&Johnson
#16 $0.4 trillion Walmart
#31 $0.3 trillion Exxon Mobil
#40 $0.2 trillion Toyota
100 $0.1 trillion SoftBank

So which is the largest in the world? It depends.

Finally, Forbes this week had an article on how the world's biggest companies endured the pandemic. First, amazingly enough, the world stock market has JUMPED 48% in the past year. They list 100 companies by country, sales, profit, assets and market value. They had the following ranking:

#1 Industrial and Commercial Bank of China
#2 JPMorgan Chase
#3 Berkshire Hathaway
#4 China Construction Bank
#5 Saudi Aramco
#6 Apple
#6 Bank of America
#6 Ping An Insurance
#9 Agriculture Bank of China
#10 Amazon

In terms of parameters:

ICBC at #1 had the most assets = $4.9 trillion
Walmart at #18 had the largest sales figure = $556 billion
Apple at #6 had the biggest profit = $64 billion
Apple at #6 had the highest market value = $2.2 trillion

Tesla is not in the top 100, while General Motors is #47 with:

Sales = $123 billion
Profit =$6.4 billion
Assets =$235 billion
Market value = $84.6 billion

Here is a tribute to policemen by Paul Harvey, who passed away more than a decade ago:

Quizas (Perhaps) with Andrea Bocelli and Jeniffer Lopez. The original in 1947 was by Bobby Capo. I best remember the version by Nat King Cole.

HONOLULU TO SEATTLE

The story of the day is Hurricane Milton, now a Category 4 at 145 MPH, with a track that has moved further south and the eye projected to make landfall just south of Sarasota. Good news for Tampa, which is 73 miles north. Milton will crash into Florida as a Category 4, and is huge, so a lot of problems can still be expected in Tampa Bay with storm surge. If the eye had crossed into the state just north of Tampa, the damage would have been catastrophic. Milton is a fast-moving storm, currently at 17 MPH, so as bad as the rainfall will be over Florida, again, a blessing. The eye will make landfall around 10PM EDT today, and will move into the Atlantic Ocean north of Palm Bay Thursday morning. My first trip to Seattle was in June of 1962 just after I graduated from Stanford University. Caught a bus. Was called the Century 21 Exposition . Also the Seattle World's Fair. 10 million joined me on a six-month run. My first. These a...

WHY YOU SHOULD CONVERT TO A JAPANESE HIGH TECH TOILET

Did you know that Oktoberfest in Germany is mostly in September? The very first day of Oktoberfest 2021 was supposed to be today, September 18, extending into October 3. Well, as in 2020, Oktoberfest was cancelled. So why is it called by that month when it is held mostly in September? The first celebration in 1810 was in October. Did you also know that Oktoberfest is held only in Munich? These days seven million drink more than a liter ( about three typical cans ) of beer each, costing around $11. Except for my wife and I when we followed the crowd to board the S-Bahn to the fairgrounds near Old Town. It was drizzling a bit. We bought a large pretzel outside of a typical barn where beer is served. We did not know that you needed to get this inside the hall. So no one came to serve us beer. After a while we decided to have lunch, and the restaurant we settled on only served wine. Thus, we might have been the ...

THE FIRST 84 YEARS OF MY LIFE

The first half of my life was spent preparing myself for my final 42 years. This was a mostly trying and stressful period involving a less than ideal youth, then struggles to get through school, my first few jobs and accompanying life, ending two months later on a Sunday with Part 15E , so it was a spiritual conclusion to my final transition. I never did count the number of actual postings, but I suspect it was around 25 parts. The ending had to do with golf, the disappearance and re-appearance of an 8-iron cover. That was the final clue to whether the beyond after death would be eternal gloom or Heaven. Today, I provide only one transition, but hint about a final one, for this, after all, is Sunday. I'm 84 years old, so let me summarize what happened during the first phase, from 0-42, and follow with the years 42-84. As this is 2024, that key transition year was 1982. I can't seem to find this photo, but as a one-year old baby, I was fat....

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