Thanks to a steadily climbing stock price, Facebook is now more valuable than the world’s biggest retailer and the company that currently sits atop the Fortune 500: Walmart.
Facebook’s (FB) shares have gained more than 11% in value so far this year; they are up more than 32% over the past full year. The company’s shares surged 7% in the past week, pushing Facebook’s market value to about $238 billion. That tops Walmart’s (WMT) current market cap of $234 billion, knocking the massive retailer off of the list of the 10 largest companies by market value.
Apple (AAPL) is still the most valuable company based on market cap, valued at greater than $735 billion.
The last time Walmart ended a year outside the top 10 largest S&P 500 companies based on market cap was in 1997, according to The Wall Street Journal. Walmart’s stock is down more than 15% since the start of the year, despite topping the latest Fortune 500 for the third straight year with nearly half a billion dollars in sales. Last month, though, Walmart joined several other U.S. retailers by reporting quarterly sales figures that fell below Wall Street expectations.
Facebook shot up this year’s Fortune 500 rankings, jumping nearly 100 spots to crack the top 250 companies based on annual revenue. Facebook’s 2014 revenue increased by 58% to $12.5 billion. That’s still nearly 40 times less than Walmart’s revenue, which means the social networking company still has a long way to go before it can make a run for Walmart’s spot on the Fortune 500.
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