Microsoft, for a moment on Thursday, was the third U.S. company to see its valuation cross the $1 trillion mark.
Shares have since lost some of those gains, putting the company just under the line once again. It’s uncertain if it will close above the milestone
The stock spiked after the company beat its earnings estimates late Wednesday, briefly topping $130.50, which pushed the market cap over the psychological threshold. Overall, Microsoft’s stock is up 34% in the past year.
Apple was the first company to top a $1 trillion valuation last August. Amazon cleared the mark in mid-day trading the following month, but failed to close at that level.
Microsoft beats Google parent Alphabet to the punch with today’s accomplishment, but it’s likely only a short period of time before the search engine giant joins the club.
Reaching such a goal, in truth, is more a bragging right than anything else. The valuation likely won’t affect investor interest one way or the other (they’ll remain more focused on quarterly earnings). But it’s a good indicator of how the company has performed historically. On Aug. 2 last year, Microsoft’s valuation was just $822 billion, showing how substantial the increase has been.
The first company to ever hit $1 trillion was PetroChina, which reached the valuation briefly on its first day of trading, following its 2007 IPO. But that peak coincided with a Chinese stock-market bubble, and PetroChina’s shares would go on to lose $800 billion in value over the next 10 years.
