Alphabet’s Market Cap Briefly Passed $2 Trillion. It’s Poised for a Speed Record.

Alphabet‘s market capitalization briefly passed the $2 trillion mark on Monday, highlighting how the tech giant is in position to be the fastest U.S. company to make the leap to that level on a closing basis from a mere $1 trillion.

Alphabet ‘s Class A stock (ticker: GOOGL), the most widely traded, hit a high of $3012.30 on Monday, while the Class C shares traded as high as $3020.69, lifting the company past a $2 trillion valuation for a short time.

Alphabet ended the day with a small gain, giving the company a closing market cap of $1.978 trillion. To get this close to $2 trillion on a closing basis has taken 456 trading days so far. Apple (AAPL), currently the fastest to make the jump, took 516 days to add its second trillion of market cap. Microsoft (MSFT) was right behind the smartphone giant, taking 543 days to go from $1 trillion to $2 trillion. 

Fast adoption of many Alphabet services since the start of the pandemic has helped the stock to take off. Shares have risen almost 180% since hitting bottom in March 2020, when full lockdowns were ravaging both financial markets and the overall economy. That gain beats the S&P 500 ‘s surge of about 110%.

Google’s advertising revenue soared last year as people stuck at home used their computers and mobile devices more often. The company also benefited from the world’s fast transition into cloud services

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as more people work from home. Earnings per share grew 19% in 2020, despite the fact that, for some time early in the year, brands were spending less on advertising in general. 

Alphabet’s third-quarter earnings

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were about 18% higher than analysts had anticipated. They are expected to rise more than 80% year over year for all of 2021, according to FactSet data. 

Write to Jacob Sonenshine at jacob.sonenshine@barrons.com

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