Microsoft was able to once again regain its spot as the second most valuable company in the US after a disappointing quarterly report from Amazon lowered its market capitalization by $65bn.
Apple still holds the top spot at over $1tn after it crossed the trillion dollar threshold back in September but Microsoft and Amazon are still competing for second place. Before the dot-com bubble burst in the early 2000s, Microsoft had the highest market capitalization on Wall Street.
Amazon's holiday season sales outlook missed targets which led its stock to drop by seven per cent which is the most its fallen in nearly three years. The plunge also raised concerns that Wall Street's tech darlings have begun to face stiffer competition.
The race for second place
Microsoft's stock fell by just 1.1 per cent as a result of a broad technology sell-off led by Amazon's holiday outlook and a weaker-than-expected report from Google's parent company Alphabet.
The company's shares remain up by almost four per cent as the it beat quarterly profit expectations thanks in part to its cloud computing business which has improved at competing with Amazon's AWS.
Microsoft's stock market value is around $823bn and it is on track to close above Amazon for the first time since April when it first gave up its spot as the second largest company in the US by market capitalization. Amazon meanwhile is worth $805bn after it fell below Microsoft in extended trading.
After its recent decline, Amazon is up around 40 per cent year to date while Microsoft has gained around 25 per cent during 2018.
Apple will report its quarterly results on November 1st and then we'll see just how the top second and third US tech company stack up to the trillion dollar giant.
Via Reuters
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