Just days after e-commerce kingpin Amazon hit $1,000 per share, Alphabet — the parent company of Google, the online ad behemoth and Android developer — cracked the milestone during Monday trading.
With a market cap of nearly 700 billion, Alphabet is firmly entrenched as the world’s second largest technology company, behind Apple. Its shares are up more than 25 percent since the start of the year.
The company’s run is unsurprisingly due in large part to its command of online search and advertisements. Last week TheWrap noted from the latest “Meeker internet report” that Alphabet continues to dominate the space, combining with Facebook to account for 85 percent of growth in internet advertising.
Alphabet’s ad revenue jumped about 20 percent from 2015 to 2016, pulling in more than $35 billion in ad sales.
Still, Alphabet’s strength extends beyond merely ads. More than 80 percent of the 432 million smartphones sold last quarter ran on Android’s platform, and Alphabet is betting on a myriad of industries — from self-driving cars to artificial intelligence.
At a share price of $1,000, many investors would anticipate a stock split. Since going public in 2004, Alphabet has split once, in 2014. And just FYI, if you were smart enough to invest $1,000 in Google when it first went public, you’re investment would be worth more than $20,000 today.
Beyond Amazon and Google, the only other S&P 500 company with a price tag above $1,000 is Priceline.